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Green Building Bible, Fourth Edition
Green Building Bible, fourth edition (both books)
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    •  
      CommentAuthordjh
    • CommentTimeDec 15th 2023
     
    Agreed about format, although I guess some people care about reading it on phones?

    As long as whatever is chosen doesn't have the weird dichotomy between formatted quotes and clickable links, I'll be happy :)
  1.  
    Owlman said:

    ''P.S.
    How about a final dinner, perhaps regional ones?"

    Love it!

    I'll dine!
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeDec 15th 2023
     
    I am in but don’t see it as the end
  2.  
    Agree. End of an era and start of a new one, I hope.
    • CommentAuthorborpin
    • CommentTimeDec 16th 2023 edited
     
    In terms of cost, it is unlikely to be that great. The server load would be pretty small and bandwith unlikely to be excessive. That could be mitigated with CloudFlare. Small scale hosting starts at about £50 per year. 10 folk a fiver each. My gut feeling is if we asked, we'd have plently of support.

    Keith will hopefully tell us what the current bandwidth/server basis is.

    It would be good to be able to get the ball rolling.

    Re GDPR, transferring the information isn't the issue, really. It is the Data Controller responsibilities. Effectively Keith did this via his company and rather than having to set something up specifically for the forum, if someone was willing to 'own' the forum through their company, that would be a great help (I think someone did on the previous page).

    The biggest risk from running a forum re GDPR/Data Protection is libel, and hacking of credentials / information (I'd suggest). The first is mitigated by Moderators being in place plus authenticated users posting, the second by using Third Party services as the authenticators (such as GitHub and Google) and not storing (protected) personal information.

    It isn't quite as simple as it used to be, but equally, nothing insurmountable for folks who have built or renovated a house!
    • CommentAuthorGarethC
    • CommentTimeDec 16th 2023
     
    My website is a WordPress one (geckoglazing.co.uk). I'd be happy to cover the cost of hosting if it was only a few hundred quid a year (I've no idea what's a realistic estimate). Frankly I'd probably derive a commercial benefit from it, so I suspect covering some costs would be the least I can do. What I don't have is time and IT skills I'm afraid. I still wonder if you guys want to rely on a company, especially a young one like mine. Still scarred by Navitron.
    •  
      CommentAuthordjh
    • CommentTimeDec 16th 2023
     
    Posted By: borpinKeith will hopefully tell us what the current bandwidth/server basis is.
    Is anybody actually in direct touch with Keith? There's no point in talking and planning unless we know he's willing to help by transferring ownership (data, maybe DNS etc).

    I'm currently a member of another forum where the owner (i.e. the person with managment rights to the domain etc) has gone incommunicado, which has caused a lot of grief. Fortunately things have improved recently there. One of the things we have learned is to plan for future transitions and the withdrawal of key people etc.

    FWIW, I don't have a google account and continuing to be a member of this forum wouldn't convince me to create one.
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeDec 16th 2023
     
    I have written to Keith but not had a reply yet
  3.  
    Yes, I too have written to Keith a couple of times over the last couple of months but no reply yet. Will let you know if I hear from him. Nick
    • CommentAuthorwookey
    • CommentTimeDec 17th 2023
     
    I have considerable nerding skills and would be happy to help with setting up a new server and copying the forum over. It would be a great shame to lose this resource even if it was no longer being updated/used. Ideally upgrading to at least a newer vanilla version, but that's more work. The only catch is that my nerding skills are in quite high demand so I am bit short of Tuits (I still have a house to finish) at least until I retire sometime in 2024 (probably). But I rescued another (simpler) website last year and it only took a couple of evenings.

    As Borpin says a minimal server, which should be plenty of cpu/ram/storage and traffic to run this (and allows a great deal of flexibility should we want any other services), costs 4.5Euro/month (Hetzner is my favoured provider for this sort of thing). We could just put in on my existing VM (which would cost nothing), but it's easier for future management if it's an explicit separate account. DNS for .co.uk is £55 for 10 years. So yes just over £50/year which I don't think we'd have any difficulty covering.

    Actually getting access to the old machine to copy stuff over could be a problem, given Keith's minimal interest in such discussions over the last few years, but here's hoping we can sort that.

    Like djh I would be deeply unenthused about changing things to _require_ a login with a proprietary outfit like github or google. That's a terrible idea, and not necessary. Fine as an option to those who find it convenient.

