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The Netweather community has been a pretty lively and busy place over the last few days as snow has been rattling across the country. Over the space of 48 hours during the Sunday and Monday (1st and 2nd Feb), over 13,400 posts were made which if you average it out right across the period means there were nearly 5 posts a minute, every single minute! Those who were online during Sunday morning will have seen we took steps to make sure the servers didn't slow down or crash by upgrading them, we were glad we did as that evening we set a new record for the amount of users online with 1233 people all the forum at once, which hammered the previous record of around 670 which was set just a couple of weeks beforehand. Over the last few days we have also welcomed more than 140 new members, so welcome to you all - it's great to have you onboard! I need to say a big thank you to our team members who have done a sterling job in keeping things well organised and flowing along nicely during this extremely busy time, thanks too to all the members who have contributed to the great atmosphere on here! Paul

Following the successful launch of the [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?autocom=blog&blogid=189&showentry=3483"]community groups[/url] with a number of new groups already up and running, a lot of people have been asking how best to let the other members know about their new groups, so I thought I'd share some ideas. Firstly, we've made a change to the profile system, so if you visit [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?act=UserCP&CODE=01"]my controls[/url] then select edit profile information, you will see an option at the bottom to enter your community group into it. This will then show up on your profile and also alongside all of your posts. Another great way of communicating with other users on the forum is to place a link into your signature to the group(s) you belong to, perhaps with a little bit of information to let people know what the group is all about. We will also be creating some button style images for group users to make use of in their signatures, and of course there is nothing to stop any group members from creating their own group logos etc either. You also have the blogging facility available to use, it is now setup so that multiple editors can add entries to one blog, so a community group blog can be setup. You can do this by visiting [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?act=UserCP&CODE=01"]my controls[/url] and following the blog setup instructions. We will also do our best to help you promote your community group, whenever a new group is started we'll announce it on the forum, and we will also be regularly featuring groups within the site and forum newsletters which are sent out. Hopefully that will be enough for you to get your teeth into, of course it doesn't just have to be forum members you can promote your groups to, if you have friends with similar interests, or if you use facebook or other social networks, why not let them know about your community group too? Don't forget - if you would like to set a group up, please drop any one of the team a pm. Paul

As you may have seen in [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?showtopic=49142"]this announcement[/url], there have been some changes made to the netweather forum, including the addition of new community forums and groups. We're pretty excited about the possibilities and opportunities that this brings for the community, and already a few groups have been started, which you can take a look at [url="http://www.netweather.tv/forum/index.php?showforum=118"]here[/url] All groups are free and open for anyone with an interest in the subject to join and take part in, so you can get together with other like minded members of the community to discuss topics, create projects, arrange events or just socialise. The aim isn't to dilute the ongoing areas of the forum, so if for instance someone wanted to start a model watchers group, members of that group would still be encouraged to post into the main model discussion thread on the forums, then within the group they could perhaps discuss other aspects of the models, learn more about how they work, talk about interpreting the output and so on. The idea is that when a group is started, the group leader(s) will look after that group, will be able to setup topics, moderate as required (with the team's support) and look to bring people into their group and take the group forward in the direction they want - it's a real opportunity to make a part of netweather their own. On top of this, the blogging system has been changed to allow multiple editors of a blog, so a group could set up their own blog with several editors and use that as an extension to the forum areas. The blogs will also soon become much more customisable with a variety of skin and header options and even the option to design your own look and feel to them. (More on all of this will be posted in a 'how to' thread on the forum shortly). If you would like to start a group for social purposes, research, to organise an event, to get some like minded individuals together to discuss a particular subject or whatever else, please feel free to [url="http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=contact;sess="]contact us[/url] and we'll get it set up for you. Paul