Hurrah!

[El Gordo]

Hi All

As you’ll know, I’ve been in two minds about what to do with the website, and have taken it down while trying to decide the best way forward. In a nutshell, I don’t want to lose what we’ve created together, but equally, I found the old format stale and illogical.

Here’s what I’ve decided to do.

I created a blog account with TypePad. It’s a “Pro” account (yes, I even had to shell out $150 for it, but decided that it’s worth it). With the Pro, I am able to create, or at least invite people to become, Guest Authors. This means we all have the same ability to post, edit, and do all sorts of other clever stuff. We can choose to read just one guest author at a time (as with the old forum) in one lump, or we can choose to read everything chronologically, regardless of who’s posted what.

One of the best advantages is that we can choose to create a new post under our own name, or simply add a Comment to someone else’s. I like this. It’s a way of giving different weight to different types of post, unlike on the RC forum where a stonking epic race report from Sweder had the same status as chat about football or beer. [We all know that the latter were far more important….;-) ]

I’ve posted a couple of things to help set the scene.

At the moment, I’m in the throes of moving all my other websites to a new server, so just for the time being, the URL of the new site is:

http://runningcommentary.typepad.com/run...ommentary/

Within a few days max, the URL should be simply http://www.runningcommentary.net.

My plan is to invite the people who had training forums on the old site to join up as Guest Authors. You will get an email teling you what to do. Please do not feel obliged to join up. I appreciate that people move on, and this is certainly true with runners, who often are focused on just one big event, after which the ir running head disintegrates, and becomes something else for a while. Some of us of course work hard at letting ourselves go while retaining embarrassing athletic ambitions. I would point the finger, but unfortunately this PC monitor has developed a strange mirror-like fault all of a sudden…

If anyone receiving this mail wants to be a guest author but hasn’t been invited, just mail me, and I’ll send you an invite.

Important: Guest Author accounts are free of charge. In effect, I have already paid for them. When/if you sign up, press the “Free Account” button from the link you’ll be emailed. However, the next screen implies that you have to choose between various accounts, none of which are free. PLEASE IGNORE THIS. If you find yourself giving bank details, you’ve done something wrong.

Anyway, I’ll not say much more at this stage other than that this really is the answer to a problem I’ve been wrestling with for a while. There are all sorts of questions we need to resolve (principally what to do with the existing material), and we need to decide what we want on the new site. It’s pretty limitless. But let’s discuss it over there rather than by email.