Moving from FB to forums

Taking back a bit of content ownership

[zulu_dude]

Firstly, I know there's an excellent thread on forums being 'dead' or not. I've read through that, but I think my question is sufficiently different to warrant a new thread.

We have a large Facebook group (circa 60k members) that has been going in a particular niche for many years. It has got harder and harder to get engagement on the group, as Facebook seems to be falling out of popularity (especially with younger demographics). Also, in our niche, people sometimes want to ask anonymous questions or stay entirely anonymous. They can do that on FB, but people are sometimes uncomfortable having their 'real' identity available to moderators.

I appreciate the irony of asking this on a forum, but does anyone see forums as the future? Kind of back to the future, if you will ;) Has anyone successfully 'migrated' their FB group to a forum? Appreciate it's not possible to migrate all the content, but I'm considering gently signposting users from the FB group to the forum (if that's the route we decide to take) so that over the course of a few years the action will be happening on our site and not on FB.

My very rough plan is to select a few key FB group members and get them to commit to supporting the forums. Hopefully that would generate enough initial traction for them to gain their own momentum.

[mack]

I think if you have a userbase and a topic that inspires discussion you are right to want to host the discussion on your platform. Facebook can be great for kickstarting a community but if you can get a decent percentage of the users to join your forum on your site then I would say you have made the right decision.

I would say keep the Facebook presence and use it to promote your own forum. Posting links to recent discussions would be a good way to achieve this.

With Facebook, you have some editorial ability but at the end of the day, Facebook has ultimate control over your community. Moving the main discussion to your own forum gives you more control and ownership over the content.

Mack.

[graeme_p]

FB groups can be a pain to run.

I am an admin of a (not for profit) FB group and a mod of another (similar) that also sometimes want to ask anonymous questions without abut 30k users between them. We also want to keep out users who do not fit certain criteria (because they ask questions that are misunderstood out of context, or that we cannot be sure are correctly answered, may be snooping etc.). Managing users would be a lot easier if it was a forum. It would be really useful to have topic boards. Lots and lots of advantages I can see. if I could persuade the other admins to do it, I would definitely move to a forum

[explorador]

zulu_dude: I appreciate the irony of asking this on a forum, but does anyone see forums as the future?

I might be alone on this but I think there is future for forums. Some topics are perfect for forums, some not so much, but FB mostly... it sucks, it's really terrible despite relying on user generated content. There are plenty of groups (public groups) with great information you can't easily find with search engines, some don't even appear to be indexed.

In my country, Twitter has been well known (like all around the world) for being a very negative place for your mental health, as lots of people just use it for hate-style-discussions, but FB has changed a bit too, several local groups changed a lot; after the end of 2021 I've seen an increase of pure protesting comments on different groups.

Also, due to constant changes, it became more difficult to browse and read (FB), suddenly there is an interesting topic, you want to read it, but comment 01 says "yeah, it exploded", and comment 02 says something like "it's going to happen tomorrow", and you know right away it makes no sense. Turns out FB decided to select specific comments, and 01 it's actually comment #30, and 02 it's actually comment #55, it makes no sense until you change the preferences to show ALL the comments, and even so, some comments appear, fully, while others need constant interaction to expand with the "read more"; and for some reason you can't really see all the comments, you are left expanding and expanding, this drains energy and makes you waste time, attention and interest.

zulu_dude: Has anyone successfully 'migrated' their FB group to a forum?

Nope, I'm not in charge of any FB group, but I think a tool to copy/paste the information and turn it into an easy to read page or thread forum style would be great (for archival purposes), and perhaps part of the fb group if the users find it handy.

After all, it doesn't matter if you have 500 discussions on your FB group: EVERYTHING could vanish any day, and according to their policies, you don't own that content.

[Kendo]

Forums are ideal for user-guides and help sections that can be categorised. All form posts are searchable and threaded in a way that lends itself to research. Facebook can never do that.

[zulu_dude]

Does anyone have experience of migrating from a Facebook group to a forum? I'm wondering what the best process would be.

A few initial thoughts:
- enable user accounts on the site/forum to use a Facebook login to make things easier for users to move.
- occasionally post an interesting thread from the forum to the FB group, but lock comments. Make clear that the discussion continues on the forum.
- for pinned posts, copy/paste some of the most interesting/useful threads from FB across to the forum.
- make sure admins are super hot on replying and encouraging discussion on the forums, not neglecting FB but definitely prioritising forums.

Any any thoughts/ideas/experiences?

