NWAN's 10th ANNIVERSARY, 8th MARCH 2019. HAPPY BIRTHDAY NWAN
Mar 7, 2019 23:49:22 GMT 1
Beemer, woody66, and 13 more like this
Post by viscount on Mar 7, 2019 23:49:22 GMT 1
NWAN FORUM’s 10th ANNIVERSARY – 8th MARCH 2019
HAPPY BIRTHDAY NWAN
Brian Jones
A CELEBRATION OF TEN YEARS OF NWAN FORUM WITH HOST PROBOARDS
In its current guise, with Proboards.com as host, the nwan forum became open to members and the first posts appeared on 8th March 2009. The initial posts being made by Dave Graham as the then site administrator, ‘Beemer’ and ‘TonySpeke’. Since then some 144,185 posts have been posted on some 29,280 threads. In that time some 1,970 people have registered as site members, but we know a far greater number look-in fairly regularly as guests, or find us when redirected from other sites as a hyper-link or via a search-engine while ‘Googling’ a topic.
An opportunity then for a little reflection and a big ‘pat on the back’ for all those who have contributed in a big or small way to the undoubted success and current popularity of this forum, which while being proudly Liverpool, Manchester, Chester and Isle of Man centred, also welcomes aviation related contributions worldwide too.
HISTORY – HOW WE GOT TO WHERE WE ARE NOW.
The story behind the current incarnation of the nwan forum goes back to the days of rapid adoption of home PCs and the spread of the internet at the end of the last Century and into the very early 2000s. By that time the Air Britain Merseyside Branch had parted from Air Britain and taking its name from their monthly printed magazine had become the ‘North West Aviation News Group’. In early 2000 it began to encourage those members who had PC access to consult the Group’s website on zoom.com, soon after this was transferred to nbci.com and later tripod.co.uk before Lycos became host around February 2002 until June 2003. From July 2003 the website acquired its own domain name as nwan.co.uk, with a major new look and screen presentation April 2005. In June 2006 the Group’s paper magazine ceased production, the recording of Liverpool Airport movements passing to the website. When nwan’s website provider failed (circa 2008?), as webmaster Dave Graham had most of the pages saved, he restored the content with a new provider retaining the domain nwan.co.uk name until he unilaterally ‘pulled the plug’ on the contents in July 2014, regrettably wiping out the 15 years of his contribution to the recording of Liverpool Airport’s history overnight. However that was his website, what is more important here is his role in developing the ‘North West Air News’ member’s forum.
Parallel to the NWAN web-site with its mix of reports of past events, photographs of Speke in the 60’s and 70’s, monthly Visiting Aircraft Movements and Annual Airport Activity Reviews, there was a member’s forum being flexible and much better to meet member’s day-to-day needs to exchange and obtain the latest information on movements, routes, airlines and air shows. The first mention of a member’s forum I can trace back to June 2002 as an extension of the nwan group website while hosted by Tripod.co.uk. This soon changed to hosts Amazing Forums.com in October 2002 until February 2003. In March 2003 the Forum/Bulletin Board host changed to xsorbit.com. The partnership of Website nwan co.uk and a Forum with hosts xsorbit4.com lasted for around six years, ended overnight as the forum host was shut down in the USA over irregularities sometime late early 2009. As Dave Graham was still re-building his nwan.co.uk site he was in no hurry to locate a new home for the Bulletin Board/forum.
It was member Paul Derbyshire who ran DerboSoft in the UK that came to the Liverpool Enthusiast’s rescue with the offer to re-establish the forum with hosts Proboards.com in early March 2009. With Dave Graham back on-board as the Administrator, the first couple of members joined on 5th March however it was on 8th March 2009 that the membership not only jumped to 30, but also the first posts were entered onto the forum’s Liverpool Airport Movements thread. From there the forum has not looked back, although there was an uncertain period in July 2014 when Dave Graham walked away from the Administrator role; Brian Jones and Brian Thompson stepped up to take over the responsibility for running the forum despite no prior experience. The rest as they say is history as we celebrate a full decade of reporting on the NWAN Forum hosted by Proboards. In the past few years the forum has adopted a wider role becoming the new platform for the monthly Liverpool Airport Visiting Aircraft Movements and the Liverpool Activity Annual Reports along with developing the Nostalgia section. Pleasingly, today aviation activity at Manchester, Isle of Man and Chester is now also covered in daily detail.
