Let’s welcome 2021 with optimism that we will be able to get back to our normal lives.
In the meantime the message from the WOTA management team is to please follow government advice. I’d rather we all were seen to be acting sensibly rather than having to lock functionality on the website, but I will be reviewing logging when the latest set of restrictions have been lifted, and will be removing contacts where they have been logged when the programme is suspended. Clearly I would rather not have any work to do, so please don’t make any for me!
As an activator myself it pains me to have to do this, but more than ever regardless of our ability to interpret the rules the most important message really is to provide no scenario where mountain rescue may be required. It is incredibly easy, at this time of the year, to slip and twist an ankle for example which can be completely immobilizing on a fell. Don’t be that person!
What we should all be doing is reflecting, during this time of abstinence, on the wonderful resource that we have here in the Lake District, and a democratic government under which we have the freedom to enjoy the resource when more pressing matters do not arise.
Website News
In other news now that we have had discourse available for over a year it is time to fully embrace our much more feature rich modern alternative. The original software has served us admirably for many many years but hopefully everyone now can see the benefits brought by discourse as an alternative. The software is actively maintained and should not be subject to the ‘bit rot’ that affects the stable but aging software on which the WOTA site was founded. It is quite a task making changes to the existing site and I fear at some point, based on provided hosting support and the ancient version of PHP required for the WOTA site, that we will have no alternative but to migrate to a more modern platform. I do not relish that day!
Now that I have implemented a front page summary of posts we have no reason not to embrace the media rich alternative. I have disabled the latest posts feature of the original forum software shown on the home pages to encourage you to move, however the link is still available at the bottom of the menu and it will remain as a read-only resource. I would very much like to migrate posts over to discourse, but have still to find a solution.
If you have not yet signed up for discourse head over to The Discourse Main Page and click on the Sign up button top right.
I wish you all a very healthy and happy 2021.
Mark M0NOM