Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Subscription-only model

I notice that Frank (if that is not over-familiar?) is going to make piano world forums subscription only. I think that's an appreciate move. I am sure we can all appreciate that revenue from advertising (in these days of shrunken piano industry in the western world) won't cover the cost of running the forums.

Among other things, a subscription model will have the effect, I am sure, of diminishing queries from people who sign up to ask questions they should appropriately ask their regular technician, except that they don't care enough about the piano to HAVE a regular technician, and they want an instant answer for free (and usually get it). Very experienced industry professionals give such responses for free in here, and sometimes it goes unappreciated.

There are websites where people have to pay a significant amount to ask a question of a qualified person.

"an appropriate move"

Well, I don't know Frank's intentions but it would be an 'appropriate' move if the intention is for the forum to shrink to a handful of industry professionals and otherwise highly interested others that have already found this place and like it.

I can't see any new user from the general public even considering paying for a subscription at current rates without having already used the forum for a while and deciding it was worth it, so eventually it will fade away and die due to lack of new blood. It will be cheaper to run with far fewer members though so perhaps the commercial model will work, for a while.

I think the first 10 posts could be free or free trial for one month.

I’m curious how much it costs to host these sites. My service provider, who I’ve used for 13 years, costs me about $120 a year for unlimited bandwidth, storage, email addresses, etc. including phpBB. Their performance has always been very good for me. I’ve never hosted a bulletin board so I can’t comment on that (but I have no reason to think it wouldn’t be decent).

On the Donation page it says Pianoworld pays approximately 7500 USD per year.

Here is the page:
https://pianoworld.com/help-support-piano-world/

Thanks for the link! Quite surprising. Maybe the owners should shop around instead of charging subscriptions. I have little doubt that my hosting service could provide as good as performance as this at a tiny fraction of the price.

It's been mentioned that there are many servers. The UBB software is not known for being efficient.

If a tech feels he should be paid he has the option to not respond. No one is required to respond to a question.

Even if someone has a regular tech they may want additional opinions on some question.

I see you don't have to be a Paypal user. You can allow PayPal to process your payment.

There are monthly subscriptions. But, there don't seem to be any links in the drop down menu for annual subscriptions.

Also,is there a difference in subscription levels other than the amount paid?

I can see the annual drop down link a few lines below the monthly drop down link as well.

I looked at the wrong link. Go to:

User_name > Subscriptions

Honestly part of the issue with Pianoworld IS the forum software. Xenforo is incredibly superior, and there is no need to have multiple servers. You can build a 32 core AMD system with 128gb of ram and 4TB NVME flash storage with 10GBE for about $5k. Done. Or just rent one.

I am grateful for the work that Frank does keeping this place running, and I will become a subscriber to help chip in. But perhaps it is time to look into how to eliminate the source of the time and money-sinks that take his time up, and move to something more modern and economical like Xenforo.

In my professional industry, the relevant forum is www.rdforum.org. I have never seen a forum so well run in my life. One of the things I really like is the transparency with the funding. There is a sidebar added to the forum that shows monthly costs needed, as well as where we currently stand with donations. Each month, when people see that and notice it might fall short the community pitches in to make sure all hosting costs are covered. It works extremely well and the forum never comes up short.

He also writes PW is main means to support his family, so the $7500 is only something like 10% of the problem.

Kees