Would appreciate your feedback

[Alastair]

As you will now know we hope to get our new servers up and running with our new telco very shortly now. Once we are back up on their services we aim to work on this community to get us the very latest version of our software and also to update any of our apps to the latest releases.

While we are doing all that we'll also be looking to make a mobile suite available for the community which can be used through your smart phone. We'll also see if there any new apps that might be worth adding to the service.

What we'd like to know from you is about anything that isn't working as it should and also anything you'd like to see added to the community. And also perhaps have an overview of all our forums to see if there are some that could be amalgamated with others or should be removed.

We will also be trying to bring you options you can use to configure the community to your own more personal style.

All this gives us an opportunity to relaunch the service and hopefully attract some new members that contribute to what we already have and perhaps something new.

So... if you have any thoughts on any of this we look forward to hearing from you.

Alastair

[Euan]

Al, when you get the mobile suite up and running, remember there are other smart phones other than the iphone...so many times i see apps for different things but solely for the iphone.
I also think there are too many different categories in the forums..For example, all the sports forums,many don't get used so maybe just the one forum for sport?
Personally, i find the huge number of different categories a bit overwhelming..

[sandyc]

Personally, i find the huge number of different categories a bit overwhelming...

Ditto.
Sandy

[Alastair]

Thanks for the feedback. The Mobile Suite will be for both iPhones and Android. We hope to make that available within the next 3 months as we need to upgrade our software to the latest release before we can work through the application process which I'm told takes between 6 to 13 weeks. The app will be free.

As to forums. I take your point about Sport and of course we do have a heck of a lot of forums but the intention was to see how they were all used. Some are never used and that means they really need to be deleted. But I'd rather try to merge any forums where I can rather than lose messages that have been posted.

The 3 University Groups are really dead as they have just not been used after they were setup. So I am intending to remove those. It's easy for me to create forums but it's an entirely different matter to get them used. I'm not sure that we even need Groups.

And so I could add a Sports forum under the lifestyle Group and totally remove the Sports Group. Now if I did that are there any messages that would need saving or can we start all over again? Like we did have a lot of motor sport messages if I remember correctly. I'll have to see if I can move messages from one group/forum to another group/forum.

Might be best to work on this gradually like if I worked to remove the sport group but try to preserve the messages into a general sports forum that sounds like it would work. Then we could look at the Lifetstyle Group and see if we can pune tha down somewhat.

I'll give it some time to see what others think. It might even be worth eliminating Groups altogether although I think I'd want to retain the Electric Scotland Group as all our newsletters are under that and I know a lot of folk do subscribe to that forum.

Thanks for the feedback!

Alastair

[Alastair]

OK... been working on things with likely more to do.

Have totally removed the Sport Group but before I did that I moved the Motor Sport forum messages into the Auto forum under the Lifestyle Group.

I created a Sport forum under the Lifestyle Group and moved the Golf messages into it. Then I simply removed all the other messages in that group and deleted it.

Have also removed the University Groups.

I'm inclined to move the Gamers corner "Arcade" forum into the Main Group and thus eliminate that Group as well.

Alastair

[Alastair]

OK I removed the Ganmers Corner Group and moved the Arcade forum into the Main Group.

I also reloved the Kids forum from the Lifestyle Group.

Guess I'll stop now and perhaps you can give me feedback on what I've done so far and any other suggestions for merging or deletion?

Alastair