Monday, June 25, 2007

Flight of the Forum

In recent months, problems logging-in and loading pages at the Poem Forum have been getting steadily worse.

Today, I managed to get onto the site briefly and saw a message from one of the other members, suggesting that we 'migrate' to another forum to avoid all the log-in frustrations. That had never occurred to me, as I had always assumed that the problems - whatever they are, and that's not clear - would be resolved and normal posting would resume eventually.

However, after a few moments' thought, it occurred to me to open up a space on my own message board, Poets On Fire, for any Poem members who wanted to keep talking. Which is what I've been doing today - creating a 'Temporary Poem Forum home' on the forum board associated with Poets On Fire.

My POF board is designed for people who want to discuss 'live' poetry. However, this specially-created 'Poem Forum' section will be for those of us who want to talk about English language poetry in print, mainly British poetry, but also from the US and beyond. If this idea catches on and members of the Poem forum do start to migrate to POF, I shall be doing my best to keep an eye on how the two types of member are integrating and will intervene if things go wrong.

I wasn't able to log back onto the Poem Forum to let members know what was happening, but I believe someone else has posted my invitation up there. So hopefully new members will be registering at POF even as I type this.

:ironic expression:

If you're reading this and would like to join the POF forum, it's perfectly simple. Choose a nickname or use your real name, go to http://z11.invisionfree.com/Poets_On_Fire/index.php and register as a new member. A validation email should be sent to you within 24 hours, usually much sooner. Then you can post.

If you have any problems getting validated as a member, contact me via this blog or my website, with your email details. Many spammers try to join POF, and it can be a tough job, deciding who is a bona fide poetry-lover and who deserves to be bent over a barrel and thrashed with fresh nettles.

No comments: