Nigel, it was probably me who mentioned social media connectivity but not with relation to the forum. The use of frames will cause some problems with social media across the site not specifically on the forum. It would be a very good idea to get rid of them as sharing of news stories would be made a lot easier. If I recall correctly you were still using Microsoft Front Page an even more outdated technology than frames so it is a bit harsh of you to be so critical.
In fact the integration of the forum and social media is relatively good with new posts going to an RSS feed and Twitter. There has also seems to have been a recent upgrade of the mail notifications to a cloud based system. The use of a very basic user interface is quite a sensible approach in terms of platform compatibility and maintenance burden. The popularity of the forum doesn't suggest that the software is a major problem, in fact the simplicity of it may have boosted usage. The much more sophisticated directory has much lower usage and some compatibility issues.
As someone who has had responsibility for corporate web sites I can tell you that they are an exercise in plate spinning i.e. they need constant attention just to keep them going. This site seems to have about seven front end applications all which are proprietary software and probably an equivalent number of back end ones. Anyone who does have some relevant experience will recognise that it is quite an achievement for a small company to keep them up and running let alone implement the occasional enhancement The people who run it deserve a lot of credit for managing to do this. |