Bordeaux Mixture & Bayer - approval withdrawn

[kathyd]

You and I have the benefit of this service for free. Someone has to pay to host and maintain it - IME we are talking £thousands per annum. If we were paying for the service things would be different but given that we aren't I never quote links from rival forums, magazines, or anything else which might be perceived as a competitor which I see as just being common courtesy.

Well... yes and no. I know for a fact that you can install a forum for free, the hosting costs nothing, although obviously I have no idea whether GYO is paying for this one or not. I do hope it's a free one otherwise there's no excuse for all the adverts which now take up at least 50% of my screen and make it harder and harder to navigate around. In terms of managing it, isn't that largely done by unpaid mods? So I'm unclear where the 'thousands' a year costs would come from. And they certainly wouldn't be doing it at all if they weren't gaining a lot more than it might be costing . I'd never 'recommend' an alternative mag on here obviously, or make a needless reference to it, but IF I were to direct-quote from one I'd include the name of the mag or insert a link to the relevant page. However, it's a mute point really. If that's the rule we either live with it or lump it and use one of the many other gardening forums available .

[bearded bloke]

Hi kathy, I'm sure the GYO owners would be very grateful if you could furnish them with the information of them where they can find a free of charge server to host the forums & even more so, who the IT technicians are that work for no wages

[Kristen]

OK, here's my view. Not intended to be argumentative in any way, so I apologise if it reads like that.

Well... yes and no. I know for a fact that you can install a forum for free, the hosting costs nothing

I'd love to have my own forum ... if it was free I'd do it today

Decent forum software costs money. The people who write it have to eat to live! Trial / Limited versions may well be free as a carrot ... but that doesn't work for real installations with lots of users and a big archive of several years of posts

In terms of managing it, isn't that largely done by unpaid mods?

The computers the stuff runs on cost money to buy, cost money to install, and then need maintenance - backing up the database, fixing faults etc.

The forum breaks from time to time. Engineers have to fix it. Perhaps the forum grows to the point where the backup is now so big it fills up the disk ... engineer has to sort out how to work around that, or install a bigger disk. Hardware fails and needs to be replaced, and then the database has to be sorted out to fix any corruptions or recover from backup. For a database as popular as this users will expect close to zero data loss when that happens. The greater the uptime and the less the acceptable data-loss the more sophisticated the hardware and software has to be - for example automatically copying all data, in real time, to another "Mirrored" server in a physically separate location.

Engineers have to install upgrades from time to time. Generally all hell breaks loose when that happens - users get annoyed because things work differently, or not at all. Support costs go up, in the short term, either just providing assistance to users or figuring out how to sort out the problem.

Some, but I doubt "all", that will be included in the hosting package.

Then the Magazine's Marketing People decide they want to restyle it - new colours, new logo, complete re-branding / facelift. Or change the way the adverts are displayed. That requires building / changing style sheets (which tell your browser how to display / "style" the page). Quite possibly some programming too - for example to hide the footer ad for a month when you click on a button (as happened a month or so back). Then they find that some users on some browsers complain that doesn't work, so they have to change the program to fix it. Folk will no doubt remember all the angst that arose when that was introduced ...

The bigger the forum (and this one is huge) the more it costs

And they certainly wouldn't be doing it at all if they weren't gaining a lot more than it might be costing

From the posts Admin have made here [e.g. this one ] I don't think that is the case, although I don't expect them to say so categorically. There is a lot of difference between the view that the forum is free and costs them nothing to them needing to cover their costs and break even. I think the biggest gain to the magazine is the opportunity to experiment with digital media - the recent experiment of wall-to-wall plastering of adverts, for example, as well as posts along the lines of "We are planning an article on XXX we'd appreciate your views which may appear in print". But they also have to put up with the negative publicity of disgruntled magazine readers venting their frustration in public on here if they don't get their copy / whatever - the 99.9% of people who get their magazine on time and are happy don't pop up here saying "Cheers" and providing positive publicity - which is normal of course

My guess is as good as yours, for sure , but FWIW here's mine:

Hosting:

I've picked a UK hosting (i.e. VBulletin Forum hosting] company at random from Google (although I have at least heard of this one). I've picked their mid-range "busy site" plan rather than a boy's-own bottom end or a top-end dedicated server (in practice I think a forum as big as this may well require a dedicated server)

£85 / month

(Minimum Boy's Own is £20 a month, if dedicated servers are needed that would be £300-£500 a month)

https://www.nimbushosting.co.uk/cloud-hosting/premium

I am guessing that a [i.e. staff, not MOD] Admin posts on here once a week. 15 minutes each time (its not going to be "How's the weather" but a considered / researched / discussed reply ). 1 hour / month - call it 2 days / year.

Site breaks / routine maintenance behind the scenes / some fiddling with style-sheets etc.. 1 day / month - 12 days a year.

Site upgrade / restyling. Once a year? maybe only once every 2 years? 5-10 days development, testing, rollout and then fixing / support after it is live. Major revamp? Probably between one and three people working for a month.

Call it 20 days a year. I doubt that would be costed in the budget at less than £400 / day which would be £8,000. Even at £100 a day its still £2,000 . Add to that the hosting cost £1,020 and up.

[marchogaeth]

I expect the sulphuric acid in acid rain would speed things along a bit though.

This was what I was referring to, I can't for the life of me remember where I heard/read it but rain is no much less acid than it used to be and some of the positive effects from it (can't remember what they were either!) are being lost. However, if I thought about it, copper ionises in a really basic battery doesn't it so even clean rain is probably enough.

[veggiechicken]

Thank you Kristen - that's very helpful.
I don't have a technical bone in my body but I can assure everyone that there is a lot more going on behind the scenes than most people realise.
We Mods give our time freely because we love the Forum but it is become more and more time consuming - especially when there is a Gripe.
In my happy, smiley world I don't enjoy giving up my time reading rants so can we just get on with doing what we do best - helping each other with our gardening!
I'm off for some peaceful garden time - play nicely while I'm gone

[Thelma Sanders]

I'm sure the Forum does cost money to run, but also believe those costs can be covered without so much advertising that makes it difficult to actually see the posts on a small lap top screen.

Looking at it now, on my daughters huge desk top screen (apx 1ft x 2ft), there's no problem - so perhaps the people who design the content, need to look at it on different devices, so they can see what works and what obviously doesn't.

[kathyd]

Hi kathy, I'm sure the GYO owners would be very grateful if you could furnish them with the information of them where they can find a free of charge server to host the forums & even more so, who the IT technicians are that work for no wages

Here you go BB: https://www.google.co.uk/search?scli...=Google+Search.

And just for the record, you seem to be taking all this very personally. I don't remember anyone, at any stage, blaming or criticising you or our moderation skills for anything. I think all the mods on here do a great job, especially since they're not paid to do it. Personally I don't give a monkeys what GYO do with their forums, it's entirely my choice whether to use them or not, I was simply commenting on a view expressed by someone else. And I kind of object to feeling as though I've committed some kind of sin for doing so. Bonne journee a tous, je vais planter mes pommes de terres.

[veggiechicken]

I'm closing this thread. Its has strayed too far from the original topic and the advice in that may be misleading as these products are still on sale.
Its been said before, many times, if you're unhappy with the way the Forum operates, other forums are available.
Your choice - but, anyone who chooses to stay here must also accept the way in which it is run.