The FastDay Forum

I think that it is still early days for the new look forum and that those who dislike it, or are having difficulties, should give it a while longer before deciding to leave. If it is really bothering you then why not take a break for a few days/weeks and come back when the team have had time to tackle the problems?
I have enjoyed the support, friendliness and information of this forum since January 2013 and, speaking only of myself, feel that giving up on it now would be like turning my back on a good friend when they in turn needed my support.
However, to each their own, and to those who are considering leaving I sincerely wish you all the best in you IF future.

I am at a loss as to why anyone would wish to delete all their posts!

Ballerina x

[Moogie]

I'm really sorry to read that some people are thinking of leaving because of the changes here. We've tried to keep the forum very much the same as before, with a bit of re-colouring to match the new brand, but overall it's still the same old forum. We've all undergone changes through doing 5:2 and that has taken some adjusting, I'm sure we can all adjust to the new look here too.

I want to re-iterate that the forum will always be free. We may consider offering a paid option to remove the ads if there's a demand for it but at the moment our priority is making sure everything works correctly. Yes, the site is expanding - we've got a lot of new content that Caro has worked really hard on to make sure there's plenty of fasting info here for free, above and beyond what the various (non-free!) books out there provide. It's been a colossal project and there are a lot of plans in the pipeline too, but you can choose whether or not they are of interest to you when they're here - and the forum will remain of course! You don't have to be involved in any other parts of the site, but I want you all to be assured that the community and its needs will always be at the heart of it.

Taking on the traditional diet industry is no small feat and we are trying to grow the site to spread the word that the diet clubs which try to make you buy their diet products aren't the only way - a support based community like this is every bit as effective as (if not more so, as I think most of us will agree) the major 'diets'. We want to help people find a way of eating for life, focusing on health, real food and friendly support. Yes, that may mean making things look a bit more commercial, that's how many people 'buy into' a diet, by knowing a brand and recognising it. We're FastDay now but that doesn't make us a big evil corporation, we're a rose by another name is all

I agree that this is just 'the good old forum' with a few visual changes. Make sure you directly enter the forum.fastday.com website as a start for the forum. You will immediately see that you are logged in automatically (at least in crome it works for me). The inclusion of easy to find fixed information for starters and reference on the fastday part of the website is a very valuable addition. It works much better than the old forum where a lot of information was present, but hidden in the countless contributions in different topics. As for the ads: I hardly notice them, as I focus on the real contributions (have to say this might be easier on a full seize computer screen than on an Ipad or smartphone). It took me 7 years to notice that the content of the adds in gmail was related to the content of my email messages (just because I never pay attention)
So, please keep up the good work, as it has been a major operation, and I must say that I am more impressed by all the things that are still working than by the few that still need some attention.

I prefer a forum supported by obvious Google ads to the ones that are hosted by companies that sell horrid fake diet food and scammy supplements. Those forums look ad free, but many of the messages on those forums are posted by flacks working for the owners, who enthuse about the latest miracle supplement that melts off fat like magic, but do so in ways that make them sound like real dieter having success.

It can take quite awhile to realize that is what is going on at such forums, as anyone who tells the truth about the crap the shills promote will be banned from the forum with no notice. Anyone who has participated in the big low carb forums should know exactly what I'm talking about.

The lack of people promoting the miracle nonsense here is refreshing. I hope they can attract a much bigger audience, as the stealth marketers have poisoned so much of the online diet community, one that in the good old days before social media marketing took off taught me so much.

Can I put in another plug around making the tracker sweeter and more supportive, like the old one? Still just looks very stark and overly analytical. The old one was much nicer! Oh and it's still not accurate re: weight to lose etc

My avatar is back on my iPad!
I am with those who say the site is very little different to the way it was before-at least for me. I don't see any more ads than I did before. The one that was at the side on my iPad is now at the bottom of the page , so I seldom see it and the one that seems to appear after the first post is easy to ignore once you get used to it.
Thanks to anther post I have installed ad blocker on my desk top so no problem there.
I am sure the other problems will be sorted out soon we just need some patience while it happens, just like we do while trying to lose those pesky pounds(or kilos).

[janeg]

I am sad that you are leaving [tag]kencc[\tag].
I have valued your contributions and wise words. I respect your decision and reasons for going.
Best wishes
janeg (and the wet fish)

Yes, me too @kencc Thank you for sharing your weighing data charts. Without those I would never have even thought of daily weighing and here I am, over a year later, daily weighing and tracking. A revelation that keeps me on the straight and narrow. Sorry to see you leave, just wanted to say 'thank you' before you close the door.

And a massive thank you from me for all the info on NEAT - probably the most useful and long lasting thing I've learnt from this forum - I'm really grateful. Good luck for the future.

[Moogie]

Now I’ve started I might as well continue ...
<snip>

I'm sorry to hear you no longer want to be part of the community kencc, your posts have been really helpful to a lot of members and you will certainly be missed.

You say you object to FastDay being a 'commercial site'. Well, there's no denying that FastDay is a business but we don't see anything wrong with that. The world is full of business that do great stuff for their users and customers. In our case we provide lots of content for free - the forums, fasting information and more to come. Twitter is a business, so is Facebook, so are other communities like the popular Mumsnet. I really don't see anything wrong with that!

