Host your online community here!
Migration Process for our Customers
We wish to thank all those groups that have already signed up for our service. We are in the process of preparing your groups and getting them back online. This is a complex task and we want to ensure it is done properly. let us explain the process:
- We collect and check the incoming data is complete and if not, request the missing data from the customer.
- We setup a temporary website for your group in the format: groupname.forums.group
- Once we have the complete email list, we send an email to all your members informing of the move to forums.group
- In our experience, there are always a number of email addresses that are no longer valid. Bouncing emails are marked as such so no more emails are sent.
- If a message migration has been ordered, these are sent for conversion. This is currently the bottleneck.
- Once the conversion is complete, the phpBB forum is setup and configured as ordered.
- The login details are sent to the moderator so that any customizations can be made.
- Once everything is approved by the moderator, we send out emails to the members with their login data.
- Your group is now online and can be used.
Update October 06, 2021
We are in the final stages of completing the email posting system, that has been holding up this service for too long. We have had to solve a number of technical issues as a phpBB forum was simply not designed to work with posting via email and he had a lot of hurdles to solve. We have got the posting function working and just need to complete the email out system (Individual, Digest or no email settings). How it is going to work is described here and it is being implemented now on the Minutus group.
New: We will soon be able to migrate Facebook Groups to Forums.Group. We are currently testing this. More details, soon.
We are also working on a migration to Telegram option. This has less features, but will be cheaper for those with smaller budgets.
As soon as the email system is fully working, we will be migrating all the groups in the waiting line. Sorry this has taken so long.
We are also working on the admin guide and plan to have that ready soon, as well.
As soon as this is complete, we will be releasing the migrated groups on our platform.
Please have a little patience while we work or this process and get your groups back online.
Status: October 6, 2021
YahooGroups are now Offline! What you can do!
Yahoo Groups is no longer accepting emails. It is no longer possible to reach your group via Yahoo Groups
Access to the membership list has also been removed.
If you have not downloaded your members list yet, it is too late - sorry, but read on!
Status: December 16, 2020 at 17:00 UTCIf you have not downloaded your members list yet, it is too late - sorry, but read on!
Process your Members List - Downloading is no longer possible!
YahooGroups did not make it easy to download their members list, if it had more than 1000 members. We have worked out how the owner or entitled moderator of the group can do this for any number of members and you will find our full instructions here.
What do we do if we were unable to download the Members List?
If for any reason, your group was unable to download the members list, but you do have the messages.zip file downloaded from Yahoo Groups in December 2019, we can still rebuild the members list from those that actually posted (plan 3) by extracting the email addresses from the posts, themselves. Silent member will then be lost, but they can always sign up on the new group when it opens. They can find the group on this website under Categories. In general, if your Yahoo Group is called "MyGroup@yahoogroups.com" then the domain here will be https://mygroup.forums.group
Make sure you have a copy of the Yahoo Groups Downloads from 2019
If not, ask your members to send you a copy or alternatively ask if anyone captured all the posts in Outlook (including any posts made during 2020).The files to look for are: files.zip, link.zip, messages.zip and photo_and-attachments.zip. The most import file is messages.zip which contains all the messages in MBox format.
If you had any files or photos on the YahooGroup, do you have a copy of them? If not, ask your members.
If you had any files or photos on the YahooGroup, do you have a copy of them? If not, ask your members.
If you have the members list, but not the messages.zip file, we can send an email to your group asking if anybody has a copy. The chances are high that someone in your group has a copy as Yahoo was actively offering these downloads to all users back then.
Make sure you have designated a Moderator
Make sure you have designated a Moderator
That person should preferably have some experience of using phpBB forums and read our Moderator Guide as well.
You also need to ensure you have the funds to cover the costs of the migration.
