SMAX Owners Club Top Stories

Yes it's the 1st of December & I now permit everyone to use the C-word.

Use of the C-word will be acceptable until 23:59:59 on the 26th of December. After that time the ban will be restored and permission is granted to use the HNY greeting until 23:59:59 on the 6th of January 2012.

No need for each of you to email me & thank me for this incredible gesture of goodwill, I take it that you will all appreciate the supreme effort it's taken me to grant this freedom.

So go on, knock your socks off & use the C-word with confidence that you won't face a public stoning, unlike me after inadvertently using the C-word without appropriate punctuation on Facebook yesterday. Still feeling rather bruised, or was that the dodgy Asda prawn sandwich I ate at lunchtime?

Paul

Thanks to JasonMarie I've been reminded that this month is SMAXOC's 5th birthday. Cake & fizzy pop all round

It's also timely to let you know that myself & Zozzer have been discussing "what next" in terms of the website.

We've reached a position where reliability is close to 100% thanks to Zozzer & Montgomery Scott's work behind the scene down in the basement of SMAXOC HQ. Thanks needs to go out to these two and anyone else involved at Two:Design.

Software is constantly evolving and I'm conscious that some other owner's club sites have the lead on us in terms of user friendliness. I've recently been dabbling on the BriSkoda site and have to say that I'm impressed with the online presentation on my laptop/Mac. However it's when you access that particular site via an iPhone that it stands out from the crowd. The same has to be said of the Caravan Talk website.

So my challenge is this. Can you as members identify for us a list of websites/forums/owner's clubs that you think are worthy of closer inspection? As a prolific user of the said iPhone I am keen that we become more 'smartphone friendly' in the near future. But this also applied to accessing the site via a range of screen sizes & operating systems. Here at SMAXOC HQ I access the site by iPhone [iOS 4], MacMini [OS X 10.5.8], HP laptop [Windows 7 Home Premium], Acer netbook [Windows 7 Starter edition] and an old Dell laptop [Ubuntu - Linux]. It just depends on which device is available & not being used by the family.

My one ongoing question is whether we can 'easily' and 'simply' swap to another software package. As we now have just over 3 years worth of data stored on the server we can't afford to lose that amassed knowledge and many other software packages would not allow us to port across that important data. However that question is one that I have laid at Zozzer's feet and he, with Mr Scott, will investigate further and advise accordingly. When this idea was last looked at the result was an emphatic "computer says no". But things change, new software is written & who knows we might break out of the clutches of vBulletin one day.

Please reply to this post & we can then look at who is doing what & how.

Thanks,

Paul.

It seems that we've fallen foul of Google's Names Policy on Google+

Trying to sort it out but it will take a few days apparently.

Paul.