[thecoalman]

Using third parties for forum type discussions raises a lot of risks. The service can change or even be removed. Yahoo groups for example, they discontinued the service and *poof* goes all the content. FB may be king of the hill now but that doesn't mean they will be 10 years from now, .

and according to their policies, you don't own that content.

I'm not a copyright lawyer but a forum owner does not own the content either, it belongs to the user. What you have as owner of the forum is an agreement to display that content. e.g. if you had a forum about recipes you couldn't aggregate those recipes into a book and publish them. This is something to consider before copying any content from a FB forum or other service.

All form posts are searchable and threaded....

I'm nitpicking but a lot of forum software is not "threaded". Threaded is when you can reply to individual comments within a topic and your reply is directly below the comment. phpBB, vBulletin, Xenforo and Webmasterworld are not threaded. They only have topics.

zulu_dude, I'm quite familiar with phpBB. If you have any specific questions about it or it's capabilities fire away.

[engine]

@zulu_dude

Some members of a forum niche tried by themselves to migrate to FB, however, it did not work, and the niche forum still remains active, even with some of those exiting members still participating. Some did not return, but they continued to post unrelated content on FB, so it's no loss to the niche.

I can only suggest that they wanted to take the conversation to a platform (FB) that was easier to use. The forum software was the challenge for some people. At over 20-years the hard core members remain on the niche forum. I've tried to close it down a few times but those members want me to keep it running.
Having questioned everyone about it, they feel in control, and their privacy is assured far better than FB.

With FB in some groups i've found that some have around 10% active members, and other smaller niche groups have around 45% active members. The rest of the members either don't participate or read that group. FB's policy to grow groups is not a good one, imho.
Who wants FB group members that don't participate!

[explorador]

thecoalman: I'm not a copyright lawyer but a forum owner does not own the content either, it belongs to the user. What you have as owner of the forum is an agreement to display that content. e.g. if you had a forum about recipes you couldn't aggregate those recipes into a book and publish them. This is something to consider before copying any content from a FB forum or other service.

In general, one can specify the terms of use of a platform to certain extent, and if the user agrees you are covered; certain details might change depending on the country, and international laws/agreements regarding can be difficult to grasp regarding "you created it, you own it", as there is no registration available for your content anywhere.

But what I meant above was something else about FB. On a forum hosted on your server, it's your content, I'm not saying that you own it in order to publish a book, I'm saying it's on your "hands" and you can do many things about it. On FB, people agree to have their content there, it's there and you can only copy it. FB can remove, suspend, or ban you and your content any time. This is why many of us have told our clients how important it is to have your own website, something (sadly) most clients don't understand until FB does something and everything is gone with no appeal available.

Being able of copying the content from FB doesn't equals having it on a DB or on a backup, and so, years of content can be gone in seconds. I suggested copying content from a FB group (That one manages) in order to somehow answer the original poster question, but the ownership and policies of FB will need review.

[zulu_dude]

Yes, a large part of my motivation is having more control (not necessarily ownership) of the content. It also helps from a SEO point of view, especially with the recent focus on UGC.

If we go ahead with this, I'll write the forum software myself from scratch as that'll ensure the highest level of interoperability with our current user accounts and all the functionality they offer. It also means I'd have complete control over the functionality, so I could make it more FB group-like if that's what users wanted (but I suspect it's not what they'd want!). If we do look at phpBB, thanks for the offer @thecoalman, much appreciated.

I have quite a few internal company people to convince, not least the FB group moderators! I'll keep you all in touch if/when we decide to go ahead.

[thecoalman]

Registration is available in the US but there is a fee and it doesn't necessarily provide proof of ownership. The big benefit of registering is you can get more damages if the registration occurred before infringement. Because of the fee it's only going to be used for works with substantial value that are likely to be copied.

[thecoalman]

If we go ahead with this, I'll write the forum software myself from scratch as that'll ensure the highest level of interoperability with our current user accounts and all the functionality they offer.

phpBB is open source, do with it what you want. If you are looking for something to build on the 3.0.X versions are fairly light weight compared to newer version and do not have any third party dependencies. it was built with two things in mind, security* and performance. All of the subsequent 3.X version are built on that. Downsides might include it only uses phpBB templating system, twig can be used with newer versions. The style is not responsive etc. Probably be a lot of changes to support newer versions of php. Anything you might expect from older software. Also note no support is given on phpbb.com for 3.0.X.

[download.phpbb.com...]

*It's been over a decade since the last release of 3.0.X version so it's possible it has vulnerabilities fixed in newer versions. Overall phpBB 3,X.X has a very good record where security is concerned.

