I've been hanging over here http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowForum-g41298-i101-Ocean_City_Maryland.html

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That's a nice forum Bob. Thanks for the link.

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Hi OceanCity.com Forum Members,

My name is Nat Cohen. I'm the President of StateVentures which publishes OceanCity.com.

One of the things I am most proud of on OceanCity.com is our member forum. Those of you who have cared enough to post on this thread are the heart and soul of this forum. Many of you have been involved for years and have generously made hundreds of posts. In the process you've created a supportive online community to discuss any and all topics related to Ocean City.

I realize that the roll-out of this new forum was not handled well. I apologize for this. There was not enough advance notice or request for input. The features that you relied on and grown used to disappeared overnight.

I can understand your frustration and the disappointment. I respect your desire to move to another forum.

The unfortunate thing about these developments from my perspective is that the main reason that we are moving to this new platform and this new forum software is to give Forum members more power and influence throughout the entire web site, not just on the Forum. The new platform for OceanCity.com is built on a software called Drupal. Drupal allows site-wide membership features. The problem with vBulletin was that your membership was limited only to the forum. With Drupal, members can create blogs, write articles, and submit reviews. Drupal also has a member profile page, where you can see all of the member's recent posts, blogs and articles. We are also working on developing new member features such as create your own itineraries, lists of favorites, and photo gallery.

We are steadily rolling out new functionality to take advantage of the features offered through Drupal. A major new release is coming by the end of the week. Details on the release will be posted in this thread.

I regret that we have disappointed you and failed to live up to your expectations. We will work hard to regain your trust and hope that if you check back in the future you will like what you see.

Sincerely,

Nat Cohen

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Thanks Nat. I'm sticking around and will be patient. The other board mentioned on this thread is terrible. Thanks again.

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Having blogs, etc. is not why I support this site. I come here for easy information. You can offer members all sorts of features, but if the members all disappear, what good is it? If I wanted blogs and signatures and profile pages, I'd go to My Space.
It's a shame that you didn't have a poll before hand and ask the members if WE felt you needed to make changes. There might have been one or two things that should have been changed, but this was such a drastic change, and not all for the better.

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I know that most members are pretty upset by this new format, and no one has spoke out louder then me against it, but I think it's pretty clear that they are really working hard to get this site back to the level we were before. I think we all would agree this right now is NOT the same format we were introduced to when this all first happened. We complained, showed our disaproval, and the administration heard us and responded.

What we have in front of us right now, is a far cry from the two & three word diagonal scroll down to nowhere that we first saw... We now have a block format, order of most recent posts, full screen viewing, info on other members ie, joined date, online, ect... options like picking your own avitar, and sig. So what I'm trying to say is - now is not the time to turn your back on this site and leave. They are obviously willing to try to make it better, and as members we should take advantage of thier receptiveness. Right now, for the first time ever we have a chance to have a say so in what we want from this site. I belive we need to help them get this figured out I think we all need be suportive give some feed back as to how they can make this site better. So I'm urging everyone to please stay and be patient, and lets give them a chance to straighten it out some more, before we all just go and bail on this site & each other too.

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Thank you for your perspective. Your comments have led to many of the improvements we have already made. Your specific comments as well as those from all the other users of the forum will continue to guide our efforts as we improve the forum and make it exactly what all of you want. We appreciate everybody's feedback and patience. You definitely have a say in what we are doing on the site because it's for you. Please continue to provide ideas and improvements so we can get them implemented.

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things are looking quite a bit better around here,somebody has been hard at work. Looks like I'll start coming back here much more often,thanks!

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Yeah, the other site is worse...I'll wait things out here and get used to it.

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not too happy with this format. Very hard on the Diabetic eye. Sorry.

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