Help!!!

I have also updated the Welcome Message (email) to read as follows:
The redie-brickie-brownie bit is the new addition to the original written by the late great Watson.

G'day Username,

Welcome to Renovate Forums! Your account has been activated and you are now able to ask for advice and contribute to the forums.

All information for using the forums, eg: how to make a post, what’s appropriate content and other handy tips can be found in the Frequently Asked Questions

Feel free to say hello and introduce yourself to other members in our G'day mate - THE WELCOME WAGON -Introduce yourself forum.

By logging in and posting you will be promoted to a higher user group and all of the annoying ads will disappear. If you do not post you may see a couple of ads at top and bottom of the forums on all pages. If you do not log in you will see numerous ads all over the place.

As a new user your first posts may be moderated (won't show until approved by Admin) This is an extra precaution to help us keep forum members protected from from spammers, scammers and other ne'er-do-wells intent on doing the wrong thing.

So it may take from a few minutes to s few hours before your post will be approved and show.

Just a quick note that a lot of the members are workers so you might not get the answer you require until after "Knock-off", so settle in, make yourself at home, and if you need any "forum help" just let us know. You can do that by on Contact Us link at the bottom of all pages or CLICK HERE.

Best regards
The Admin Team
Renovate Forums

I went incognito and searched for RF, and the following came up. So, if someone has a problem that needs a solution, someone who might be interested in joining the group, and they see this invite to, "chat with an expert," then as soon as they click they're sent somewhere else. We might never see them again.

If all our potential newbies click on that, then RF is being bypassed. It looks like it's part of RF, but it's not.


Attachment 537741

don't you get some sort of site traffic and sign up data anyway?

pretty easy to see if people are coming to the site but no clicking register, THEN you can worry about that kind of stuff.


But I would assume its a fairly simple that the site just dones't get the traffic it used to (the shut down might not have helped this)
even now there is barely a new topic or old toppic discussed even coming here over the last 3 days there has been nothing.


It sounds harsh but i'm not sure it will ever return the glory years. I think enough people have moved on from here and found other sources of info or the younger generations coming through just don't engage on forums as much as the previous gens.

it sounds odd but maybe we do actually need some high follower count aussie renovate social media content creator to drop the forum name a few times to get traffic here.

Here ya go

https://www.renovateforums.com.au/sh...93#post2333693

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ErrolFlynn

I went incognito and searched for RF, and the following came up. So, if someone has a problem that needs a solution, someone who might be interested in joining the group, and they see this invite to, "chat with an expert," then as soon as they click they're sent somewhere else. We might never see them again.

If all our potential newbies click on that, then RF is being bypassed. It looks like it's part of RF, but it's not.


Attachment 537741

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That ad is flagged for deletion from our google ads. Has been for a couple of days it is one of a few similar ones all placed by the same mob "JustAnswers.com"

It is one among many that have been banned from the 3 forums including all soft and hardcore po'rn. We really don't lose out by people seeing ads as mostly what they see is what they have been using, been in their searches, cache, or visiting history that is being held by search engines etc, which are the main reason we get them here in the first place.

As for them no signing up, they do. Even on the best forums in the best times for every 100,000 who hit a site like forums or blogs etc only a couple genuine ones will join as opposed to scammers, spammers, etc who will sign up in dozens or even hundreds which has happened to us in the past on WWF and on MWF to a lesser extent. Hence the fact that WWF currently has 130,781 registered Members and not over 1,000,000 members because I do massive culls of all the bad guys from time to time. Had this not been done we would have been way over the 1 million mark a few years ago. We also would have had an unsafe barely usable forum.

That's just my personal culls of the members and doesn't include the following done by Spam-O-Matic, see below:
825,511 Spammers Denied Registration, 1,820 Spammers Permanently Banned, 1,798 Spammers submitted to StopForumSpam, 2,174 Spammers submitted to Akismet, and 16,459 Spammy Posts Automatically Moderated

So you can see how the ads really don't affect signups. The genuine ones will join the rest won't and the ones who won't don't really matter as they would most likely never post or participate in any other way.

As for stats here... There have been 182 new member registrations since the forums move to this new site at the beginning of May around 33 per month on average whilst WWF average 160 and MWF average 80. So by size and age of forums we're not doing too bad for new registrations.

However where Reno is falling down is in participation. If there are little to no posts there is little to no participation, little to no participation means the search bots have little or nothing new to list.

Since May this year Reno has averaged 150 post per month (ppm) however many of those have been me pulling in posts from the archives. Whilst for the same period WWF averaged 1,750 ppm and MWF had an average of 750 ppm.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by havabeer69

But I would assume its a fairly simple that the site just doesn't get the traffic it used to (the shut down might not have helped this) even now there is barely a new topic or old topic discussed even coming here over the last 3 days there has been nothing.

