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Hawker
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Posts
24,885 -
Joined
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Days Won
17
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Profiles
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Posts posted by Hawker
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No trouble - thanks for letting me know.
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I think that should be fixed now - can you do the same; clear the cache and try again for me, please?
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I've reissued the certificate; looks ok to me now - can you clear your cache and test for me?
It was secure, so don't worry - the certificate was there and active, but evidently not pulling down properly.
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Thanks both - I rebooted it as soon as Trac pinged me.
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I am thrilled to announce that we now hold a summary for every single episode of Neighbours - all the way from Episode 0001 in 1985 to the present day.
Our regular summarisers will, of course, be completing 2022 in the coming weeks - and therefore, the archive as a whole. However, most of you will be aware that we've long had some gaps in the mid 90s.
Several of us have had a major push over the past 12 months, with accelerated efforts over the past 18 weeks, to ensure that these gaps were filled by the time the show finished.
I am very pleased to say that the final missing episode summary was uploaded today.
I have to admit, I sit here today, completely astonished that I am even writing this message.
This has been a long running project for the site - taking over 2 decades, and with hundreds of different participants over that time. I am deliberately not namechecking people below - because the key element to me about the archive is that it's a production of the entire community, showing what we can achieve when we all work together.
I've said over and over, it's not 'my' site; it's our site. It's the site that so many have had a hand in, whether it's been writing one or two episode summaries, or one or two thousand episode summaries (and I am not exaggerating with those numbers!) - whether someone capped an episode as a one-off back in 2003 or whether someone has capped a thousand episodes as a regular contributor for years.
It has been a cumulative effort from us all, and demonstrates what a community can do together.
It took several years for the archive to evolve. Our oldest 'original' summaries are from 1999 - and when the forum was finding its feet in 00/01, our Australian members would write up spoilers from the daily episodes, which our UK members devoured as we were a few months behind. Over time, these grew into more complex summaries - storyline by storyline.
There were also old episodes airing in the UK and in Australia at the time, and from time to time, members would return the favour by summarising historical episodes - episodes that we assumed would never see the light of day again.
Most of these early summaries are lost to time, just posted on the forum for people to read - but eventually, they transformed into the scene-by-scene breakdown that's more familiar, and we started to archive them separately from the forum. There were a couple of non-Neighbours websites that I frequented which also added screencaps, and I was very excited at the prospect of emulating this.
Both of these sites, alas, are long lost to time - which makes it all the more incredible to me that we have kept the archive going with such continued enthusiasm for so long.
The real turning point came in the early 00s, when we settled into a rhythm of the current episodes being summarised and the UKGold episodes being summarised simultaneously. I think there was something particularly exciting about seeing so many episodes being uploaded per week, and so many members put their hands in the air and offered to write a summary or two or ten themselves.
This collective effort meant that, a couple of years later, the 80s were worked through, followed by the majority of the 90s - and just as importantly, all whilst the back catalogue was being filled, our regular summarisers kept writing up the new episodes as they aired.
As this project has demonstrated to us all, two decades goes by very quickly, and it would've been easy to have lost an occasional episode along the way - but the determination and commitment shown by all involved has been incredible.
I know that a good number of those early summarisers are still involved in the site - and I think we're all quietly devastated that there aren't really any episodes left to write up, as it's something that's been a constant in our lives for so many years.
But most importantly, we all worked together as a team and we've created something wonderful - something that was beyond all of our wildest dreams when this first started. I know, secretly, we hoped it would be possible one day - but to actually achieve it feels surreal.
And although I said I wasn't going to namecheck(!), I really do have to mention @Sayaka- who has written all of the code behind the scenes, and who listens to, and attempts to implement, every off-the-wall idea that I come up with. Also, to @Grahamfor (amongst many other things) keeping the front page updated - and then to everyone else, from those with literally 1000s of summaries to their names (you know who you are, my friends) to those with just 1.
You have all been part of this - and I am so incredibly grateful for all of your efforts.
Of course, a project like this can always go a little bit further - so we'll be posting soon about how you can help us to add a little polish to the archive.
I am so proud of us as a community; I think this project really embodies the spirit of the show, and is a great fan legacy to leave as the show draws to a close.
From the bottom of my heart, I really do thank everyone who has been involved. I hope you all continue to find it a useful resource over the years to come.
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It'll be ongoing for several days yet.
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Great effort, all - thank you so much for completing another year.
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All fixed now; apologies.
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Fixed now; should be better going forward.
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No, it's a long standing issue - I've got a fix for it, but it needs to run overnight.
Sorry for the outage.
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Yes - that's it!
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Oh yeah, sorry - I had to restrict searches to content from the last 365 days, because the search table was blowing out the database size to epic proportions.
I'd completely forgotten I'd done it until I read your post here.
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3 hours ago, Skylover said:
That's excellent. I also really like the 'Our Picks' section which I noticed last night.
Ah yes, I was having a play with it the other night - a bit trickier to set up than it first appears!
