Thread: The other Renovate Forum is NOW CLOSED!

I had to have a look, and there’s a redirect on the site. I smiled (read: curled my lip) at the comment that the forum has closed its doors. Yeah, well sure it has. That’s not a lie but it’s not quite the complete picture as there was nothing about the new venue right across the street (ie. this one).

Google will be full of search results for “renovateforum” that now direct them to Oneflare. Can something be done about that?

I'd like to say "and thanks for all the fish" but no fish or thanks arrived from the new forum owners. Unlike the old days where we would at least get a Christmas present from UBEAUT (thanks Neil!).

Am I missing something or did the "At the end of the day" thread not make the leap to the new site?

Any of the former mods made the move? Either way my thanks for their efforts in the old forum; sad to see the owners of that forum were unappreciative of their efforts. Any desire I might have had to do business with Oneflare has gone for good.

Originally Posted by PhilT2

Am I missing something or did the "At the end of the day" thread not make the leap to the new site?

Neil said that there wasn't rss feeds for all the forums unfortunately, so that one may have been a casualty.

Originally Posted by PhilT2

Any of the former mods made the move? Either way my thanks for their efforts in the old forum; sad to see the owners of that forum were unappreciative of their efforts.

I'm here and I know Bros has an account on here, not sure about Phild01. Thanks for the thanks )

Originally Posted by PhilT2

Any desire I might have had to do business with Oneflare has gone for good.

I never had any lol.

EDIT: Looks like Phild001 has an account here too.

Originally Posted by Uncle Bob

Neil said that there wasn't rss feeds for all the forums unfortunately, so that one may have been a casualty.



I'm here and I know Bros has an account on here, not sure about Phild01. Thanks for the thanks )



I never had any lol.

EDIT: Looks like Phild001 has an account here too.

I had an account here for many years but I used Phild001 for some reason, not sure if Phild01 was already taken.

The redirect says the following. It's clearly obvious that they never understood the spirit of the community.

In all our years there, Moondog and I never saw it as anything other than likeminded folks sharing ideas, rather than an "army of trade professionals" trying to drum up business. The single time I attempted to get something quoted by oneflare I never got any responses so a total waste of time anyway. When I think of all the thousands of posts sharing fabulous projects, photos, ideas, fun and games, arguments, discussions, and friendships I just feel sad that it's gone.

"We've seen thousands of avid home renovators search for timely, practical and expert advice on their latest building or DIY projects, always ready to be welcomed by the community's army of trusted trade professionals eager to share their expertise and industry tips"

Originally Posted by ErrolFlynn

Google will be full of search results for “renovateforum” that now direct them to Oneflare. Can something be done about that?

Huh... I have a cunning plan for that. I happen to own renovateforums.com renovateforums.au & renovateforums.com.au (note the spelling) I will put renovateforums.com on the WWW as soon as I get it configured and run it with a redirect to this site and if it gets to the point where this grows enough, I will put the whole thing back online in its own right but run the way it is supposed to have run but wasn't.

Originally Posted by Uncle Bob

I'd like to say "and thanks for all the fish" but no fish or thanks arrived from the new forum owners. Unlike the old days where we would at least get a Christmas present from UBEAUT (thanks Neil!).

Hehehe... no bloody fish here either and poor old DJ and I haven't had a Christmas present for the last couple of years. Lean pickin's here.

Originally Posted by PhilT2

Am I missing something or did the "At the end of the day" thread not make the leap to the new site?

Any of the former mods made the move? Either way my thanks for their efforts in the old forum; sad to see the owners of that forum were unappreciative of their efforts. Any desire I might have had to do business with Oneflare has gone for good.

At the end of the day made it but as I couldn't copy anything over to here and it wasn't on original forum, so I didn't have anything to put into it. It's on and I will see what comes of it. It's the third forum down from the top.

There's still a lot of other stuff that needs to go on but haven't had the time to get it all done.