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Exactly right! It doesn't get the traffic because of the shut down by the last lot who completely abandoned all their members.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by havabeer69

It sounds harsh but i'm not sure it will ever return the glory years. I think enough people have moved on from here and found other sources of info or the younger generations coming through just don't engage on forums as much as the previous gens.

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It's not so much that the members moved on, it's more the fact that they don't know this forum even exists. :dunno: That's due to being totally abandoned by the last lot when they shut it down with little to no notice to members. Certainly not letting anyone know there was a rescue planned. To top it off that other lot refusing to pass on member info or anything else to help in keeping it running. Even after numerous attempts to contact them and help out they refused to take my call or have any contact with me. Hence we started off again behind the 8 ball with a forum that had info which was from 10 years before the other lot took over.
:gaah:
I started Reno on WWF in 2002 and it became so big that I split it off to its own site where it became another great resource, In 2013 the other lot took it over to boost their sales etc. In the 10 years they had the forums there would have been many thousands of members register and all were unceremoniously dumped when they closed down. Had I had access to the site and the members these forums would still be flourishing. So the problem lies solely at the feet of them not the current members, the forums or anyone or anything else.

A final word or few before apologising for this rant. Woodwork Forums started off 25 years ago 25th May 1999 with 6 members and grew by around 10 - 20 per mth for about 6 months, then that many per day Reno and Metalwork Forums both sprang from WWF and flourished in their own right. It was enthusiasm that grew all 3 forums and not despair. No reason why a bit of enthusiasm can't get this lot up and running again.

:cheerleader::brava::woot::Party:

Cheers - Neil :U

PS Oh yeah, almost forgot... SORRY FOR THE RANT! :C

so....

been a few months since the revival with bulk emails etc sent out.



the place is still somewhat dead, how long before it gets shut down?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by havabeer69

so....

been a few months since the revival with bulk emails etc sent out.



the place is still somewhat dead, how long before it gets shut down?

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I very hope that that never happens.

Where did Marc go? He loved to post, although sometimes it was a bit of a rant.

I think everyone these days is after or use to almost instant fix/gratification, facebook group etc are quite popular and I can see some advantages in relation to that, as often will have their facebook notifications turned on and if being a member of a group will generally get a notification at the time of posting and most people have the facebook app on their phone, with facebook being ingrained into their lives.

However, I think forums are way more advantageous for looking up something that may have alread been post or if someone has made a instructional process on how to do something, I don't see youtube as a competitor to forums but something that can supplement forums, where say the method of doing something is written in a forum but a youtube video is embedded or linked in the forum post to support the written instructions etc. I do see facebook groups as a major competitor, I'm not sure if there would be a way to mesh the two worlds, to get the best of both worlds. Such having a facebook group of the Renovate Forums, and have the discussions feed into the web forum of the Renovate Forums as new threads. I would think perhaps that could encompass both group/types of people on how they use the web, but I'm not sure that its technically possible?

Wow... Somehow, I did not know (or recall) that these forums are back up. I stumbled across it again today due to a reference provided via an AI query. It was really disappointing and perplexing to see such a great source of information taken down a couple of years ago. I was an on-off member since 2007 and these forums helped me many times. Throughout the years I felt there were a handful of key contributors who knew their stuff in various areas that could give prompt and very good specific advice. That is where this forum has been really useful for me. I.e. get answers or advice on specific questions (accompanied by photos in many instances) which you cannot have answered on platforms such as Youtube.

"Since May this year Reno has averaged 150 post per month (ppm) however many of those have been me pulling in posts from the archives. Whilst for the same period WWF averaged 1,750 ppm and MWF had an average of 750 ppm."

I found that comment surprising. With so many people wanting to do their own renos, I would have thought that the Reno forum would be outperforming the others.

If there was a "donate" section, I would be happy to donate to keep this forum running and help fund some promotional activity. I would think that some businesses could really benefit from being active on this forum. How many times did people give advice on this forum and drum up business in doing so? I would think that sole traders and retail businesses could drum up business by providing advice and in turn promote their own products and services.

I note that many of my posts have gone missing. I think I was up around the 1000+ posts but my profile tells me around 100 and the ones I can see are from around 2007-2009. Did the forum lose over a decade of posts and history?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Gooner

I found that comment surprising. With so many people wanting to do their own renos, I would have thought that the Reno forum would be outperforming the others.

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to be honest, talking to alot of people my age and younger, I don't think they are "doing their own reno's"

in my broader circle it seems like a lot of people are just paying to have people come in and do the stuff for them and its slapped onto the home loan.


