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Divine Truth Hub Forum Board (NOW CLOSED) • General Site & Forum Update - November
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General Site & Forum Update - November

Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 2:02 pm
by Nicky
Hello everyone

It recently dawned on me that I thought it would be a cool idea to share with you all my current thoughts and feelings on how things are progressing on the forum as well as giving myself an opportunity to announce upcoming site (main site and forum) plans, developments and improvements in an attempt to keep you all in the loop of what may come to pass in the near future. I will try to provide these kinds of updates once a month at the end of the month so here goes with my first one....!

As you guys can probably guess, ever since the forum went live, it has been pretty crazy on my end in general. Much of my time has been split between looking after the site from a technical perspective (the back end "computer" stuff you guys do not see) that helps keep the site and forum functioning as best as it possibly can along with of course, the site and forum content that is public.

After speaking with Jesus and investigating his recommendations, there are a number of technical considerations that I am currently in the process of researching and understanding that we feel are very crucial to implement on the site sooner rather than later. These include potentially moving "hosts" (and the migration that will need to be done as a result), scaling up the capacity of the site to cater for increases in site traffic that may occur in the near future, security/back up procedures as well as other aspects. This is very challenging for me personally as I am pretty new to all of this technical stuff and don't have a background in this type of work. It is literally like learning another language for me, so I hope with some patience and perseverance, I can learn enough to get these really important jobs completed, which is where a large proportion of my time will be spent over the next few weeks. I would like to say a huge thanks to Jesus for guiding and providing me with his support and knowledge in this area.

Of course, now comes the maintenance of the actual content of what is being shared between us all on the forum itself. When I was creating the site and forum, I thought setting all of this up was half of the job, but very quickly realised that this work was only maybe 0.00005% of the "real" work that involves observing, reflecting and feeling about the interactions going on between people on the forum and ensuring that the principles of Divine Truth that Jesus & Mary teach are being upheld to the best possible degree.

As you can see, there were many amendments and tweaks that I felt were necessary to make to the forum terms of use in the first month and a half that I felt encouraged people to self-reflect and make their own decisions on taking the most loving course of action (such as not acting anonymously on the forum as an example) and it has been really great to see how many people have recently been in contact with me to change their forum username to either their first name or full name. In the early days of the forum, it was very turbulent and there were many times I felt it necessary to strike people for certain behaviour I felt was unloving and breached the forum terms of use. This in itself was the biggest challenge for me as I felt I was being harsh to people for striking them, particularly to the women (due to my own injuries). I used to spend hours and hours deliberating on the feedback I felt I should give, along with going into crippling self doubt once I posted my feelings on such matters whilst waiting to see how the person I gave feedback to responded (usually pretty negatively with resistance and anger but lately, this has become less of an issue which is great).

I have learnt so much in this regard, and it is great to see that the strikes have reduced in frequency slightly over the last few weeks or so as a result of the increased sincerity and humility in more people who are now engaging and interacting on the forum. There have been some really awesome threads that people have been creating and others joining in on discussions that are crucial in understanding and developing our own personal relationship with God. It is also great to start feeling and witnessing the genuine improvements within a few people after receiving feedback on the forum as this was one of my main motivations and desires with creating this platform.

You may also have seen that there are a few site moderators now, being Lena & Eloisa thus far. There may possibly be one or two more additions in this area as time goes by depending on the desire and will of those whom I feel would be really fit this role well. These guys have really started to take the role in their stride and learning about the various tools at their disposal. I'd like to say a huge thank you to these guys for gifting some of their own personal time to the forum, it means a lot to me as well as helping in maintaining the safe environment (in terms of observing and feeling about any issues of love on the forum) that we have all been enjoying up to this point in time, particularly as the forum traffic increases.

Finally, myself and my friend, Perry (who is also registered on the forum), have recently moved in together in North London. We have many exciting ideas that we would love to co-create with one another and in the extremely near future, will be acting on these ideas. One of these ideas involves recording a series of videos and uploading them to the YouTube channel I have previously created named "The Divine Truth Experience" where we will be sharing our own personal experiences with living "The Way" as taught by Jesus & Mary and getting them out there on the net for people to view should they desire to. We are planning on discussing many awesome areas and principles of Divine Truth which we hope all kinds of people will find interesting and insightful to hear about, so we are looking forward to seeing how that goes.

Image

Perry (left) & Myself (right) selfie taken after a visit to a church service in South Kensington, London around a month ago

As a result of these ideas, the main hub site will be going through a few changes to accommodate for this new project. Perry will be looking at adding his own "about me" section to the site and we will also be looking at embedding these YouTube videos onto the "Blog" section of the site so people who are browsing the site can view these videos without needing to exclusively visit our channel.

Of course, a huge amount of thanks to both Jesus & Mary for their continued support to this site and forum. Their patience, generosity, enthusiasm and knowledge has really been incredible to witness. I'd like to give a massive shout out of thanks to Mary for organising the movie section of the forum into it's different topics, a task that would have taken a fair amount of time and it is quite a repetitive thing to do, which I feel displays the above qualities and more! I can see people have been sharing movies in the relevant threads which is awesome and we are slowly, as a unit and community, adding to the "collection" so that hopefully, many people not just now, but in the future can benefit from this too.

I'd like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has registered to the forum so far and is contributing to discussions, being open to learning more about Divine Truth as well as opening themselves up to any personal feedback that may come their way, it's really cool to see. I hope you are benefitting from your activity here and that you continue doing so.

I'd also like to thank those of you for your generosity in donating to myself since the site and forum went live, no matter how "small" or "large" your donations have been. It means an awful lot to me and I am constantly so touched by your gifts that you are giving to me. These donations go exclusively to the site and forum as well as to help contribute to my own personal living requirements (shelter and food/water only). Your donations allow me to live in my main passions and desires and that increases my own joy and faith in God as a result and I am absolutely loving the experience so far.

I look forward to continuing with the projects that are going on currently and I look forward to interacting and getting to know you all better as time goes by.

Love

Nicky