In the past week, daily activity sees around 55-80 persons ‘on-line’ at any one time during an afternoon and into the early evening, and in any 24 hour period around 1350-1450 visits to the site by members and guests. These numbers clearly increase on busy days when there is special aviation activity anticipated.
MOST POPULAR THREADS AND POSTS
In the past 10 years there have been 29,280 threads on which have been 144,185 posts contributed. To say that the average thread consists of 5 posts is likely misleading, as it is likely difficult to find many threads which are 5 posts long! Another average generated from those stats, gives on average 40 posts a day for the past 10 years with amazingly 8 new threads each day! Actually, on consideration, not so amazing as currently with new threads daily for Liverpool, Manchester, Chester and Isle of Man plus regular airliners for Manchester and Liverpool now accounting for 6 daily, along with less regular coverage of Barton and Blackpool too.
The number of ‘views’ each thread has, is recorded on the section index page. I’ve not been through them all as the Liverpool Airport News, Liverpool Airport Daily Logs and the Nostalgia section are the main areas with threads that exceed 10,000 views – some by a very considerable margin! Due to the site construction, the threads in the Liverpool Airport News section threads keep running, although the topics within the subject area continually change. The current numbers only date from August 2012, at which time the then Administrator got fed up with repetitious discussion and reset the Section threads back to 0 posts. Oddly, clearly members quite frequently make use of the only Section of the nwan forum that does not permit posts, as the hyper-link to LJLA official arrivals and departure board gets more hits than any single thread outside of the Liverpool News Section! Read into that whatever significance you may!! Personally I have LJLA arrivals page set on my favourites bar.
TOP 10 ‘LIVERPOOL AIRPORT NEWS’ THREAD POSTS (Running for six and a half years)
Terminal area 252,200 Passenger figures 129,200
Ryanair 204,400 Wizzair 97,800
Blue Air 185,300 Charters & I/Ts 96,500
EasyJet 158,100 Hyper-link to LJLA 60,900 (direct link to LJLA arrivals & departures pages url)
Flybe 149,500 Wideroe 21,900
While in the Nostalgia and Liverpool Daily Movement Sections the numbers are smaller, there are many shorter threads that have been (indeed remain) extremely popular. I suspect popular not only to repeatedly look back over by our members but also often visited as hyper-links from other sites and as the result of Google search requests. The range of topics is wide and having trawled through the indexes looking for threads with over 10,000 views (although I might have missed a few) it certainly shows a very active interest in the past. I’ve rounded up to the nearest hundred the posts on each of the threads located with over 10,000 views, as clearly the numbers are forever slowly rising. The clear ‘winner’ in the popularity stakes came as a surprise as I was anticipating a Liverpool based Nostalgia thread to be heading the list.
TOP 25 NON-NEWS THREAD ‘HITS’ OVER 10 YEARS
These threads are mostly in the Liverpool Daily Movements or Nostalgia Sections.
RAF Valley through the Years 54,500 British Eagle at Liverpool Airport 14,700
Liverpool Airport - dates for your diary 32,600 Manchester Historical Website 13,500
The Merseyside Aviation Society 28,800 McDonald Phantom photo thread 13,400
Janes/Emerald Aviation Story 23,500 Southport Air Displays 12,500
The Kiev LFC Final, Airport Daily Thread 23,200 Aircraft Carriers Visits to the Mersey 12,300
Speke–Photos from Yesteryear ('Springy') 21,000 Basle LFC Final, Airport Daily Thread 11,500
Gate Guardians Photo Thread 20,000 The EE Canberra in photographs 10,700
Starways, Liverpool's Airline Story 17,500 Jurby, IoM – The Twilight Years 10,500
Burtonwood, USAF & AFDs 17,200 Amphibious Aircraft at Liverpool 10,400
Liverpool Airport's Air Displays 16,900 B&Ws Speke 1950s and 1960s (Alan Pritchard) 10,300
British 50s & 60s Fighter Aircraft 16,500 The Boeing 747 at Liverpool Airport 10,300
Aircraft Accidents & Incidents at LPL 15,700 The Keenair Company Story 10,000
Yesteryear Photos overseas ('Garstonboy') 15,000 These are the most popular 25 of around 29,250 threads entered.
It is a rare ‘topic’ thread indeed that does not within a few months reach 300 views, 800 to 1,200 being more typical of threads that develop over several posts, the averages varies from Section to Section though. It is an exceptional few that go on to exceed 10,000 ‘hits’, likely with the aid of interest generated with hyper-links from other sites and Google’s search engine.