Inform your Members about the migration to Forums.Group
Once you have all the above items, it is important to inform your group of the upcoming migration. Now that YahooGroups is offline, you cannot reach your group any more, but we can. Once your order is confirmed and paid for, we will send a message to all your members informing them of the upcoming move. This email is also important for us to determine which members have bouncing emails as they cannot be added to the forum. This can take a few weeks, depending on how many groups order. They can use the time to learn how to use a forum by reading our User Guide and joining our Support Forum to practice.Order the Migration to Forums.Group
We have not set a time limit to ordering a new group on forums.group, but remember that we are processing orders as we received them. The longer you wait, the longer the queue of groups waiting to be migrated, which could delay the reopening of your group by up to a few weeks. Order the migration of your group, here.
If you have ordered a premium account, we can make the imported messages available to the moderator in advance, so that the moderator can remove any spam messages, etc. and add any newer posts from 2020, before they are uploaded to the new forum.
Signup to our Newsletter, so that you can be informed of the process.
Click here to sign up and you should also join out support forum.
That's it - we look forward to enabling your group to continue on Forums.Group
Why should I host my community at forums.group?
After the loss of the online archives at Yahoo Groups in December 2019 and growing censorship on other online platforms, we recognised a need for a new platform where existing YahooGroups could be fully restored complete with their message archives, files and the members on a modern safe platform where members can discuss a wide variety of topics where their freedom of speech is fully respected and where even topics that are not politically correct can reside in peace with a diversity of ideas.
Our websites are hosted in Germany, where freedom of speech is still respected. On our platform, you do not have to fear your forum being removed without warning or without the ability to download the archives for use elsewhere. The founder of this system (Peter Walker) comes from the world of communities for alternative medicine and respects a wide range of topics. Basically, if your topic was permitted on YahooGroups, it should be permitted here as well, provided it does not break the relevant laws in Germany. We do however reserve the right to refuse applications for forums on our platform.
The motivation to start this service was in answer to the loss of the archives on Yahoo Groups that contain knowledge collectively gained over up to 20 years or more, which is still valuable today. The collective knowledge on a wide range of topics can now be restored to a new home and can continue the discussions that made those groups so valuable. While more than 3000 active Yahoo Groups were able to move to groups.io with their message archives, that is only a tiny fraction of the approx. 10 million Yahoo Groups that existed. Many were unable to transfer in time and those that moved to other platforms were unable to take their archives with them, so they were effectively lost.
With the announcement that YahooGroups will be closing completely on December 15, 2020 - we have now ramped up our preparations to open this service for all. You will be able to order a migration to forums.group as of October 31, 2020 and YahooGroups will be migrated on a first come, first serve basis. If we receive a lot of orders, it can take some time to process them all, but we have no time limit for this, provided you have downloaded your complete member list before December 15, 2020.
Forums.group is a new platform that can make use of the YahooGroups MBox format files that were offered to all members during December 2019 to download and also Microsoft Outlook PST files that can also hold the archives of such groups. These two sources can be used to revive the respective Yahoo Groups on a new modern phpBB platform on our managed servers.
Yahoo Groups took their archives offline on Dec. 17, 2019
If you want your group to continue, yet missed the deadline to transfer to another platform,
we offer a powerful new solution to migrate your message archives and members.
Yahoo Groups has now announced they are closing
YahooGroups completely on Dec. 15, 2020
Do not lose your community, apply to move your group to Forums.Group, NOW!
We can import and convert your existing YahooGroup into a fully featured phpBB online forum
where members are able to post online and receive messages via Email - in a similar way to YahooGroups.
The Ease of Groups - the Power of Forums - Full Freedom of Expression = The Evolution of Groups!
Yahoo! Groups is a free-to-use system of electronic mailing lists offered by Yahoo!.
Prior to January 2020, Yahoo! Groups was one of the world's largest collections of online discussion boards. It allowed members to subscribe to various groups, read subscribed discussions online, view and share photos, files and bookmarks within a group, access a group calendar, create polls for group members, and receive email notfications of new discussion topics. Some groups were simply announcement boards, to which only the group moderators could post, while others were discussion forums. Depending on each group's settings, membership could be open to everyone or only to invited and/or approved people.
On December 17, 2019, Yahoo! removed online access to discussions and all other features except simple membership management, essentially turning all groups into mailing lists.
