I'm aware of a number of areas where improvements could be made with big advantage, and making it
more mobile friendly is one of them. But whilst I (and the admin / moderator team) are aware of these things, we're currently running in a steady state mode where the site / forum runs stably and only critical issues that arise in the software are fixed.
The forum has developed over the years into something much bigger than we intended / expected, and what we thought would be a short term campaign and build up to an
FAQ▸ database of common questions took on a much longer and wider life of its own. The initial choice of software has proven to be a good one, but upgrading at this point would be a tricky operation through a number of intermediate versions that might be hard to source, and patches would need to be re-engineered and applied. Technically possible, but very expensive in terms of time taken and there would probably need to be a financial cost in doing so. However, we don't take advertising, we don't charge membership (neither paths we can take) and beyond the provision of server space by my company, we're not sponsored.
In summer and autumn 2012, we had provisional plans afoot to make a switch should trains in the West of England be operated by a different
TOC▸ - that would have been a logical time to move to something with mobile, search, and other improvements, and perhaps to something that had a different organisational approach behind it. Having the name "FirstGreatWestern" in the URL is both a blessing and curse; it's a blessing in making it very clear that "Firstgreatwestern.info is information about First Great Western", but we cannot [mt]ake money from the use of their name, and every page makes it clear that "This forum is provided by a customer of First Great Western, and the views expressed are those of the individual posters concerned. Visit
www.firstgreatwestern.co.uk for the official First Great Western website."
The stable / non-changing nature of the underlying software hasn't stopped us upgrading underlying Linux, PHP and MySQL, and it doesn't stop us changing relatively minor things which aren't there in the original software; it could be an issue in the future if deprecated function calls are removed. We can also make a wide range of data changes and flip switches, so that new boards can be added, membership groups changed, and so forth. We can even make a few look and feel changes (as indeed we did when we added multiple styles) and it just
might allow us to help the mobile users who - I know - are now a significant proportion. I'm not personally enough of an expert (and I don't have the time) to do such work, but there are two or three longstanding, skilled, trusted members who might be able to help. They'll know who they are ... and I would be happy to explore options with them and the moderator team.
In the longer term, I note that wnxxforum has basically started afresh (as I understand it) with their old forum archived and the new one - under a different domain name - taking off well. Perhaps there's some merit in that approach, all be it I would really ("vitally") want to see an ability to look back within our archive of postings as well as at newer material. That would be a huge decision, though; this forum has become a significant factor for quite a number of members, and that's something that I (and I'm sure the moderator and admin team) cherish and wish to protect.
That's a very long answer - thanks for the opportunity to look at where we are and where we might go in this way. Historic statements above are pretty accurate (I think); thoughts of where we might go are to a degree personal, although much has been discussed on matters like this "behind the counter" over past years.
Click on the map to explore geographics
