To give some background to the move...

UKD was previously running on a hacked together bit of software which while it looked okay from the outside was becoming more and more difficult to keep going. Earlier this year I lost the hosting for its server and had to make a rapid move to a new machine, and then a forthcoming upgrade of the new machine was about to mean I would have to do some serious work to keep it going.

Along with that, there have been regular complaints from people wanting a more forum-style interface where they can more easily see new messages in threads and people wanting to keep a longer archive, not just the previous two weeks. As 'The Other Place' (www.anoraknation.com) had been running successfully on the Jiglu platform for some time I decided to finally make a move to that as it would be less hassle.

I appreciate it's a change after all these years, but everything the old system did the new one does too. If you're reading messages one at a time I know it's now more difficult to find where you left off and we'll be doing something about that very soon. There have been improvements to the posting interface based on comments from people on UKD and any feedback that can make the system better and simpler to understand is really welcome.

Louise's problems we've tried hard to reproduce but just can't get it to do what is happening for her. It's not something anyone else has reported either on the jiglu.com system or at our paying customers though I know that doesn't help in the frustration. We do at least allow you to get messages in or out via e-mail or even an API so if don't like the site and want to do something different you can.

The biggest problem is that UK-Dance was really about a moment in time and has been slowly shrinking since then as people have grown older and moved on. We have only 95 members now, compared to well over a thousand at its peak. I thought it was worth a shot to see if new software with features that could encourage additional creativity such as being able to embed videos or build a wiki might do something to stem that tide. I try and be open to ideas, though I'm sometimes a bit pushed for the amount of time I can spend on UKD, and I'd more than welcome suggestions for how to bring more life back to the place.