Is PianoWorld site down?

pianoloverus · 2026-08-06T21:22:54+00:00

Is the PianoWorld site down? I get this error message: You don't have permission to access this resource.Server unable to read htaccess file, denying access to be safe

pianoloverus

ShiroKuro pianoloverus I think some posters on this thread are far too critical of PianoWorld.

Perhaps. But there are some folks on PW itself who are equally critical.

The new site owners have addressed many of those issues within just a couple of days and there are many posts with PW members thanking the new owners for their quick response to issues that were raised by PW members . I am not sure but I think the new version is completely ad free, which was not the case before it was sold to the new owners.

ShiroKuro

pianoloverus I am not sure but I think the new version is completely ad free

I have yet to see any ads as well. I have a really hard time believing that will be permanent, though it would be nice if it were. Time will tell of course!

navindra

Sophia Thank you so much! 🙂 I still see a bug or two left from the migration, but I'll address them all eventually.

pianoloverus They are indeed working very quickly. I can see they are using Claude AI for development in their staging environment and that's probably they why they are able to push out fixes so quickly as well.

I don't think we have seen the end state yet. If this is the end state, PW users should celebrate. However, VS have exactly 0 advertisements that I can see so far, and I was expecting them to flood PW with ads. So I don't think all is said and done yet.

pianoloverus

ShiroKuro The thread list display and the clicking to take you to the part you haven't read is buggy.

I have had zero problem with that.

pianoloverus

ShiroKuro That seems to not work in the dark theme then. Unless you're using the dark theme?

ETA: I switched to the light theme and now I see it, it's visible in both themes. But I don't find it as visually informative as the old site, or as this site. I feel like the UI is too "flat" (for lack of a better word).

How visually informative something is is a personal matter. Once they started marking threads with posts you haven't read in red, I instantaneously adjusted to this.

ShiroKuro

pianoloverus I have had zero problem with that.

Have you looked at the site from more than one device?

WieWaldi

The thing I found very strange about the new platform is, how close they replicated it. I tried the reply button once and see the same old dusty behaviour as it was before:
A small answer box, that is NOT FULL EDITOR. Why? Why not granting all the text formatting buttons in the first place?
After you entered the full editor, you can see only one post of the thread. Same crap as it was before.

Same crap with quoting. Press the quote button and the entire post is quoted. Same old cumbersome behaviour as it was before. I prefer the Flarum engine of PT hands down over that old PW clone-engine.

pianoloverus

WieWaldi None of the things you mentioned, which I think have been part of the Pianoworld Forums for decades, ever bothered me in the slightest although I agree changing them would be more convenient. I really think they don't bother many people and to the best of my recollection very, very rarely ever came up for discussion on Pianoworld before the site was sold. The only thing I remember people complaining about was the difficulty posting pictures. To discuss one thing you mentioned, I often only want to quote part of someone else's post so I just use the quote function as it now functions and then delete parts that I don't want to appear.

WieWaldi

pianoloverus I am not really bothered of that. I just say other forums are more comfortable than the PW setup. Uploading picutes? Absolutely agree, this was the biggest hassle. Didn't try it now, did they improve it?

But I also didn't like the behaviour of the full editor - being only able to see one single post of the thread. I had the habit to open the thread in a 2nd tab to be able to see all posts while answering. Sometimes I moved it into a 2nd window to have everything side by side on my screen. It is a workaround that worked. But still I found it quite inconvenient.

The quotes? Indeed this is the smallest issue. Nevertheless it lead to many posts with huge quotes of other posts that quoted entire other posts as well. Not everybody invested time to delete the parts that were irrelevant for the quote. This made the entire thread overloaded and hard to read.

The thing is: I just don't understand why the cloned the old behaviour as close as possible. I think this meant extra work in order to make it worse than something like Flarum out of the box.

navindra

WieWaldi They didn’t update the underlying software, they only refreshed the theme/presentation and changed some settings e.g. they enabled likes.

What they didn’t do is adopt Fora. It’s still UBB.threads. So I’m not sure why they bothered.

What is interesting though is the lack of ads.

ShiroKuro

navindra What is interesting though is the lack of ads.

I assume it’s temporary. Either that or they’re going to monetize that owners reviews page?? Or both??

WieWaldi

navindra Re-reading the thread over there, they said they have their own Fora platform. But they never wrote, the old PW forum gets moved onto that. Maybe (hopefully) this will happen in the future. Because now, it is still an outdated forum software and the open source Flarum clearly shows how a good and more modern one can look like.

If they are still on UBB.threads I don't understand why they changed anything at all. Just looked at the #83 recital thread. Looks like a mess - all formattings are gone. No better forum engine but they introduced some new problems by migrating from old to old.

ShiroKuro

WieWaldi Just looked at the #83 recital thread. Looks like a mess - all formattings are gone.

That was the thing I thought was most sad 🙁

BartK

WieWaldi The thing is: I just don't understand why the cloned the old behaviour as close as possible. I think this meant extra work in order to make it worse than something like Flarum out of the box.

Because they didn't want to touch the database. They just asked AI to create a new interface that uses the old database. It's a quick, low-investment fix.

BTW, Fora isn't that much better. I still prefer Flarum. You can see an example of Fora at this site: https://www.talkclassical.com/

ShiroKuro

Wait, remind me what Piano Tell runs on? (I think that came up in this thread but I’m not seeing it).

pianoloverus

ShiroKuro

ShiroKuro why assume the worst outcome? I have been a PianoWorld member since near the beginning of its conception and have had no problems with this site at all. The only real issues, in my opinion, were the the huge increase in ads when the new owners took over but this is really a non-issue as has been explained numerous times on this forum and the original PianoWorld forum. I'm not claiming that the setup on Piano Tell isn't an improvement over Pianoworld, but for me the differences are miniscule and it's the quality of the comments that's important. IMO it's a fact that except for the ads, which is a non issue, and difficulty posting pictures, which was the case for decades, there were very few complaints by members about how the forum was organized.

TC3

ShiroKuro I believe we're Flarum (please correct me if I'm wrong).

BartK

TC3 Yes, it's Flarum.

ShiroKuro

pianoloverus why assume the worst outcome?

Why? Because I think it is this outcome is the most likely. Also, for the record, ads themselves are not necessarily the "worst" outcome. It's not the presence of ads, it's their presentation, the totality of the user experience and whether the ads significantly reduce quality of user experience.

I have been a PianoWorld member since near the beginning of its conception

As have I, for the record.

it's the quality of the comments that's important.

On this we can agree.

ShiroKuro

Can we change the topic slightly? With the new site, it's very easy to see how many are viewing the site at any one time... if my memory is correct, that info was visible with the old site as well, but I didn't really pay attention to it.

If you check this page, you can get a quick look at how many are viewing each individual forum:
https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads.php/ubb/cfrm

Do those numbers seem crazy high to anyone else? To me they do, considering the slow pace of new threads and comments (especially compared to some years ago, when new threads and comments popped up in a more continuous stream).

Is it possible that a lot of that is bots and web crawlers rather than actual (human) users?

@navindra in your role as site owner, do you see similar info for PT?

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