Newness!!

We have “newness” to tell you about. Kati and I are always trying to keep the site fresh and interesting for both the readers and the writers. We are always experimenting with different interactive software, looking for that something that can give our readers and writers that little extra for the same cost, which is of course nuffin.

We recently added the photo album, which is there for everyone’s use (everyone who has a blog with us that is). As I get more and more familiar with how it works, I have to say it is the simplest and most effective online photo album software available. The last one we tried was so complicated one needed a PHD in computer science to get anything useful from it. Anyway, its there if anyone wants an album. One of the uses it serves pretty well, is that it will resize your pictures so they show up nice and neatly in your blog, without you having to alter any codes. It’s also pretty flash at putting a random thumbnail size picture (s) from your album on your blog. You can also access it from the home page if anyone wants a squizz.

Onwards…Our very first online experience with message boards and web forums was on a site called “Delphi Forums”. In fact that’s where Kati and I met. They were well known as having the very best forum software on earth. Their message board forums were unparalleled anywhere. Unfortunately though, they decided around 2002 to begin charging for full access to their service which is part of the reason the Observation Deck exists today. For the cost of a yearly account on Delphi, we could have our own entire website to play with. Well….that was true at the time, but we have had to move a couple of times to bigger and better servers which incur bigger and badder costs, but we do so willingly because of the enormous amount of pleasure we get from helping people to publish their views in the best possible manner.

Anyway, I digress as usual. I have recently discovered that Kati and I were not the only annoyed refugees from Delphi who struck out on their own. A group of hugely talented computer genius’s who’s ability far exceeds our own were also in the same boat. Rather than switch to weblogs though, they set about building their own version of the Delphi forum software, which they would distribute for free.

They called the project “Beehive”, and the product they have come up with is quite simply awesome in a word.

Kati and I have been playing about with it for a couple of weeks or so as I write this, and are still yet to fully grasp its abilities. I think it is fair to say that not only did they manage to build a passable version of the worlds best forum software, they have surpassed it some ways.

One of the beauties of all this, is that you can have as many different forums as you like all operating from the one database, yet all independent of each other in terms of style and content.

That means we are able to offer our writers and (selected) readers this new service for the usual cost. The forum can be used as a supplement to your existing blog, or if you don’t have one, it is a fine alternative. One of the uses which a message board has that surpasses a blog, is that it is better for a “single concept”. For example if you want to just write about your hobby and little else then a forum is better than a blog in my opinion.

So far we have only set up two forums, both of which are as yet unfinished in terms of spit and polish. I moved the Frequently Asked Questions over to it just to have an excuse to play about with it, and I have resurrected the very first website I ever built.

When Kati first started teaching herself HTML and showing me how to do it, the first thing I did was make a site about David Coverdale of Deep Purple/Whitesnake fame. (you can see the remnants of that very first site here. That was before we bought the Observation Deck.) I believed then as I do now, that despite the serious fashion mistakes the guy has made over the years, his voice is by far the best in the rock world. He is the Rolls Royce of rock singers, albeit a Rolls Royce with an atrocious paint job.

Go have a look and gimmie some feedback, let me know what you think.

There is also an integrated Chat Room for anyone who wishes to use it.

If any one thinks they might want a forum to play with, let me know and we will create one, which is as simple as clicking “create forum”.