Order of the Golden Sprout The New Robert Rankin Fan Club

Ah but a free spirit such as Mr Rankin's cannot be tied down. I think you'll find that his first post was in the public forum.

(Where anyone who hasn't logged in will think we're all ignoring him )

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All shall reap as the sow...except the amateur gardener

nursewhen as ever you are correct

I have to agree with most (and probably all) of the comments here - making the site and the club as accesible as possible is really important - and I am really pleased with the number of new members that have joined since I took charge (and thanks for the kind comments about the magazine).

It is also important that we not only get these casual visitors interested but that we also give them an incentive to actually join - exclusive web stuff, the magazine, exclusive events, free gifts etc.....

I have lifted the restriction on where Robert can post, as if I could control that in the first place and will look at what we can and should make accesible on the forums and talk to our web master James....

Ultimately the more members we have the more we can do and I have big plans that I would truly like to see come to fruition, I can only do these if all you guys are there for the club (as I know you are) and play a part in promoting and then recruiting, as I know you will.....

Ian.

Whoot Whoot!

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All shall reap as the sow...except the amateur gardener

Not only are we (Ian & me & Others) working flat out on this years events, but plans are already afoot for next years BIG event.....buy me beers on the boat trip and I just might tell you some of the fun and frolics we have in store for you lucky, lovely special people.

Could I bung you people a few £ via PayPal and you can pretend you are drunk and e-mail me the details?
It’s too hard being north of the gap (even tho it’s better up here in the north he he, and we will not get flooded come the “climate change” )

Thanks for spotting this. It wan't my intention to exclude non members from replies in the public forum, just an oversight when I set the permissions. It should be fixed now. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Also, you might have noticed that you sometimes got hit with a capcha when posting, especially if your post included a URL. Members should now be exempt from this, but "guests" (i.e. people who've set up a user account but not joined the club) will still be subjected to it.

I agree that the member forums should only be visible to members. There may be some fine tuning of what is visible to non-members, but I think the principle that your posts can only be read by people who've made the same committment of joining the club, and not some tosser who happened to pick the same search term on Google, is good for builing a proper community spirit.

Like Ian, I have big ideas for exclusive member only content, as well as more public teasers to convince people it's worth joining, and I have no doubt that the club will keep getting better and better.

James

Keeping the big flywheel spinning...

Hoorays! The public forum looks much better now

(What's a capcha?)
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All shall reap as the sow...except the amateur gardener

CAPTCHA = Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart

It's a little pic with some distorted words that you have to type in, on the basis that recognising distorted/garbled letters is easier for a human to do than a cumputer.