Well we're just over a year on from launching The Camping Forum. You can read our reasons for starting in our earlier post here.
So how has the last year been?
So the last year.. Well we have seen many changes some good some bad, that will always be the way though and you don't know until you try right? I think one of the biggest moves we made very early on was joining forces with in-a-tent. What started out as just cross promoting quickly turned into somthing else. Both Andy and I (Yes Andy runs in-a-tent and I'm Andy and I run The Camping Forum, were not the same person I assure you lol) anyway, we talk on a regular basis bouncing ideas off each other and testing diffent new ideas out for each other. I would go as far as to say (for me at least) it gives me another person's opinion that I have come to trust, respect and value. Many of you will see the obvious stuff such as the reviews from here hitting the forum, the reviews that I write here and the very blog that you are reading now. Behind the scenes I often pass questions over for advice and feedback before I go live and its that alliance that has honestly helped The Camping Forum to not only grow but also become far more usable. So big thanks to Andy and in-a-tent :)
[ED: Same goes for us here at in-a-tent, the support and help from The Camping Forum has been brilliant ... now enoughh of the love-in get on with it]
So what are these changes that have taken effect over the last few months? Well the early changes were small things to better streamline the forum itself.
We removed some of the Forums that were just not being used and merged others together to help to build the post counts, which for a new forum is pretty important, the whole idea is about discussion so its no use to have forums that sit empty with no activity.
The navigation bar was another addition early on that made it much more user friendly and easier for new users to quickly find the most common areas of the site. Some areas were actually removed such as the events calandar and the classifieds section. We may reintroduce these later but at the current time it is just to early. All I can say is watch this space they may well return.
End of the 2009 season I started thinking about 2010 and the forum moving forward and decided it would be a good time to introduce a little help in the form of additional moderators for the times I'm not about and also because member and post counts are going up. The choice was a simple one, I had in mind one member who joined pretty early on and who had been a consistant and helpfull poster, merlin1973 or Rob as he is known by his real name. Rob didn't hesitate and jumped at the chance. Things were quiet at the time, being out of season, so it was a good time to start. Rob went on and took things a little further which was great and it was his dedication and work that provided us with the chance to offer tickets to this years British Leisure Show. It did'nt stop there, within the next few days we will be launching another great competion to win tickets to another great event this year! Also both Andy and I now have another person's opinion when looking at changes and new ideas.
As we move into the new season I look back at what was started not so many months ago and can see how it has changed so much. Those of you that have used the site from early on will have noticed these change and those of you who are new to the forum will see new changes along the way. The site will always evolve as we work harder to improve on what we have already achieved. Its never ending lol! but thats all the fun right? :)
Cheers and thanks for reading Camping Forum Guy