I mean with ALOT of houses pushing towards duplexes and MUCH smaller homes and units the idea of battling on and updating your own home I think is slowly trickling off vs convience of having brand new dewelling with nothing to do it

Hello everybody. Well, just the few of you left then :D

Just a public service announcement about ads and safer browsing in general.

On computers, don't use the new standard of data stealers (Chrome/Edge) Use Firefox or some other third party browser. Use the uBlock Origin browser extension. This will remove all ads, even out of Youtube videos and block trackers.

On mobile devices, Use the Brave Browser. This has build in ad blocking and will also block trackers.

Those asking about Marc. I believe he was last seen floating down the Hawkesbury on his house roof mumbling something about damned climate change deniers :wink:

Hey UB. Good to hear from you.

FYI all my problems with "extra banner" ads on the site were fixed by a change Neil did in the back end. Something to do with how certain accounts were configured, I think

Apologies for the very late response to your post Gooner. I basically only get on here to fix problems, respond to reported posts, remove spammers/scammers and other ne'er-do-wells.
________________

Quote:

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"Since May this year Reno has averaged 150 post per month (ppm) however many of those have been me pulling in posts from the archives. Whilst for the same period WWF averaged 1,750 ppm and MWF had an average of 750 ppm."

I found that comment surprising. With so many people wanting to do their own renos, I would have thought that the Reno forum would be outperforming the others.

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The reason for the lack of posts, threads and continued use is because around 98% of old/original users don't know we are here anymore thanks to Oneflare not helping in any way to keep the forums up and running after they unceremoniously dumped them in May 2023. I had to change the name ever so slightly from renovateforum.com to renovatefroums.com.au to put them back on again.

Quote:

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I note that many of my posts have gone missing. I think I was up around the 1000+ posts but my profile tells me around 100 and the ones I can see are from around 2007-2009. Did the forum lose over a decade of posts and history?

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All of the information from Oneflare's time were basically lost. All the RSS Feeds from Reno to WWF were all but useless as they just went back to the Onflare version so basically this entire site had to start from scratch again with a really small membership base made up from the very few who saw my URGENT message on Reno saying I would rescue the site. It was only on for the last couple of days before they shut it down,

I did a mailout to all the 130,000+ members that I had listed. Around 40% of those bounced and the mailout all but crashed this site as well as Woodwork Forums and Metalwork Forums by overloading the server and getting our site and email server black listed for spamming. Took a lot of work to get the around that including a new mail server for each of the 3 forum along with U-Beaut Polishes site sales and personal emails, etc.
:gaah:

I also put notice on WWF & MWF saying that Reno was now on a new site for almost 6 mth. as well as the link at the top of all pages on WWF and MWF Directing people to this site.

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If there was a "donate" section, I would be happy to donate to keep this forum running and help fund some promotional activity.

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Thanks Gooner... https://www.ubeaut.biz/woohoo.gif just send $10,000 and you can have the entire site, along with other site names to protect it from theft, etc. NO! Just joking.

I will not be shutting down Reno and if I can help it neither will anyone else while I'm still above ground. Sad to see it so quiet but it has been worse since it was shut down and with any luck and assistance it will get up and running again in the future. Unfortunately the social media sites aren't helping. However Reno is a much safer and more secure place to be, away from the regular run of the mill social media sites.

Quote:

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I would think that some businesses could really benefit from being active on this forum. How many times did people give advice on this forum and drum up business in doing so? I would think that sole traders and retail businesses could drum up business by providing advice and in turn promote their own products and services.

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Be nice to think that we could attract some businesses to the site who would be helped by participating with help or information.

However the best way to help make the site grow is to have people posting new threads and replies, etc. as these will be picked up bu the search engines and help to drive more people to the site some of whom may well join up and become good involved members.
If and when the forums drop to less than 1 thread or post a month I think then that the time may come to pull the pin. But I can't see that happening.

I'm ever optimistic.

Cheers - Neil :U

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Uncle Bob

Hello everybody. Well, just the few of you left then :D

Just a public service announcement about ads and safer browsing in general.

On computers, don't use the new standard of data stealers (Chrome/Edge) Use Firefox or some other third party browser. Use the uBlock Origin browser extension. This will remove all ads, even out of Youtube videos and block trackers.

On mobile devices, Use the Brave Browser. This has build in ad blocking and will also block trackers.

Those asking about Marc. I believe he was last seen floating down the Hawkesbury on his house roof mumbling something about damned climate change deniers :wink:

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G'day Uncle Bob

Just a quick response to the above.

Please folks, bear in mind that the ads only show to people who are not logged in, and members who have never posted.

It's hard enough trying to keep the forum alive without having people dismiss ads that may be of help to them. Plus the few cents the forum makes off the ads help me in a very small way to keep these forums up and still running.

Cheers - Neil :U