19th Sept 2009 - New mod and some back office changes

[Jools]

Firstly, Marc van Arc has volunteered to help out with moderation of the forum. Marc's been doing a lot of work around the cat-elog primarily working keeping the species synonyms data up-to-date. We're delighted to add Marc to the mod team.

Shane Linder's now moderating the new "Travellers note book" forum the new home for those collecting type posts - I think it will become a heavily subscribed forum and hopefully also generate some great new article content.

I've been working on the bit of the site most people don't see - the back office administration functions have been upgraded from a rag tag collection of poorly written, buggy scripts held together by the online equivalent of duck tape and good luck to new pages that fully integrate with the forum software's security, database and templating features.

This means for the first time moderators can add images and some other data to the site as well as the already existing ability to edit cat-elog data. The think behind spending so much time on something that doesn't directly affect what you guys see on the site is that it will hopefully free up some of my time from adding images and so on to creating new features mostly in the "my cats" and "my aquaria" areas.

Meantime however I've got a bunch of articles, bug fixes and other things to attend to!

Jools

[Martin S]

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying how much we all appreciate how much time and effort you, and the other mods, put into keeping the site running. I for one wish there was more I could do to help!
Martin

[chemma]

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank Jools and all the wonderful people at Planetcatfish - you guys are such a wealth of information!

[racoll]

I'm sure I'm not alone in saying how much we all appreciate how much time and effort you, and the other mods, put into keeping the site running

Indeed.

[Jools]

I for one wish there was more I could do to help!

Well, a CotM wouldn't go amiss - write ups on species not already featured are most welcome. Aside from that, I'll drop you an email to resurrect the discussion around anything technical you might wish to join in on.

Jools

[Richard B]

Ok then everyone, a round of applause please in appreciation of all Mod's & Admin

[TwoTankAmin]

I think this site is one of the most frequently metioned on other aquarium sites as the place to come for the best info on catfish available. So many folks who are not members use this place as a reference and most of them never say thankyou. So on behalf of all those "ungrateful" visitiors I would like to thank the staff here for all the wonderful work they do.

Oh yes- thanks from me too.

[Jools]

Thank you each and one for the kind comments. However, it wasn't my intention to fill up this post with such replies - however I must admit the knowledge we're on the right track does help keep us all going.

I would be happier still if, once we get the new features to which I alluded, up and running, that people havee a go at using them and comment openly on their utility and improvement.

But now it's over to me to get cracking.

Jools