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Huge kudos to @benjy for our new logo. It looks amazing!
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29 minutes ago, Starmaker73 said:
Aww well done on all the changes/updates. The Board looks great. I do love my little achievement status thingie, and am well chuffed with all my badges. I know I don't post on here that often, but that's kinda because I'm a bit intimidated by the 'grand masters' (my issue, not theirs, as everyone is just lovely) and always feel like my opinion isn't as valid. But I am going to make an effort to post more so that I can get up to mentor status. LOL! I might even commit to the cause fully, and get myself a wee avatar.
Thank you!
The badges are cool, aren't they? I think we could have some fun coming up with new ones - and you've got one of the rare ones too!
I know how it feels to feel intimidated; I tend to lurk elsewhere on the internet, so I really feel you - but all opinions are very welcome, and you are super welcome to post. I look forward to seeing your progress to Mentor!
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12 minutes ago, benjy said:
I’m a graphic designer - happy to look at some designs if that’s of interest!
If it's something you'd like to do for the site, I'd be very grateful! Graphics have never been my forte; everything looks like I've opened MS Paint.
(Because I have.)
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1 hour ago, Skylover said:
Thanks!
No trip to Barbados??
Not without introducing a levy to use the site.
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Fixed now, I think.
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...and I have made some more changes, and now I'm running a few more rebuilds - so apologies if the activity page doesn't populate and/or it feels a little slow.
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1 hour ago, Benji said:
I like the idea of merging the Off Topic subsections, as some of them do seem a little unloved these days. It might also help flag up new threads in areas one might miss when separated as they are. I wonder if it could work having a ‘General Chat’ and ‘Entertainment’ subsections as those seem to have the most traffic?
With regards to ‘polls’: was that originally created so NChat wasn’t overrun with polls? If merging them together again created more participation with polls then it could be a good idea.
I’ve seen the ‘achievements/rankings’ feature on other boards, and it’s nice to see that including this hasn’t reset everything like it did on another board. I see I’m in the top 1% which is cool, but I wonder what the next stage is for us Grand Masters? I also wonder if this is what all those billionaires and trillionaires ponder being part of the 1% club.
Cheers Benji - the polls suggestion was just an idea of what sort of things I am open to, but I do wonder if there's a better way to drive traffic towards the polls at a certain point (when there's a poll to answer) and/or if allowing polls on threads in Neighbours Chat is enough to encourage use of them when appropriate. I will keep thinking.
And ha, yeah - we've been around for so long, hitting the default levels is pretty trivial for most of us regulars who like a chat! I will have to sit down with a pen and paper at some point and expand them further.
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12 minutes ago, daydreambeliever said:
I think a "General" and an "Entertainment" section in OT might work well as they do seem to be where the action is these days.
I mostly want to be able to go
about Days Of Our Lives still.
Don't worry; I won't be taking anything away - just merging areas, so you're still more than welcome to wax lyrical about Days.
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29 minutes ago, JimDeeFan said:
Testing. Does this message come through?
It did, mate - are you still seeing the message when you're posting?
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I've completed the major part of the maintenance now.
You'll see some new features over the coming weeks, and I'm currently running a few rebuilds in the background - so you might see changes to reputation and ranks over the next few days.
As always, drop any questions, comments, concerns, problems etc here and I'll take a look when I get a moment.
And I'm very interested in your thoughts and ideas for what you might want to see in the future, so feel free to shout up if you think you'd like to see something we don't currently offer, or if you think you've got an idea for how we can implement something differently.
Thanks for your patience whilst I took us offline; much appreciated.
Edit: I realise the reaction button isn't visible in the theme without rolling over the area first. I'll fix it tomorrow - think I need to do some template digging!
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Hi,
Just a quick post to let you know that at some point (I have not decided when just yet!) I'll be taking us offline for a little bit of maintenance.
In preparation, I've been doing a tidy up of the members database - namely, pruning members who have no activity and haven't logged in for several years. Hopefully, I won't have caught anyone who is using their account - but if you've been lurking and only logging in on occasion, your account may have been picked up as dormant and removed.
Apologies if this is the case - you are, of course, more than welcome to re-join!
I am also having a big think about reordering some of the forums, particularly in the Off Topic areas. This is primarily because traffic is a little lower these days, and I'm not sure that it's particularly helpful to have several subforums instead of one General Chat forum, perhaps with threads which are tagged by topic (so instead of a sport subforum, the threads which are sport related have a sport tag etc).
I am still pondering this change - so if you have any thoughts on this, please reply and let me know; I'm keen to read what your feelings are.
Additionally, if you have any suggestions about the way the forums are structured, now is a great time to speak. So, for example, perhaps you feel we should merge polls back in with Neighbours Chat - anything like that, please speak up and let me know and I'll have a think.
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Upgrade complete - 23/03
in Forum News
Posted
Hi all,
The forum software has been upgraded today.
If you run into any problems, please can you let me know by replying to this topic?
Cheers!