I added a flower.

I wasn’t making as much when I joined but I love being here and feel like it is a family and I want to contribute my experience and my resources. However I can

Yay. Now you're flowering size too!

I'm going to insult DC. He was 'flowering size' ----- just wasn't getting enough light hehehe

Hahaha

erm so DC, you have sold out.

Never mind, now you can tell me what goes on in the VIP lounge.

For $100 a year it better be a very special lounge.

Ok fine, unwelcome opinion here but seriously, this site has so many bugs, I appreciate someone making it but it seems to be a nice money maker for whoever gets these yearly forum fees. Signing up to a monthly nature magazine is cheaper.

Maybe not as profitable as the kid I read about on the news making £290,000 as a 12 year old kid making new emoji pictures

I think if someone could make a new site and get 25 people to join up that would be worth a bit. Makes me wish I had become a better programmer. So who is the mysterious king of Orchidboard who actually gets to spend the money?

Have they got the biggest colletion on OB or does the money go into an unaccessible account that the password was lost to years ago?

Signing up as a forum supporter is not mandatory, so I'm not sure why you are complaining about the cost. If you feel the value for money is poor and don't want to pay, that's fine, and is understandable. Everyone is free to make their own decisions about where their money goes, and we have certainly not hidden the fact that the forum software is hopelessly out of date and has not been updated in any way in recent years.

Yes, I very much agree that the forum is full of bugs and desperately needs updating, but the forum owner has a business to run and no longer has time for it. Quite honestly I think he is keeping the site up as a huge favor to us, and if there hadn't been some long term moderators who stepped up to take over the daily management, the site would have been taken down years ago. I will happily take the current suboptimal situation over the alternative of no forum at all.

The fact that we will need to upgrade the software at some point is something I and the forum owner are well aware of and have already discussed, but there is no timeline for it yet.

Shadeflower, as a dev myself, let me tell you that creating a website such at this one is a MUCH more difficult task than one might think.

How do you make it responsive across all devices? How do you secure incoming and outgoing data? How and where do you store your data, using what database? How do you set up a mailing service to send notifications? How do you keep your website online and accessible at all time? How do you integrate 3rd parties like PayPal for subscriptions, or signing in using FB or Gmail?

Quite literally everything, down to the size of text, will need careful planning; and it takes a lot of time, expertise, and communication with people involved.

Exactly. Which is why the majority of forums run on software developed and sold by companies who do that for a living (vbulletin, Xenforo are the main ones), though some nice open source options exist as well (ex: Discourse). Even then, unless you pay for someone do do everything for you, you still need good programming knowledge to update/improve things without breaking everything.

Another unwelcome opinion (bea ing a beit swarccasket tis mourning) from this non-FS member.

Read the above... it says it all. Count your blessings!

"I'm not on the left, and I'm not on the right - not part of the herd - ain't even sure if I got a dog in this fight"

I posted previously that I like the Orchid Board just the way it is. I'll explain a little. With other forums and just websites in general, I have found that whenever they are "updated" or "modernized," whatever term you want to use, that means they are made more phone-friendly. They then end up being more difficult and less user-friendly for someone using a laptop or desktop computer to access, because the entire format has changed. I am one of those old-fashioned people who still uses my desktop computer, or occasionally my laptop. I do not even own a smart phone. Yes, I'm a dinosaur, and I make no apologies. :biggrin: I do feel, though, that I am being pushed out of places on the Internet that I used to be able to easily access but now they make no sense except for phone (or maybe tablet?) users.