Wednesday, November 19, 2014

EARLY

It was a thing that we all enjoyed, the brand new Oliver Forums. Oliver Travel trailers were growing in fantastic leaps and bounds, out reaching everyone's expectations. The factory was swamped with orders and inquiry's. And, yet, some of us wanted more. Though we had a cool new Oliver trailer in the driveway, we wanted more. We wanted a way to visit with other owners and enthusiasts to exchange ideas, photos and much, much, more.
What we needed and wanted ever so badly was a forums.
In its infancy and experiencing growing pains, the Oliver Factory was sympathetic to our needs, but were covered up in the nuts and bolts of phenomenal growth pains. They did however give the ok to proceed with a Forums project, then went back to what they do best, building cool trailers.
So, there we sat, with the green light on the project, but no funding. The solution seemed easy at the time. He, he, now we all know just how those quick fixes can come back to bite us. And of course they did, but way on down the road.
Our web designer at the time provided borrowed server space and we picked up some free software from out there on the internet. We had our own forums !
The forums evolved rapidly and grew wildly, becoming a force of it's own.   
Years of evolving and growth, bring us up to 2014, with many members and moderators on board. Now the forums are on their own servers, having experienced bumps in the road during that major move, and Oliver has a IT Department that is coping with the QUICK FIX SOLUTIONS of the EARLY DAYS.
I have went to the Oliver IT department for help in the past and these guys are absolute Magicians !
Our years old forums issues, are being fixed as they rear their ugly heads, but, it is a pretty labor intensive process.
I have no doubt that Oliver's IT department will prevail, but our iron in the fire is but one of many that they must navigate their way through.
So, here is hat's off, to our forums members, moderators and IT Department for coping with inherited issues from the past, while planning for those cool forums features of the future !
Future ? Yes there will be streamlining changes in the future to make things more "user friendly", and those will be much welcomed changes, but as history has taught us, there will be "bumps in the road !"
So, let's "cinch up tight, screw our hat's down tighter" and ride into the forums future together ! It's gona' be a great ride !

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