    All the stuff I said in this post still applies: http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=17633#Comment_298727
  4.  
    It seems ironic that the green building forum is possibly going just at a time when these issues are becoming mainstream.
    Its probably one of the few websites a view daily.
    Would be really sad if it goes,glad there are ideas to keep it
    • CommentAuthorJulesS
    • CommentTimeDec 18th 2023 edited
     
    Hi, I've only really found this forum in the last few years, but I'd really like it to continue, and would like to offer what I can. I am reasonably techie, but not a dev, so if Wookey is available to set it up, that gets my vote. I'm happy to assist financially when required. Cheers, Jules
    • CommentAuthorborpin
    • CommentTimeDec 18th 2023
     
    Posted By: wookeyIdeally upgrading to at least a newer vanilla version, but that's more work.
    From a quick scan, moving to Discourse (not to be confused with Discord) looks reasonably simple. This is the same platform as used by Home Assistant and Node-RED forums (amongst others).

    Posted By: wookeyWe could just put in on my existing VM (which would cost nothing), but it's easier for future management if it's an explicit separate account.
    Yes keep it separate makes most sense with several folk identified as admins.

    Posted By: wookeyDNS for .co.uk is £55
    Ideally, Keith might allow the current domain to be transferred

    Posted By: wookeyActually getting access to the old machine to copy stuff over could be a problem, given Keith's minimal interest in such discussions over the last few years, but here's hoping we can sort that.
    Let's hope.

    Posted By: GarethCMy website is a WordPress one (geckoglazing.co.uk).
    For me, having a company to provide the top cover would help, especially around GDPR. I don't see it as trying to tack on to someone elses hosting - that just invites trouble. As long as the domain and the Hosting is in the hands of a few folk, then it shouldn't do a Navitron!

    let's see if Nick or Tony get a response.
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeDec 18th 2023
     
    From djh - FWIW, Tony has been in conversation with me and wookey at least. He's had a response from Keith now.
    • CommentAuthorwookey
    • CommentTimeDec 19th 2023 edited
     
    Posted By: borpin
    Posted By: wookeyIdeally upgrading to at least a newer vanilla version, but that's more work.
    From a quick scan, moving to Discourse (not to be confused with Discord) looks reasonably simple.


    Have you grokked the process? Looking at https://meta.discourse.org/t/migrate-a-vanilla-forum-to-discourse/27273 it tells you to use https://open.vanillaforums.com/addon/porter-core which appears to be a vanilla addon that needs installing on the same machine as the vanilla forum. Possibly it can be run in another instance - I have no idea what the architecture of vanilla is.

    So I _think_ the idea is that with that extension installed there is some kind of import/export facility exposed which just gives you a tarball, and discourse has a script that should grok that.

    What's not clear is whether 'vanilla porter' can run in the ancient version of vanilla we have here. We might have to set up a vanilla v2 in order to install the porter extension and then use that to import GBF. Which is a faff, but would get us an upgrade anyway. https://open.vanillaforums.com/discussion/38331/converting-from-vanilla-1-porter-gives-error-message suggests that some dicking-about may be required.

    I am amused to note that the wikipedia entry for Vanilla starts at version 2.0 (july 2010), and we are on 1.0.3. That came from 'getvanilla.com' which no longer exists. It predates the Vanilla releases list which goes back to just before v2.0 (https://open.vanillaforums.com/categories/blog/p5).
    Looks like everything started again for the Vanilla community with new repos and a new site for v2.

    Aha. I found vanilla 1.0.1 in the software heritage archive and that was released in 2006. Not clear where 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 got to. I guess they are out there somewhere. https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/directory/?branch=refs/tags/Vanilla-1.0.1&origin_url=https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla1
    The first posts here are Jan 2007 so before then.

    There was an upgrade to v1.1.4 in 2008, so maybe we are actually running v1.1.4 but the footer never got updated? http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=1176&page=1#Item_0
    That version does exist in the archived repo: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/directory/?branch=refs/tags/Vanilla-1.1.4&origin_url=https://github.com/vanilla/vanilla1

    I did try setting up Discourse on a Hetzner VM a couple of nights ago and most of it went OK but I got into an argument with ruby about rack versions. And then it was 4am so I stopped. But clearly that can be dealt with: it's just 'computers'. Annoyingly discourse is not packaged for Debian so you get stupid stuff like this instead of a nice 'apt install discourse'. Neither is vanilla. Grumble.

    In the meantime I'm running an httrack web-scrape of the existing site so we at least have a copy should that be the best we can manage. I'm just saying this so we don't all do it and waste a lot of bandwidth. I presume from the commentID number that there are about 30,000 posts. At 10 per page that would be 3000 GETs, at 5 per page 6000, and then all the images. I guess that's not actually too many.
    • CommentAuthorwookey
    • CommentTimeDec 19th 2023 edited
     
    OK. A web-scrape of the site is 485MB. It is now available at: http://public.wookware.org/gbf/

    We appear to have everything back to 2007, including images, but it's not quite right: most of the 'account-holder' pages just point back at the index page for some reason that is not clear to me yet, and if you use the search it drops you back to the 'real' forum (not unexpected but not quite right either).

