Sarah,
Thanks for entrusting us to continue what you started here. We look forward to learning about the needs of the community and providing the members the tools to make SOC even better. This is a special place and we look forward to spending time with you all in the years to come.
I will start off with a brief intro about me. I started my first forum from scratch in 2002, it's on Airstream travel trailers (
www.AIRForums.com). I was restoring my old 1961 Airstream and needed way to communicate with other owners on how to address certain issues. It started to grow and I had a blast learning about forum software and finding solutions to ideas that members had on how to make the site better. Through a totally random event, I ended up adopting my first forum in 2004 that was going to be shut down by the owner because the cost to run the forum.
My fascination with forums continued to grow and slowly over the last 6 years have acquired various other forum communities. I understand how personal online forum communities are. They are very special places where many friendships are formed and a tremendous amount of information is shared. I am huge believer in forums and spend all day everyday working with wonderful mods/admins learning and working to make our forums better.
Janet works with me helping bring issues to my attention. She's off camping this weekend on the Oregon coast but will be around this next week to post her intro.
We were introduced to the mod team last week and had a chance to chat about some of the pluses and minuses of the current forum software. We plan to convert over to vBulletin (just like EMD_Driver
suggested here). This change will simplify a lot of the tasks that currently are difficult with phpBB. The most obvious is the ability to post attachments to your posts. There is a whole list of other goodies that we will look at rolling out as well.
The moderation team will remain the same with the exception of one new member. JohnB has accepted a role on the team, so please congratulate him when you get a chance. The moderators not only zap spam and help keep the site organized but also help foster new discussions and most importantly act as a liaison to Janet and I helping us understand what their fellow member's needs are.
Both Janet and I are campers and look forward chatting with you all about the general camping stuff. Since we don't own Sunlines (yet) we depend on you all to guide us. We are here to provide you the tool you need to make SOC the best it can be. So if you have any ideas, thoughts, or feedback, please post it here, send me a PM, or tell a Moderator. We want to hear from you all...
I look forward to learning tons about Sunlines over the years to come and getting to know you all as well.
Regards,
Andy
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