Pingu

ah ha.. there it is

i have allowed you to choose which one you use as soon as i find out where they have hidden the setting i will let you know

the new software gives me some options on teh forum layout. i am going to keep it as the old layout was for now but what do you think of the grid option?

Have started work on the new website and would appreciate some feedback. I tend to forget i use a huge monitor with scary resolution so whilst it may look fine to me for others it may not. hows it looking so far? https://therefuge.org.uk/site/

we were at 7 rotties (very briefly 8 ) at one point

part of me is tempted to let the spambots in to generate some traffic but i would be deleting their crap for months

shame as it was a site that helped loads of places... it had its... challenges shall we say... but on the whole it did a load of good. started a fair few arguments too...

This will show how long I have been out of the loop for but has dogpages gone?

Obviously its been a while so am curious as to who has what pets now. We are down to two dogs (Both Rotties Mylo and Bella) - Bella is not good with some other dogs so we can't bring any more in for now Two Buns (Alfie and Mischief) Three Guinea pigs (Rolo, Twix and Topic) Two Gerbils (Calvin and Hobbes) four Hamsters (Loki, Lagertha, and two whose names escape me atm) and as of last night a hedgehog - too small to survive outside so has been brought in and will be released in spring

Its different. i also enjoy the likes of ripper street etc and its in the same genreyfeelthing

OK So next thing is to tidy stuff up a bit. The software seems to be stable. I have redone the site logo and done some behind the scenes tweeks to the appearance (tbh you probably won't have noticed but it makes the site load quicker) I will now redo the main website using the colours and theme from here. In the meantime there is another feature which may prove useful - Files: Files This allows you to share documents either board wide or within a club. So thing slike rehoming forms, homecheck formes, membership application forms and anything else you feel useful. I will create some categories at some point but for now will leave it freeform

I have started to rewatch Peaky Blinders. It got a bit weird towards the end but its enjoyable

There is no longer any need for so many areas so i will start merging them today into something less clumsy and more suited to the lower activity levels.

Apart from a change in the look and feel the forum has some spiffing new features. the first one i will cover is "clubs" Clubs This allows you to form private areas with their own discussion areas, calendars etc So for example say you run a rescue or dog training club it allows you to have a private area for that organisation. As club leader and owner you can decide who has access, if its a private (hidden) club or a public one. You appoint your own moderators and can invite people or allow people to ask to be able to join. When you first create a club it has basic functionality but you can add stuff from the "manage club" dropdown: To Set up a club click on create new club from the clubs page and fill in the boxes. If the club does not have a physical location then just put a dummy address in. This feature should give organisations the ability to have their own mini forums without having to host their own. No idea how this will take off (if at all) but lets see. You can also use it for other purposes such as a book club/reading group etc Pingu

suzeanna - changed

i can do a manual password reset for now PM me the password you want to use

OK the database and software has now been upgraded. I need to leave things for a bit now to settle down and see what does and does not work. I can then start the process of merging teh forums into a more logical structure and the site customisation. SO lets see how stable this is... (there were a few quiffy moments during the upgrade where i had to make some manual changes)

backups have commenced

tbh iot was touch and go a few minutes ago when I got locked out whilst kicking off the database backup... ok deep breath... here goes...

hi all.. you may remember me from such antics as "starting the forum". i have neglected here quite badly over the past couple of years but i am going to put some effort into bringing it back up to date and hopefully help some rescues out at the same time. first step is to bring the forum software up to date. i will be doing this later on tonight. things may go a bit wobbly as there are a lot of differences between the old and the current version lets see where this goes...

test post

erm... they have probably gone to the great devnull in the sky I am afraid.

I have started to make some changes to the site. I know its taken me ages but .... well... anyhow the first change completed today and that was a major one the forums now sit on a much more powerful system which will allow me to do the rest of the changes. the next one will be an upgrade of the board software. this is not a small job as the new version has a lot of things that are different to this one. I will initially do a test board to see how much get screwed up during the upgrade and take it from there. after that I will be merging a lot of the lesser used forums as well as performing a general tidy up. hopefully you will notice a speed increase now but the spring.. summer clean should help even more. there will be integration with facebook and twitter etc so hopefully we can create a joined up community where stuff posted in one place will sow in many. thi should help with lost and found/rehoming etc anyhow. its been a busy day so I am off to watch some telly

I wil be performing a migration of the forum later this evening onto new hardware i wil also be upgrading the forum software to the latest version at the same time it should only take about 20 mins but if something goes wrong then it may take longer... Rick

now i seem to actually have some time on my hands its time to do some bits to here. first up is a hardware upgrade. this will happen over the next two weeks and tehre may be some downtime as a result. sadly i cant control when they will do the upgrade but its a fairly big one so things here will hopefully fly afterwards. once thats out of the way there will be a fairly large database upgrade.. this is the scary one as if it goes wrong there is a lot of work to put it back again... i will let the new hardware bed in for a week before doing this. and then its onto the forums... not too sure exactly what i will do but my feeling is some rationalisation is needed and better integration with facebook etc. any suggestions will be gratefully recieved.