2015 thoughts, 2016 plans
Posted: Mon Dec 14, 2015 9:29 am
As the year of 2015 closes out on all of us, I wanted to take this opportunity as the site administrator of the forum to review a little of what happened in 2015, and our plans for 2016. Some new joiners may not be aware that this forum is actually an offshoot of an older forum called "How to learn any language" which has a long and stellar reputation as the place to learn and discuss languages. Unfortunately due to other commitments over the years the administrator at HTLAL had left the site untouched except for the occasional heroic effort to repair it after a number of crashes. After one such crash in June, and the loss of the domain name for a couple of weeks, I offered the moderators of the old forum a mailing list hosted here to allow notifications to go out when the old site crashed. In addition I offered a phpBB hosted forum software as a temporary refuge. That temporary refuge having a more modern interface, and the ability to upload pictures, link videos, and all of the other things you use here on a daily basis, convinced a number of senior forum members to see the new forum as valuable place in itself and not just a refuge.
By that time, we had a lot of threads open and an number of lively discussions going. The moderators and I decided to leave the temporary site running while they attempted to contact the site administrator at the old HTLAL, but sadly with no success. After a long period of deliberation and regret the moderators made an announcement about moving away from the old site. Even more sadly, this change my role from happy user into clueless site administrator. But over the course of the last few months I've had a lot of help from all of the moderators, and a lot of the users who've made this community such a wonderful place to be. Let me just take a few moments to shout out the moderators of the forum, who do such a great job keeping the forum on track and keep the spam bots, etc at bay.
We've grown a lot in the few months we've been in business over here on the new forum.
In 2015 we've managed a lot as an administration and moderation team, and I'd like to put down some of the highlights.
But "resting on our laurels" isn't want we're about here! We want to improve the forum, the site and grown and enhance the community. So what do we have planned for 2016?
2015 has been a very interesting year for me personally, and I'm very pleased to be your clueless site administrator. I'm excited to bring in the new year and watch our community grow and prosper in 2016. I want to thank each and everyone of you reading this message for your time, and your participation in this forum. This place is better for having you in it, thank you very much for being here with us.
Regards,
rdearman
By that time, we had a lot of threads open and an number of lively discussions going. The moderators and I decided to leave the temporary site running while they attempted to contact the site administrator at the old HTLAL, but sadly with no success. After a long period of deliberation and regret the moderators made an announcement about moving away from the old site. Even more sadly, this change my role from happy user into clueless site administrator. But over the course of the last few months I've had a lot of help from all of the moderators, and a lot of the users who've made this community such a wonderful place to be. Let me just take a few moments to shout out the moderators of the forum, who do such a great job keeping the forum on track and keep the spam bots, etc at bay.
- emk - who doubles up as an administrator and keeps me from wrecking the place and installing star trek extensions and other nonsense.
- Meramarina - who convinced me to setup the temporary forum, and become site-administrator (I still hold a grudge!)
- Fasulye - who helped with a lot of the initial configuration of the rooms and layout of the forums.
- Iversen - who has forgotten more about forum moderation and language learning than I'll ever know.
- jeff_lindqvist- who works behind the scenes, but who has amazing insights and words of wisdom for the entire moderation and administration team.
- Rhian - who organised all of us as well as a lot of the static content we'll soon be publishing. (She must herd cats in her spare time because I don't know how she keeps track of all of us)
- Serpent - our newest moderator who got dragged into all of this through no fault of her own by me! I really do apologise.
We've grown a lot in the few months we've been in business over here on the new forum.
- We've reached over 550+ users as I write this with 2.61 new members joining every day.
- ~1000 topics posted since we started in Jun-Jul of 2015 and we average a little under 5 new topics every day.
- ~16,000 posts and we average ~75 new posts per day.
- Created a Spanish only sub-forum with some dedicated sponsors who keep the forum energetic and relevant.
In 2015 we've managed a lot as an administration and moderation team, and I'd like to put down some of the highlights.
- We changed the name from how-to-learn-any-language.org to our new official domain. language-learners.org
- We launched a static web-site on http://language-learners.org/ and we've posted our FAQ written by a forum member Evita.
- We've installed extension packs for "Active/New Links", "Post Love" and the "UniLang Virtual Keyboard Extension"
- We've installed language packs for British English, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Mexican Spanish, Mandarin Chinese (Simplified script)
- 15 BBcode extensions for things including YouTube, audio, progress bars, soundcloud and tables.
- Moved from the default prosilver style used by only 34 of us (me included) to the we_universal style as default of which 314 of you use, and the remainder using the digi style.
- Modified the search system to allow users to search for keywords. All words are now indexed, and searches are free for everyone.
But "resting on our laurels" isn't want we're about here! We want to improve the forum, the site and grown and enhance the community. So what do we have planned for 2016?
- Expand the Main site with more static content, guest blog posts, and great forum member content.
- Establish some kind of trust or charity which will allow ownership of this forum and its content to remain with the community.
- Write more software and develop the site to make it even better.
- To host challenge bots, or other community requested enhancements
- To market and grow our audience and forum membership
- Look at possibly adding other language-specific boards.
- Update rules and policies where required.
- Add a code of conduct.
- Investigate expanding the hosting facilities for more speed and backups.
- New language packs and extensions
2015 has been a very interesting year for me personally, and I'm very pleased to be your clueless site administrator. I'm excited to bring in the new year and watch our community grow and prosper in 2016. I want to thank each and everyone of you reading this message for your time, and your participation in this forum. This place is better for having you in it, thank you very much for being here with us.
Regards,
rdearman