As many of you know, I have had various attempts with our Forum. At one point, it was a wonderful place where we had such lively discussions and great debate. We shared recipes, ideas, asked and answered questions and really had some wonderful topics. All the while I was very impressed and happy how well we all got along even when we were on polar sides of a discussion. It felt very much like a place of friends. A virtual Coffee Klatch with neighbors around the kitchen table or over the garden fence with a cuppa and a good chin wag.
After our Forum began to grow in numbers it somehow became prey to Spammers and Bots. Rather like the town gossips, perhaps, who spoilt it all with unsavory discussions and odd behavior. Not understanding how to eliminate these predators to our quite little community, I had some help. However, this resulted in an inability to keep up with new members wanting to join coupled with my own misunderstanding as to how to accept said new members.
I have, therefore, been wanting to address the forum for some time. Well, after many attempts of frustration and pulling out my hair trying to understand PHPBB, I finally found a very good service that now hosts Forums. This is a new concept (long needed I might add) and I have decided to go that route. It means, however, all our wonderful back log of information is not going to be on it immediately. What I plan to do is attempt to cut and past our old information into the new Forum once we see how much interest we get in the new one.
I have laid it out now with simply three main categories of Meet and Greet, Homemaking, and Vintage Lifestyle. Then within those categories I have made some initial sub-categories such as recipes, Schedules lists, vintage dressing and so on. We can add to this as we go, but I think the format will be easier for us to control. I have had to pay for the service, but am willing to pay a small monthly amount to get back our wonderful chat area. We shall see if it is worth it in time based on how much we all use it.
If I understand it correctly, one can simply go to it and sign in. There is no need, at present, to be given a permission. If it comes to needing it again, I think this site will allow me to better understand how to go about giving said permissions. For now it should be open to all and ready to start a new. I hope you will all at least stop by and give a “hello” or even post and share to get our community back up and running. Though it doesn’t look like much right now, it could become another great part of this site and our community.
I have been doing much thinking lately about my online time and life. Realizing that much of what I hold dear in the Vintage world actually can and does live happily side by side with this technology. Right now we are living at a time when we can group together like minded folk to form a neighborhood and organization of a type, despite our geographical locations. This is, in many ways, the answer to the new real ‘small community’ and ‘small town or village life’. I think much of the modern world has become so homogenous and so over burdened by the bland corporate experience of the everyday, that the internet is a sort of new frontier for we to explore and make it what we wish it to be, at least our own little corner of it. In a way it is much like the New World or the Old West once was, unchartered territory for us to take and shape as we like. I hope you shall join me there and help carve out our new improved Vintage inspired online life.
I have linked up the new Forum with the above Forum button, so that should take you there. You can also simply click HERE to go and give it a try.
Now, as it is a new place to go and we have always been good in the past with our etiquette and behavior, I thought it fitting to close with this educational film on Office courtesy & etiquette from 1953. Enjoy and DO stop by the Forum and let me know if it is worth our time to build it up.
Happy Homemaking.
