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Conrad
04-12-2006, 14:23
Hi all,

Thought I best do an introduction given I am administering the forum.

Firstly the forum. The forum is set up to work alongside the Pubs Galore web site, this site has been around since 2003, originally primarly as regulars reunited but as that idea fell by the wayside so did the name to be replaced by Pubs Galore. Initially Regulars Reunited was set up as part of the wave of new social networking sites with the idea of allowing you to try and track down old drinking buddies, sadly the idea never completely took off and we never really did enough work to make it worthwhile. As the company changed from being 2 friends to being 3 friends (the new person being a web designer) we decided it was time to give Pubs Galore a facelift. This facelift was to simplify the site and make it more usable, so the idea of meeting people was dropped (possibly to come back) and instead the focus moved towards the pubs. One of the features of the facelift is to try and give the credit where credit is due, so we now try and show at each point who the contributer is and how much they have contributed (although there is still room for improvement from us there). In that vein the forums have been set up to try and allow people to have public input into how the site is developed, we get a good amount of behind the scenes feedback and thought it would be better if more people had a public method of feedback if they wanted it. Also they offer our members to express more of their personalities than just pub pictures and reviews. So please use them to just chat, introduce yourselves, and let us know how we should be doing things. Where we see blatant advertising (spam) or rude and disrespectful behaviour we will moderate it out, please report anything you think should not be there.

And myself. I have been working full time with a friend since 2004 doing small web site projects of which pubs galore is one, sadly I dont get out drinking as much as I used to but (a sad confession for a bloke in his 30's), at least I can live vicariously through the Pubs Galore web site. I have to admit in general I am someone without much to say (and even less of it interesting) so I am hoping that I can largely take a back seat on these forums and let them evolve their own life, where I do appear though I will be wearing two hats I will try and remember to wear the correct ones though. For website issues I will most likely answer using Galore Admin, the reason for this is that the admin account may also be used by one of my colleagues where for instance I am on holiday, where it is me using it though I will try and remember to put my name at the bottom. For more general use I will try and remember to switch to my Conrad account.

Please feel free to ask me any questions, I will try and answer them sensibly, and thanks for any and all contributions to the community,

Conrad

General Staal
10-12-2010, 18:12
Just read this intro from way back when, cause I was curious to see what the first item was on the Forum.

I think the Forum, and the site has exceeded what you initially set out to achieve. I find it informative and entertaining.

How do you feel it has 'evolved'?

Conrad
11-12-2010, 11:37
Hmmm, the first post (http://forums.pubsgalore.co.uk/showthread.php?1-Migration-fixed) is typically me admitting to being incompetent :).

I'll start with my obvious punchline, the site is not commercially successful, so not where I want it to be yet ;).

When we set up the forums I would say we were coveting the performance of BITE's where they were an excellent compliment to the site. So that has exceeded what we wanted as it has a number of excellent posters from both sites using them and is keeping an excellent atmosphere.

The main site, the members are doing excellent work and it's performance is a wonder to behold in the last year with some huge advances. It feels like there is a lot more that can be got out of it as well.

In the real World we have had one large meet in Birmingham which was fantastic, there was a meet in London that sounded like it went well. Along with a consensus that it should be done again. Also the excitement with distributing the good word about the site is fantastic to watch, it does feel like a genuine community which is what we want.

Where we aren't doing as much as I would like is purely down to me and Dave. The site is taking too long to upgrade. The refusal by us to update areas is something I really hoped we would never do (you should never stop people trying to improve your site). I am sure we can all sympathise with the project you desperately want to get going but just never quite do as much as you would like though :).

So in summary I think it has evolved fantastically, but I fully believe that the evolution still has a lot of potential yet.