    But that is all the core info preserved as a snapshot archive. It's trivial to update it without downloading everything again. Just to re-iterate, this is approximately no use for importing the forum into a new functioning forum of any type (although it could in theory be done).

    It would be useful for a few people to take a look around and see if anything else is wrong/missing, so I can make adjustments to the scraping options if need be.
    •  
      CommentAuthordjh
    • CommentTimeDec 19th 2023
     
    Well done, Wookey! :bigsmile:

    One small thing that might help would be if the scrape could use a different favicon, so it's immediately obvious whether you're on the scrape or have been thrown back to the original site? Haven't noticed anything else yet.

    Slightly later: I spoke too early. If you go to http://public.wookware.org/gbf/newforum/index8c93.html?page=13 and look at the links corresponding to the page numbers at the top then you'll see 1 9 10 11 12 14 341 are OK but 15 16 for some reason point back to the original site (as does 17). I don't understand why.

    The way the scrape names the pages 'indexa7f1.html' e.g. where a7f1 is an at-first-glance random number doesn't make it easy to poke about.
    • CommentAuthorwookey
    • CommentTimeDec 19th 2023 edited
     
    Yeah the renaming occurs because the default is designed to work on a local disc where your browser will only render .html files. So .php (in this case) get renamed and tracked/rereferenced. As this is only useful on a public server I'll change the runes to keep the original names and adjust the server parameters to serve .php as plain HTML rather than running the scripts. That way it's a lot more obvious if something has changed.

    And yes the favicon trick is a good idea for spotting when you've been 'sent back'. I've turned it upside down so it's similar-but-distinguishable.
    •  
      CommentAuthordjh
    • CommentTimeDec 19th 2023
     
    The renaming is awkward, so good to have it fixed, but my main question was as to why some links point to the scrape, whilst other apparently similar ones point to the original?
    • CommentAuthorskywalker
    • CommentTimeDec 28th 2023
     
    Dear all

    I only drop in from time to time now but just wanted to say how glad I am. 1. That all the old stalwarts are still here and 2. That you are all going to try to carry it on. Fantastic work!

    Love to all

    Simon (just about the fit MHRV after all these years!)
  5.  
    This was posted on the Camelot forum, the successor to Navitron forum which was closed a few years ago. We're all welcome over there. Focus there is on PV, batteries, EVs but with a green building subforum.


    "Morning Lads & lassies, I am a part of Camelot RE forum. One of our members mentioned that the Green Building Forum is shutting in 2024. Sorry to hear that as we went through similar when elsewhere abruptly closed their doors.

    We learned then that it's not great to have an umbrella business over the forum so we set up as private funded. No financial drivers, just doing it for the craick and helping others/sharing experience in RE and associated.

    We are in year three of our forum and would be happy to see you guys & gals join in. All the best in 2024 where ever ye go. Cheers, Joeboy

    https://camelot-forum.co.uk/phpBB3/index.php "
    • CommentAuthorbarge17
    • CommentTimeDec 31st 2023 edited
     
    .
    Thanks very Much for maintaining this Forum for such a long time. So much better than Facebook when you are not using it every day. Things do remain in place and are easy to find again. I do hope a good solution is found and the archive can be saved somewhere.

    All the best, David
    .
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeDec 31st 2023
     
    ??
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeDec 31st 2023
     
    .
    • CommentAuthorborpin
    • CommentTimeJan 4th 2024
     
    Posted By: wookeyOK. A web-scrape of the site is 485MB. It is now available at: http://public.wookware.org/gbf/
    Looks great! At least we seem to have a good archive.
    • CommentAuthortony
    • CommentTimeJan 5th 2024
     
    ?
    •  
      CommentAuthordjh
    • CommentTimeJan 5th 2024
     
    Posted By: tony??
    Posted By: tony.
    Posted By: tony?
    Scintillating conversation!
    • CommentAuthorGarethC
    • CommentTimeJan 5th 2024
     
    Bit verbose though... ?
    • CommentAuthorjon
    • CommentTimeJan 8th 2024
     
    Sorry to hear this Keith

    The range of different interests here is good. There's no doubt I wouldn't have known to contribute to the GBB (way back when) had it not been for this place (and your suggestion of course)
    • CommentAuthorlineweight
    • CommentTimeJan 23rd 2024
     
    Posted By: willinaberdeenAs another suggestion, the community could relocate ourselves en masse to a different forum who have already gone up the learning curve of setting themselves up and have infrastructure in place? Perhaps by agreement with their organisers. Buildhub or camelot-forum have green building subforums which we could occupy, maybe there are others?


    I think this is something worth considering.

    If a new forum were set up, I'd use it, and I'm sure there would be a core of us that would, but how findable would it be for new users? At the moment, there are various green building related questions that if you google them, this forum appears in the results. A newly setup forum would probably have zero visibility in google results.
   
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