We may be a business, but we're not a 'commercial site' like WeightWatchers, Nutrisystem, Lighter Life etc are. We're here to help people to be healthier and not trying to sell things they don't really need and shouldn't want (meal replacements and other 'diet products' spring to mind).

Regarding the 'handing over' of your personal data, I can assure you there has been no breach of the privacy policy in the rebranding and expansion of the site to create FastDay. If you're still concerned about this we will of course be happy to delete all your personal data from our systems.

You mention the terms of use - these are very much industry standard for forums and other community sites and you do not have to accept them anymore than you have to use FastDay. As always I still feel strongly that should we wish to use any content provided by a user we would discuss it with them first and I hadn't spotted that this has been omitted from the terms (there has been a lot of stuff to check over and I get tired very easily at the moment) - I'm seeing what can be done about adding that in, as I feel it's important that folks know we'd never just use their posts without asking, that would just be rude!

We really are sorry that you don't like the fact that FastDay is a company (as opposed to a charity?) but as a team we believe this is in no way incompatible with being able to offer great tools and fantastic information - for free - to our users. As the original founder of the forum, speaking for myself, I really am excited about what this means for us all as a community - all the things we're going to be able to offer to users. Having quickly become the top 5:2 forum when we started out I genuinely do hope that one day we'll be the web's leading resource for fasters around the world. That's why I think the change to FastDay is exciting news for the forum. With the team we've put together there's so much we can create for users which I could never have accomplished on my own, especially not with my unexpected health problems.

If you wish to leave, that's your choice and we will of course delete your account promptly if that is what you decide - but please remember that you will always be welcome here and the community will miss you and your contributions. We'll be sorry to see you go.

I really appreciate that you have taken the time and trouble, with a fragile state of health, to answer so fully here. When you say we are a 'commercial site' it is my understanding that you want the site to pay its way not that you want to get rich and make big profits from it. You want to pay workers a fair renumeration for their work. Thank you very much Moogie.

[Moogie]

@kencc I really am sorry you feel this way. Please would you confirm that you would like your account and all posts deleted. Once this is done it can't be undone so I want to double check with you first.

I have owned and/or run major forums in the past, and all I can say to those of you reacting badly, is that you must have no idea of how much work it takes to keep a community like this one going and how little the ads posted on a site like this will earn relative to the hours the people who own it must invest to keep it going.

If the staff manage to pay their ISP rental and end up with a little something to reimburse their moderator(s) they will be doing very well. Forums, in my experience, generate very little advertising money because the same core of visitors visit every day and they rarely if ever click through on ads. Beyond that, the payments from Google ads are quite modest, and unless a site is attracting millions of visitors a year, the monthly payments will be in the tens, not the thousands.

Meanwhile forums must pay for hosting and a lot of bandwidth. If the owners are not tech savvy, they must pay someone to maintain the software. Then they must continually monitor the site get rid of the posts from bots that are junk ads and the would-be members who join simply so they can post commercial links, and the occasional lunatics who post rabid political, social or religious screeds. After that they have to keep an eye out for the acrimonious flame wars that break out from time to time and keep the tone of discussion civil.

Even on a fully commercial site it can easily become a full time job with a part time salary.

That said, the update may be posing a big threat to the site's ability to find and retain visitors, Whoever did the tech work on the site does not appear to have any professional experience with web site development and how to integrate a php-based forum into a greater site.

If the software changes were implemented by is a band of inspired volunteer amateurs, that's to be expected and forgivable. Now they have learned the very first law of software development which is that very small changes make for very big headaches, and that you never, never, never put into production a major change to a site with a lot of established users without having first run it in a test bed where you have invited a a bunch of unsophisticated users to beat on it until all the bugs are flushed out. But if you paid someone to do this to your site who claimed to be a professional web site designer, you were ripped off.

The choice of running the forum in what appears to be a frame is puzzling. This was very popular back in 1998, but is not how you design sites nowadays because of the problems you encounter with the wide range of devices used to access the web.

The choice of running forum posts as secure pages with no secure information (i.e. credit card numbers) on those pages is even more puzzling. The only place on a web site you would ever need to have secure pages is on pages that take credit card information or bank information, or something of that nature. Most sites are designed with non-secure pages except for the order taking portions of the site. That is because pages loading over the secure connection tend to load desperately slow, which is definitely the case on this forum.

Indeed, this forum loads so slowly on my android tablet that it is almost unusable, which I attribute to the use of secure pages within frames. Add to that the combination of the ultra-buggy sign in procedure that makes it look like a person is not signed in when they are and you now have designed a site that will discourage any visitors from staying around long enough to discover the very useful information to be found on the site.

If this were my site, I would insist that the developers restore the old format, and create a separate test environment in which to work on the new site--one that does not use a frame or secure pages and lets people sign on using the standard phpBB signin procedures. Invite us in to test the beta site, and when it finally works, then go live with it.

By running a site this buggy you are driving away new visitors, and in doing that you are risking your Google search rank, which once lost, like a Victorian lady's virtue, may never again be recovered. This site is very helpful and doesn't deserve that.