WSF Blog

The bulk of the server move is now completed. This is our second such move in the last nine months and demonstrates just how quickly the site is expanding. We are working with our service providers and data centre so that in future we can put in “in place” upgrades that will reduce the impact of the site going down on our users.

As you all know the WSF Forum was given an upgrade a couple of weeks ago, more can be read on that here.

The main new feature regarding the magazine side of WSF is the ability for WSF Community members to now offer their own articles and marks. This is designed to promote the community spirit of the site further, for you to contribute and be more involved in how the site evolves.

If you want to get those creative juices going with an article or fancy submitting a mark then you can do that either via the WSF Where to Fish Guides, or by clicking here. It might be worth having a look through our other mark guides to get a feel for what how the marks should be formatted.

There are a few other plans in the offing, we’ll announce those as and when they are ready for release!

Happy Surfing!

Finally, the new forum board software is in place! Whilst the new software is going to take some time to bed down, tweak and get used to, it offers many advantages over our old versions, making WSF more fun and interactive for our users. More on that later...

Over the next few weeks you will notice various changes to the WSF Site. One of the first things you will notice on the Forum pages is a new “Drop Down” navigation bar. This gives users easy access to all of the site features including all of our articles, blogs, marks, tips and features.

As part of an overall upgrade of the entire site we have totally replaced our content management systems that look after all of the articles and blogs. The new software is now in place and we are working extensively on a new, easier to use, space efficient WSF. The homepage will become less cluttered and easier to navigate, placing an emphasis on new articles and features.

We are going to re-look at our entire article archive and replace and modify features to be more modern. With widespread broadband use and our extensive and ever expanding digital image library – we feel we can do our articles more justice visually than we have before. Watch out for these new features soon.

Anyway...to the Forum!
Firstly, our forums have had some re-organisation. The General forum is now back – use it for its intended purpose and don’t abuse it please! The Announcements and Help Forum has become Help and Suggestions. The European forum has now come out of “The International Angler” and is now a standalone forum on its own.

The WSF Forum has plenty of new tweaks, tools and widgets for use by our members. The new forum software is designed to increase user interaction and to promote friendship and “social networking”. Below is a list of tweaks and additions to the new WSF Forum.

Tags! Each thread has a more relevant and robust tagging system. Threads can now be tagged with phrases and keywords which enable subjects to be found quicker.

Thread Prefixes: Over the next few weeks we will be adding thread prefixes to all of the “New Thread” pages. This will enable you to categorise you threads with words that describe what the thread is about. For example if you thread is a question, there will be an option of labelling your thread thus. We are working on “prefix” labels at the moment. If anybody has any suggestions, let us know!

Friendships: You can now form friendships with other web site users and have them shown on your profile page as “confirmed friends”. If you have ever used Facebook or Bebo, you’ll have seen this system in action before.

Public Messaging: Whilst you have always been able to Private Message each other, you can now Public Message too! This system enables you to posts public messages on each other’s profile pages, and opens the door for multi user conversations between friends.

User Picture Galleries: Whilst we have had a standalone gallery for a while, WSF now incorporates a picture gallery for each user. This will mean the eventual discontinuation of the old gallery in preference to “User Albums”. The Pictures and Albums setting can now be found in your User CP under the title Networking: Pictures and Albums. Picture Albums can be set to public or private and all public albums can be visited by clicking the “All Albums” link on the forum NavBar. Brand new images to the gallery are also displayed at the bottom of the Forum Homepage.

Social Groups: Members can now create social groups of likeminded individuals. This is designed to increase the social cohesion between various groups that are formed on WSF especially for clubs and anglers who regularly fish together. Social groups can be created for any topic you wish provided it’s all legal and above board. Each group also has its own public messaging system and the ability to add images to the group from members’ own image galleries.

All New Profile Page: The profile pages for members have been re-designed in order to integrate a better social networking aspect to the forum. The page presents information in a cleaner and more logical fashion and divides the information up into manageable chunks. The interface is now tabbed which will help members navigate around each other’s profile pages better. The new page will show who your friends are, your photo album, any useful or profile information, your group memberships and various other widgets to help you get the best from the forum.

Users can customise this page to their own style including changing fonts, colours, borders and background images.

Image Attachments: All image attachments will now show in a Light Box instead of the users being re-directed to another page. This is a very cool feature for catch reports and we are now considering opening up the full storage potential of the server to make sure you can upload images of a reasonable quality and size. We acknowledge the present rules are a bit limiting!

Avatars: Avatar sizings have now been increased to 150px X 150px. You will need to upload a new Avatar to this size spec if you wish to take advantage of the new Avatar size.

