Forum Rules and Queries

Dear Members,

Thank you for your patience in recent weeks, whilst we have dealt with issues behind the scenes which left you unable to post on the forum.

In September, mandatory upgrades meant that the website developers who we pay for the maintenance of servers etc behind this site suspended the use of the old style of Forums for all of their customers. There were no exceptions.

As I began the process of migrating all the data from the previous iteration to this new system (including some 11,000 posts), we hit snags with two items (not bad considering we had something in the region of 70,000 comments to move over on top of the 11,000 posts). There has been a delay whilst the site developers have worked through the bugs, but we now have this 'shiny new' look.

The concept behind 'groups' is that you join a particular group that appeals to areas that you are interested in. Think of it like being in a room at a Napoleonic mansion - you might not be interested in the room on the Peninsular War, but you may want to focus on the discussion going on in the room on New Books. Join as many 'Groups' as you wish.

We are still getting to grips with this new system ourselves, so please bear with us, and try to help each other out. If you have any questions, or encounter problems, post them below. We'll investigate things at our end, but equally if you find solutions to problems raised by members, reply to their queries with things that worked for you.

We have kept the old forum on the website for the moment, and will keep it in place for a while, not least because we are trying to check whether everything has been copied across correctly (something that you could help us with - if you spot something that doesn't look right, let us know by replying to this post).

All the old rules on cordial discussion still apply. Happy posting, and welcome to the future...