A large number of groups looked for alternative platforms and by far the most suitable platform at the time was groups.io that asked for $220 for the ability to migrate to their platform and just over 3000 groups did that before their migration service closed on December 15, 2019. There were no other platforms capable of migrating the message archives at the time.
NOTE: groups.io no longer offer the possibility to migrate your message archives to their service, they can however still migrate members only with premium accounts.
Important: groups.io can no longer migrate message archives to their service in 2020.
At the time, Peter Walker (who ran several groups and a forum) setup a service to archive over 70 health-related groups. One of those groups needed help to find a home after losing their own archives. That was the birth of the idea to offer a new service to reconstuct lost groups from the downloadable archive files Yahoo had offered at the time: forums.group.
The new system migrates YahooGroups to phpBB managed forums that not only provide the lost functionality of the YahooGroups, they also make it much easier to read the archives and add catagories and many other new features. The first group went online at Easter 2020.
Help us offer this service to ALL lost YahooGroups!
As phpBB forums do not offer the functionality of posting via email (receiving new posts via email is possible), forums.group is adding that functionality and are streamlining the migration process so that potentially thousands of lost groups can move to the new platform. We are currently completing the infrastucture and adding missing functionality to make forums.group the best alternative to YahooGroups by November 2020.
Forums.Group Plans:
One-time setup: $69
Plan 1: New Forum, No Members, No Messages.
For those starting a new forum with nothing to import. This gives you a standard-featured level forum to start anew without archives or members. As we do not have to migrate anything, these forums are availble for use soon after they have been ordered. See our Demo forum at this level.
Important: It is not possible to later migrate messages to such forums. Importing Members can be ordered.
Plan 2: New Forum With Members, No Messages.
This gives you a standard-featured level forum to start anew without message archives, but with the members from your existing YahooGroup (or groups.io) who are imported and an email with their login details sent to each member.
Important: It is not possible to later migrate messages to such forums. Includes one-time importing of members.
One-time setup: $109
Plan 3: Archive Forum With Messages, Files, Photos
If you have an inactive YahooGroup and simply want to make the existing archives available online without restarting discussions, this is ideal. The messages, files and photos are made available with full search functions available as well as the similar topics function that cross-references each post. This level is typical ordered for INACTIVE groups that just want to make their archives available online for reference purposes. The forum contains all the messages and members that have posted in the past, but silent members have been ommited. We will not be sending login details to the members, yet they can use the lost password feature to reset their password. As this type of forum is designed for archiving, we will leave it online for at least 10 years even without further activity.
Plan 4: Full Migration With Members and Messages, etc.
All members, messages, files and photos are imported. This gives you a standard-featured level forum complete with your previous message archives, files, photos and all your members from your previous YahooGroup. An email with their login details is sent to each member. This is the best selection if you are migrating an active group with its archives and members.
One-time setup from: $149
One-time setup from: $209
Plan 5: Conversion Service With Members and Messages, etc.
There are some groups that already have their own website and would prefer to host their new forum there and have the expertize to run it, themselves. That is, they do not need us to host their group at all, they just need our support converting the messages into a phpBB forum database for them to use.
We are therefore offering a conversion service and the customers can then setup everything, themselves.
Should they prefer us to install the forum on their website for them, this is possible for an additional charge.
Once the conversion process is complete, the customers run their own forum and we are no longer responsible for ongoing support.
Note: The phpBB database format can be converted for use on a wide range of other forum software systems.
Premium Upgrade
Premium Upgrade: $90
Premium Upgrade
The free hosting plans provide you with a standard phpBB forum with minimal extensions and no posting via email with forum based support and advertising.
The premium plans add a considerable number of enhanced features and we are constantly reviewing additional features to add.
The premium plans add a considerable number of enhanced features and we are constantly reviewing additional features to add.
For example:
- The standard account provides Moderator access only. Admin access allows you to have more control and responsibility over your forum.
- YahooGroup members are used to be able to post new messages and to reply via email. We are adding that feature for premium accounts during November 2020.
- The standard account gives you a simple text-based editor using BBCodes to format the text.
Premium accounts give you a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get editor that makes it easier to write messages. - The ability to easily show embedded media like videos on the forum is made possible with the Media Player.