Important: For you to get the best out of these new features we would recommend that you update your e-mail addresses to your most current e-mail address. All of your friend notifications and social group invitations will be sent via e-mail. You can do that here.

Above are the main new features of the software. There are plenty of other changes too numerous to mention here but you will no doubt notice them as you make your way around the new software changes.

All settings for the above items can be found by going into your User Cp.

Alan Wright a sea angler and fellow member of the World Sea Fishing web site, from Weston-Super- Mare was recently lost to the sea at Birnbeck near his home. After some discussions between the WSF Moderating team it was agreed that we should help to raise some money to help Alan’s family through this tragic and uncertain time.

This site never fails to amaze me for all the ups and the downs it creates the recent AKWBERTO appeal shows what an excellent community the WSF site has with many likeminded anglers all over the country willing to help out others in times of need.

I wanted to just write a little something to thank all of the members who have contributed and donated money or prize items to the appeal. All of the money, donations and auctions created a combined pool total of just under £6,850.

I would like to pay special thanks to Henry Gilbey, Dave Lewis and Shane Pullen of Sea Angler Magazine as well as Davy Holt, Hamish Clarke, The Codfather of Sole, Ticketty Boo, Terry Hill, Sea Donkey, Poppajoe and Lilbrit who have offered their own personal time in order to raise money for the appeal.

I would also like to thank all of those who have put time into organising matches and meets all around the country in order to raise money for Alans family, especially to the organisers and attendees of the England vs Wales Rematch Event, The Shoreham Angling Squad, The organisers and attendees of the Eastney Beach Meet, all of those who took part in the South East Meet run by Jassyfa. I would also like to thank Patester for organising the Brean Meet and to Reel Fun of Portishead who donated prizes to the raffle.

A special mention to forum member MrFishJersey who ran a collection in his Jersey tackle shop.

Many thanks to Ian Houlton for finding prizes and funds from a variety of sources for the appeal.

Finally the most special mention of all, has to go to Terry Hill (Cascars) for organising the appeal and helping to co-ordinate the money and eventually hand it over on the 20th of March.

World Sea Fishing would like to thank the following members, meets and clubs for donations to the appeal:

Mr Fish Jersey, BobJameson, Nicknobananas and Customers
Mr S Bantock
Mr and Mrs Winterburn
D Simpson
England vs Wales Rematch Event (Roamer)
Shoreham Angling Squad
The Eastney Beach Event
Mr and Mrs Sprigg
Mr John Crane
Mr and Mrs Oswick
The South East Meet (Issy)
Mr Kennedy Cooke
Mr R Burgess
Mr Keith Andrews
Predator Charters Ltd
Mr and Mrs Swansborough
R N Sykes
David Nelson
Norman Southam
Susan Wilkinson
Jeremy Clarke
Stephen Isgar
Kim Hine
TML Trading
Richard Cowling
Thomas Usher
Jeremy P Green
Liam Agnew
Nick Snow
Nicholas Brancher
Simon James
Jan Rigden
Philip Ashman
Rudi Grest
Vicky Griffiths
Kevin Hamilton
Moira Brown
Victor Lilygreen
Ian Phillips
Gary Richardson
James Worrall
Keith Munn
Brian Sandison
Daniel Phillips
Ade Kell
Keith Young
David Wright
Paul Sutton
David Beales / Weightmaker
Shonet McCormick
Hugh A Potter
Phil Meloy
Garry Humphreys
Solo Plant Ltd

World Sea Fishing would like to thank the following members and individuals who donated prizes to the appeal auction:

Henry Gilbey
Dave Lewis
Davy Holt
Hamish the Predator
Sandeel King
Shane Pullen
Stan Massey
The codfather of sole
Patester
Ticketty Boo
Cascars (Terry Hill)
Millser (Ian Mill)
Sea Donkey
Kevinhearn
Jas1972
Big_Haddie
Jas1972
Fishyrob
Poppajoe
Udderman
Bassface
Lilbrit
Sharpshooter
Wilba
gazthelad
basspopper666

World Sea Fishing would like to thank and congratulate the members who won the appeal auction items:

Stampy
NickNoBananas
Mjiamnot
Kenny the Joiner
marknj
Nick Snow
mickj
originalphish
Pelamid
NJJ
GroomyD
Ron
Hubba Bubba
Jas1972
NickNoBananas
David Caulfield
Ryehorse
Skippy
Dontforgetme
Patester
zziplexmad
vespaman
cascars
Andy C
ms1000
wilkybarkid
NigelB
sshorepunk
football-to-fish
Tackletart
Tonycccc
Harrysailor
Hubba Bubba
Pedro the fisherman
jeff1960
wilba
marknj