As for the mods. I have been contacted by The Masters Apprentice, and Uncle Bob ask if he Phild01 and Bros could be mods.

I will talk to all in time and see what happens. Need to get stuff happening first.

The Buy Sell n Swap forum links directly to WWF Market Place. It's big and gets a heap of views.

Think I answered all.

I have to say I broke all the forum rules (take note of my signature) by spamming the hell out of the forums in the last couple of days and it wasn't until about 3:00pm today that I realized I could gather names from the Introduce yourself forum and send 5 redirect pm to people every 3 minutes. Was a bit late figuring that one out, but managed to get off about 200 before they shut the forum down. Have already had 4 emailed replies from members which was a bit of a surprise.

Pity I didn't think of that earlier.

Oh well... Big, busy day tomorrow so going to bed early (for me).

Cheers - Neil

Originally Posted by ubeaut

Huh... I have a cunning plan for that. I happen to own renovateforums.com renovateforums.au & renovateforums.com.au (note the spelling)

I wondered, 'what the hell are you talking about.' Then the penny dropped - or rather, the 's' did. Actually, with all the categories in there, it makes more sense to use the plural.

I registered a new profile with WWF so I could literally come here to express my disbelief and overwhealming disappointment at this news.

I knew OneFlare had bought RenovateForums.com back in 2014, but I never for a minute believed they would take down the whole damn site after 23 years... and for what? To funnel the traffic into their paid services Oneflare and Airtasker?? Sorry but that just ain't gonna happen. Everyone loved RF because it was free! Good people volunteering their time and knowledge to help each other. DIYers who didn't want to pay for tradies if they didn't need to.

The greatest loss of course is the mountains of knowledge accumulated over it's 23 year history. You could have made an entire volume of encyclopedias with the amount of content there. I have personally completed several successful house renonvation projects on the back of advice from the amazing community at RenovateForum. It has gotten me out of more than a few jambs!

I shudder to think of the number of hours the community spent collectively building such a vast repository of useful information. There were literally thousands of nuggets of wisdom contributed by experts with decades of experience on the job, simply snuffed out with the flick of a switch!

But I refuse to believe that OneFlare was simply ditched it all. Surely it still has significant value to someone, if not to them. Why not sell the content to another operator to host under a new domain to preserve all the precious information? Or move to a subscription model, charge members a few bucks a month to keep it running?? All they've succeeded in doing is letting down and pissing off tens of thousands of community members (and potential customers) who will now probably never use Airtasker or Oneflare ever again.

Is there any way the content could be retreived??

- Scraping?
- Internet archive - Internet Archive: Wayback Machine
- Google cached pages

Hard to believe it is all just gone!

So wasteful, so disrespectful.

I will forever detest Oneflare for doing this.

LONG LIVE RenovateForums
...and now WoodWork Forums!

I hope you guys a ready for a influx of thousands of new members!

This could be helpful to some.
Renovate Forum

Unsure how much of the site has actually been captured. Suspect only very small amount.

Originally Posted by Stuckster

This could be helpful to some.
Renovate Forums

Unsure how much of the site has actually been captured. Suspect only very small amount.

Certainly helped me.

I was preparing to do a small project and all of the answers to my queries were in a thread. Just came back to it today to get started and ......... bugger!

But found what I needed in your link - thanks very much!!

Bit of a correction before I respond inline below. It was Renovate Forum (singular) which closed down not Renovate Forums (plural)

Fun fact - I am the registered owner of the Domain: renovateforums.com, renovateforums.com.au and renovateforums.au

If Renovate Forums here happen to grow as they did in the past then they can go back on the web as an autonomous site once again free and clear for all with no outside influences. I am not in it for the money just to give back to the community. The few dollars, (and I do mean few) these forums generate each month go back into keeping them up and running.

Originally Posted by Stuckster

I registered a new profile with WWF so I could literally come here to express my disbelief and overwhealming disappointment at this news.

Good on you Stuckster... I'm sure what you said here will ring true for a lot of people.