- For international forums, the ability to Google translate the forum texts into other languages greatly improves the understandabilty for foreign members.
- YahooGroups does not have a private messaging system and members instead have used emails to contact other members off-list.
Forums.Group has an internal Private Messaging system and each member can store 50 posts for a standard forum and 500 for a premium forum. - Premium forums have two powerful crossreferencing systems to read the archives:
Recent Topics provides a list of recent posts
Similar Topics provides links to 10 similar topics at the bottom of each post. - Each Forums.Group premium group can be accessed via a Smartphone or Tablet using the TapaTalk App. This greatly simplifies accessing the forum from anywhere.
- It is common to want to share posts on other social media platforms. the ShareOn extension makes it easy to share forum posts.
- The free-hosting forums have just 2GB to share files, etc. Premium forums have 40GB
- Other features will be added in the future.
See our Features page for more details.
Important: You need to ADD this to your Free Hosting order (plans 1-4) to upgrade your forum to the premium level for a considerably better forum experience.
Further Details
What happened to ALL Yahoo Groups.
Yahoo Groups removed the archives on December 17, 2019 and will close completely on December 15, 2020.
The following features were permanently deleted on December 17, 2019
- Files
- Polls
- Links
- Photos
- Folders
- Calendar
- Database
- Attachments
- Conversations
- Email Updates
- Message Digest
- Message History
Although it is still possible to send out messages to other members until December 15, 2020, there are no longer any online archives at all. It is now no more than an email redirection service. This seriously reduces the usability of the groups as it is no longer possible to read the previous messages online.
It is still possible even to migrate your YahooGroup with your archives and members until December 15, 2020 to our forums.group platform. We can recover your group complete with messages, and members to our new forums.group service. Your message archives will then continue as a phpBB forum and discussions can continue as before.
We discuss the options on our special page for Groups Owners.
For more details on the deletion of Yahoo Groups, see this official page on the archive remval and this page on the closure of YahooGroup entirely.
Yahoo Group will be dead on December 15, 2020 - long live Forums.group
Yahoo Groups (previously known as Onelist or eGroups) have been building online communities since the 1990s, long before there was Facebook, Twitter or other such social media.
We therefore, started this project to provide an alternative platform for groups that have not yet found a new home and where their messages can be preserved and the discussions can continue. groups.io did an excellent job migrating over 3000 groups to their platform, but in relation to the estimated 115 million users in 10 million Yahoo Groups, it is merely a drop in the ocean (0.03%) and they have now ceased to offer a migration service. The two main reasons many groups did not migrate were the high migration costs ($220 per group) and the lack of recent discussions on groups that were highly active in the past. Forums.group was setup to provide a new home to those groups that have been left in limbo since Yahoo removed their archives.
Free Alternatives?
We saw a lot of groups calling out for an alternative free platform for their continued discussions. The problem with free, is that it always comes at a cost like being subjected to advertising, lack of privacy as your private details are sold to the highest bidder and the fact that providers can censor, shadow ban or even delete your discussion groups at little or no notice - you pay for "free discussions" with your privacy.
Our aim is to provide an affordable means of restoring your groups in a place where your privacy is fully respected. Our servers are based in Germany where the laws for forum owners permit open discussions on almost every topic except against regious freedoms and holocaust denial - these are two restrictions we can live with and would not want on our platform, anyway. See here for more details of what is allowed on our platform, according to German laws.
We offer forums at two cost levels. Free hosting that is supported by advertising and a one-time setup fee. This gives you full moderator level control of your group. If you want to migrate your YahooGroup to our platform, that is possible for a one-time charge as well. So while our "Free service" is not totally free, this does mean that we will respect your privacy, never pass-on your personal details to third parties and we will respect your freedom-of-speech provided your group respects the laws of Germany. Our service and servers are based in Europe, yet we accept applications for new groups and members from all countries.
Test our forums now
We have setup two forums that you can join and post in to test the functionality of our services. Just click on the respective images below, register and try it out now for free.
You will also find a link to the Minutus forum - The first to be migrated to Forums.Group.
