VE Announcements

Thats a good suggestion to indicate something of the route or region in the title - lets do this. I've also enjoyed the creative titles. If the whole title doesn't land up being too long, then put both in, else as ghaz suggested, make the first line of the the message text the creative title. You can make it large and bold .

There is a section for Lesotho Trip Reports too now.

You may have noticed that the right hand navigation column has been disabled in the forum view. You can still control your profile and see new message notification at the top of the forum page below the menu tabs. This was in order to help people on iPads and other tablets since the right column was blocking some of their view. In the new template which is part of the site upgrade we were already mostly doing away with the side columns. This will also make things less cluttered.

I will be using this thread to post updates on things that have, or will be, changed. There will be quite a bit of change in the upcoming months.

Within the next few days, maybe even later today, the site will be undergoing a big software upgrade, something comparable to updating from Windows 8 to 10. I anticipate that the site will be down for a few hours so it shouldn't be a big disruption, but if something unexpected happens, it will be offline for longer. This update will not change much in how the site looks and functions currently. Some changes and improvements will be evident however and I will post more on these when we get that far.

This update will make VE capable of being 100% mobile and tablet friendly, and while I have a working test site running already, it will still take me a while to implement and optimise everything. The changes in the look & feel and layout of the site when this is implemented, will be major.

We are back online after a rather lengthy software upgrade! As mentioned above, the upgrade was a major one, but for the interim I have kept things looking and working almost exactly as before. The bigger changes are yet to come. Evidence of the capability of the new software can be seen in the "drag 'n drop" upload functionality now available in the gallery upload screen. In time this will also be available for file attachments to a forum post.

You will also notice that the member profile pages are a little bit more fun to play with. You can now have a profile banner which works in a similar manner to Facebook. I have put some banner options up, with more to come, but you can also upload your own. So go check it out!

I do recommend that you clear your browsing history for VE after this upgrade, especially if you see something strange, or something isn't working properly. If that doesn't fix it, try it with a different browser - I have noticed with Chrome for example, that it can have a weird lingering memory even if you clear the browsing history, but it eventually goes away. If things are still not working, then please send me an email or a PM.

Enjoy!

For better facilitation, there is now an email address which can be used to contact one of the moderators, to get help with an issue or to report something, for instance. The address is:
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If you send an email to that address it will forward the message to all moderators on this site and someone will get back to you, or simply do what you may have requested. Bear in mind we all do this in our spare time, and that we may be out in the mountains for several days, but normally you should get a fairly fast response. You can also submit the message through a form which is accessed by clicking on "Get Help From a Moderator" in the menu at the bottom of the page.

You may also know about the "Report to a moderator" link appearing on every post in the forum, which many have already used. This does the same as the above and is very useful for reporting a specific post.

Plans for 2016

Coming up probably by mid-March is a new look-and-feel for the site, which is aimed at making it 100% mobile, tablet, and wide-screen friendly. Though this new ability is a radical change, the change in layout will not be too radical, at least in my view, and there will be a lot of familiarity with the current look-and-feel. Inevitably there may be some things which members may prefer on the outgoing theme, but I think the gain in the new one will be significant in the long term. Some minor functionality enhancements will accompany the introduction of the new theme, but primarily the change is all geared towards device and screen compatibility. This is all coming together very nicely on VE's test site and some user testing will also be done still.

After that, another software upgrade is in the pipeline, though probably still several months away. It probably won't require a lot of down-time of the site, and there are no major foreseen impacts on the way things currently work.

There is the possibility of one major new section to the site. If and when this becomes more concrete, more details will be posted. The implementation of this could be as early as May, but could just as easily be much later in the year.

I'm happy to announce that Viking has now been made a moderator on this forum. I think he is a solid addition to the moderator team and thank him for being willing to take on this role!

I approached him to take on this role with long-term sustainability of the site in mind, and to alleviate current work loads, bearing in mind that the moderators do this voluntarily in their own time. I am also considering adding a new feature to the site which will require more moderation if it comes about.

We are almost ready for the new-look, device-friendly VE, and are currently in a testing phase. If anyone wants to help out with testing, especially if you actively browse from a phone or tablet, please send me a PM.