I knew OneFlare had bought RenovateForums.com back in 2014, but I never for a minute believed they would take down the whole damn site after 23 years... and for what? To funnel the traffic into their paid services Oneflare and Airtasker?? Sorry but that just ain't gonna happen. Everyone loved RF because it was free! Good people volunteering their time and knowledge to help each other. DIYers who didn't want to pay for tradies if they didn't need to.

The greatest loss of course is the mountains of knowledge accumulated over it's 23 year history. You could have made an entire volume of encyclopedias with the amount of content there. I have personally completed several successful house renonvation projects on the back of advice from the amazing community at RenovateForum. It has gotten me out of more than a few jambs!

I shudder to think of the number of hours the community spent collectively building such a vast repository of useful information. There were literally thousands of nuggets of wisdom contributed by experts with decades of experience on the job, simply snuffed out with the flick of a switch!

For what it's worth we still have lots of threads and posts in here that date back to 2002 when I started original forum reno forums up until the takeover by Oneflare in late 2008 when I was doing the updated feeds myself before there were RSS feeds. Those feeds like the RSS feeds are all but useless without the forum they linked to.

But I refuse to believe that OneFlare was simply ditched it all. Surely it still has significant value to someone, if not to them. Why not sell the content to another operator to host under a new domain to preserve all the precious information? Or move to a subscription model, charge members a few bucks a month to keep it running?? Most forums aren't worth anything much money wise anymore 20 years ago WWF was worth 1.5 million AU$ now maybe $50,000, Renovate Forum top maybe $10,000. Drop in the ocean to the multi millionaire owner who couldn't care less. All they've succeeded in doing is letting down and pissing off tens of thousands of community members (and potential customers) who will now probably never use Airtasker or Oneflare ever again. Agree.

I tried very hard to get Renovate Forum back from Oneflare/Airtasker with an offer that would have been extremely beneficial for them. But a number of emails and phone calls got no response from anyone with and even an inkling of authority other than a recorded massage and robotic reply with a serial number that lead to nowhere or no one. The CEO of Oneflare was the only person to speak to me but was busy looking for a job and wanted nothing to do with the forums. He gave me contact info for CEO of Airtasker who is basically un in touchable. Private email, and uncontactable by phone, etc.

Hence Renovate Forums was reopened for posting here with not much new in it. We had RSS feeds for a number of years but an RSS feed is useless without a link to the forum it came from and if that forum no longer exists they are completely useless so most of them aren't on here. Those RSS feeds were only to the original forums on here and never included forums added after the takeover.

Is there any way the content could be retreived??

In short... it would appear to be a big fat NO!

- Scraping?
- Internet archive - Internet Archive: Wayback Machine
- Google cached pages

Wayback Machine is about the only way the info can be read. Can't be copied otherwise it would all be here now. Have had the computer guru look into it and the general consensus is... Um, ahh, NUP!
Hard to believe it is all just gone!

So wasteful, so disrespectful. Agreed.

I will forever detest Oneflare for doing this. You won't be the only one, however I think the culprit may well be Airtasker.

LONG LIVE RenovateForums
...and now WoodWork Forums!

Originally Posted by =Stuckster

I hope you guys a ready for a influx of thousands of new members!

Ready and waiting but I doubt that's going to happen, as no more than a few hundred would have even seen the notices put on the forum by me directing them to this site and the powers that be over there gave no indication of there being a rescue site in their closure blurb or anywhere else.

Originally Posted by Stuckster

This could be helpful to some.
Renovate Forum

Unsure how much of the site has actually been captured. Suspect only very small amount.

Have corrected the forum name and yes that appears to be an update on Waybackmachine for May 18th even has my warning about the closure. However if you click on any of the posts they are from March 2023.

Still it's a help for anyone who was in the midst of something back then. Also those archives, I believe are not searchable so unfortunately, semi useless unless you know exactly what you want and where to find it.

Cheers - Neil