[engine]

@zulu_dude
What I was trying to get across, but didn't make it clear, it's really down to your users, not solely the system.

[graeme_p]

In general, one can specify the terms of use of a platform to certain extent, and if the user agrees you are covered; certain details might change depending on the country, and international laws/agreements regarding can be difficult to grasp regarding "you created it, you own it", as there is no registration available for your content anywhere.

@thecoalman covered the registration bit. Its only really a US issue and only with regard to damages.

At the very worst you move into a similar position that FB has with FB groups and have the rights to redistribute the content - you still transfer control from FB to you.

FB can remove, suspend, or ban you and your content any time. This is why many of us have told our clients how important it is to have your own website, something (sadly) most clients don't understand until FB does something and everything is gone with no appeal available.

Very true. Even worse people learn the wrong lesson. Lots of people burned by Yahoo groups closing moved to FB.

[graeme_p]

@thecoalman I did not know PHPBB had moved to twig. A plus for me if I set up any forums (possible, although not imminent) as I have been using Django templates (on which Twig is based) for years. Thanks.

What is the problem with support for 3.x?

[thecoalman]

It's been moved to Twig engine, In the stock template you'll find both phpBB and Twig syntax. phpBB syntax is not hard to understand as it only needs to support what phpBB requires, phpBB syntax is the same or similar as Twig, the major difference is between the start and end tags.. Twig adds more functionality. phpBB 4.0 is around the corner and I would presume phpBB's native syntax will get scrapped.

In regards to support I said no support for 3.0.X and to clarify you will get support for upgrading from any previous phpBB version. Support for phpBB versions lag behind the PHP version they support. For example the last release of 3.2 only supports PHP 7.4 and it will likely get axed soon. The latest version 3.3.11 supports PHP 8.2 officially and I think it works under 8.3 . I don't think there is going to be 3.4 line but don't quote me on that.

I would never make the suggestion on phpbb.com to use 3.0.X however if you have the skills to build your own forum you don't need support. It might be something to take a look at as starting point if you were going to custom code a forum from scratch. It's analogous to having a 1000HP sports car collecting dust in a garage. Needs some new tires, some upgrades and a shiny new paint job. At it's core it's still a 1000HP sports car. Here is some basic benchmarking from 2007.

Dual Pentium III-S 1.26 GHz, 1.5GiB RAM & 2x 60GB HDDs in RAID1
phpBB1.4.x (vanilla) = index.php in ~0.070 seconds
phpBB2.0.0-ish (without template cache) => index.php in ~0.500 seconds
phpBB2.0.5-ish (with template cache) => index.php in ~0.250 seconds
phpBB3.0 CVS (vanilla) => index in ~0.080 seconds
phpBB3.0 CVS (with eAccelerator) => index.php in ~0.016 seconds

You would probably need to add another 0 after the decimal to get benchmarks on modern machines. :P

[graeme_p]

Thanks @coalman. phpBB looks a lot better than I thought.

I have considered building my own forums too, but it is quite a lot of work to match the featureset of something like this.

[thecoalman]

For the newer versions most of the changes are on the back end. On the front end for the user there is four major improvements over 3.0.X that I can think of.

1. Responsive design
2. On page notification system.
3. plupload for attaching multiple files to a post at once.
4. Ajax/Jquery for some actions, e.g. mark all forums read.

[tangor]

Never really invested in FB (though I was one of the first 10k to join) because over time the terms of service changed and FB asserted a right (to copyright) of anything published on their system.

Not going to give my "stuff" away for free! Ultimately, a decade later, I killed the account (took three attempts!) and moved on.

There's too much noise on FB. Forums are much quieter---and in most cases you can retain your "copyright".

[csdude55]

I'm a little pressed on time and haven't read the whole thread, so I apologize in advance if this is irrelevant at this point. But I wanted to address this:

does anyone see forums as the future? Kind of back to the future, if you will ;)

I have about 100 sites with forum, and my oldest site has had a record number of users and pageviews in the last few years!

My other sites still struggle a bit, though.

I THINK that the reason is that my oldest site came before Facebook, so most of the people didn't feel the need to "transfer". My other sites came after FB, though, so I'm on the other side and trying to get FB users to transfer to mine.

Like you, I've seen that a lot of people are leaving FB and looking for something else, so I'm working hard to improve my smaller sites so that they can become that "something else".

The biggest obstacle that I think you'll have is in the beginning, when your forum is essentially dead. It will take some work on your end to create content for the users to reply to, and when they create new content you'll have to be ready to reply to it so that there's movement.