Whoa sorry folks, it loox like I've been asleep at the wheel
Welcome Gingham, Blerg, Lhianeaivee, jonbey and Promise; I'm glad you've found our sanctuary and look forward to seeing you all in our forums.
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Originally Posted by jonbey
I was just reading the first posts on this welcome thread - are many of you friends? Or is the forum now a little more diverse? Where is everyone from? I forgot to say, that I am in the UK, work in London, live just outside of it.
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This is a hard question to answer for me because even though I've never met some of our members, I can say that I feel many (if not all) are either my very good friends or are on their way to becoming good friends. I can say that prior to 2007 and our switch from the phpnuke/bbtonuke/phpbb Content Management System to Joomla/SEF Advance/vBulletin/VBSEO, I personally knew 75% of our newly registered and active members here.
Now that we've switched to much more "professional" and "SERP Friendly" software, our site has begun to reach audiences that wasn't possible with phpnuke. For this reason, new membership is not only on the rise but it also consists of people none of us are familiar with.
This does not negate the fact that new members such as yourself are not friends however because the more active you are around here, the more we all get familiar with each other and the more you become embraced by the site. Pretty soon you're a part of an online family that really cares about you and what's going on in your daily life.
I can't say when or how it happens, it just does and even though my opinion may be slightly biased I have to admit, it's prolly the coolest forum experience I've ever had on any site.
The other thing I'd like to point out is that we are not a Mod Happy Forum. Unlike most interpersonal websites, we do not discourage you from being yourself and picking whether or not you be serious or be goofy within our forums. We have plenty of areas for just goofing around as well as plenty of areas for discussing serious topics. We also acknowledge that a topic can morph into another topic so you don't see a lot of locking, splitting, moving and warning in topic because all it does is demonstrate that we care more about the site than the members.
Also, our Staff does not comprise of my drinking buddies as you see at many other sites. Becoming Staff at Lifesupporters.com is an earned position and is only available to members who've shown a knack for making new members feel welcome as well as a genuine interest in helping out. Our Staff discusses questionable content and acts as a committee when Policing the forums. I like Staffing by Committee because it means that no one member (including myself) has total autonomy here given the fact there are usually two sides to every story (unless your an obvious spambot or self promoter only here to peddle your wares that is). You should notice quite quickly that Staff are in virtually every topic and the reason for that is simple, we're not here to watch what your doing, we're here because we care just like you do.
As much as I Love Lifesupporters.com I have to admit it is only software; the soul comes from good people like yourself and all your peers in forum. You people are the reason we are here and we'll always be here for you. The only thing we ask is that everyone try and keep their input as clean as possible (not necessarily Church clean) as we are a "Family Friendly Website" and are certified with
I.R.C.A. and
Safesurf as "Web Everyone".
I'm not sure if this is the answer you were looking for so my apologies. I have a tendency to start off with one idea and then have it split off into many different directions.