THE MOST PROLIFIC POSTERS
The Administrator’s panel shows all member’s activity, and it is of little surprise that of the ‘top’ 20 posters, 15 have been active this year, 12 on a very regular basis. Sadly TonySpeke, already noted in the introduction as being the first poster on the Proboards hosted nwan forum, passed away March 2017. While ‘post count’ does not have much real validity, over the past 10 years it is these members who have contributed most in quantity. Again, as figures are generally increasing daily, rounded up to the nearest ten.
TOP 20 POSTERS OVER THE PAST 10 YEARS
Beemer 11,910 Evoant 2,590 Speedbird 1960 1,890
Viscount 5,070 Jetdragon 2,420 G-PHIL 1,890
LPL 4,070 Ste-t 2,290 Ron Turner 1,870
Biggles 3,620 Ian 531 2,280 Philglt 1,830
mky 661 2,990 TonySpeke 2,178 Chris B 1,820
Sabreliner 2,930 Marquis 2,010 Speke-EZY 1,760
Wardmanstuart 2,740 Dovermire 1,900
These are not the only regular posters, at times others have been prolific but over a shorter period of time, Vassylad, Speke-EZY, Calflier, BobJan, Wirralspotter09, Springy, gwoof, DanairAmb and John Oakes immediately come to mind (although not all for the right reasons perhaps), although pleasingly some do still occasionally pop-up from time to time. Actually, the one regular contributor that I miss most is the incredible aviation photography once regularly posted by Avro 748. A reminder that a community such as nwan forum is a mobile one.
MEMBERS
The ‘Admin’ panel also displays the sequence members joined in. There must have been an announcement that the forum had found a new host on 8th March 2009 on the NWAN Website as before then only Dave Graham (as Administrator), Icebreaker, Wadoki and TonySpeke had joined during the days immediately before, likely from a chance meeting at 27 end. Within 5 days membership stood at over 260 as the regulars from the period when xsorbit hosted the nwan forum discovered the new incarnation. A quick scan down the page of the first 50 members shows that 30 have logged-on so far during 2019 and there are a few I suspect are still active but now under different user-names. A measure too of the loyalty of our membership over time.
Today membership stands at 1,970. We now strongly emphasise that membership is only required if a ‘guest’ or ‘visitor’ to the forum wishes to make a post, as everyone is able to view all posts without joining. This was not always the case, as for a period March 2009 to August 2014 the ‘Liverpool Airport News’ section could only be viewed by members. In reality is it not the sheer number of members that matters, but the number of members that actively contribute, even if only occasionally when they have something of particular interest to contribute.
BUSIEST TIMES
Without doubt the busiest days for contributions and site visits are the very busy ‘football airlift’ days at LJLA, in particular the day LFC supporters left for Kiev in May 2018 or for Basel in May 2016, as have already been covered in a table earlier. The main index home page provides a detail that the most users ‘on-line’ at the same time was 547, recorded on 31st January 2011 at 7:53pm. Even on the exceptionally busy ‘spotters’ day with Kiev charter flights the total number of visits to the thread was 2,476 ‘hits’ in the whole 24 hours. The ‘spike’ on 31st January 2011 was on the final day of a football transfer ‘window’ and a post regarding a footballer’s aircraft inbound to Liverpool must have been hyper-linked to a LFC fan’s forum, a link they seized on and consulted for confirmation en masse. It is this incident that leads me to be very wary of permitting VIP/celebrities names to appear on nwan forum until after their visit to LJLA is completed. So regrettably the busiest ever moment on our forum, actually had little to do with aviation!
MANY THANKS TO EVERYONE
Finally, and not before time, a repeat of the very big thank you to everyone who has contributed to the success of nwan forum over the past 10 years. The contributing members are the life-blood of a forum, without them it would quickly stagnate into decline. Our coverage of aviation activity is probably more rapid and wider spread than it is has ever been. I believe that one of our great attributes is not only the information and images, but also the entertaining, knowledgeable and informative ‘blog’ style longer entries which require a sit down to read not just a glance at, and can be returned to in quieter moments and re-examined. I do like a good story or a narrative alongside picture posts to provide the details.
Well here is to another 10 years. There will be changes as the forum evolves, hopefully continually for the better with wider coverage and more contributing members. Finally, I repeat a very big thank you to all readers and contributors from the Site Administrators, the two Brians, to everyone who has participated in the past 10 years and continue to contribute as we enter our second decade of activity with our host, Proboards free forums.
