After having run a separate news forum that was designed to allow our readers the possibility of commenting on and discussing news item posted here with other site users, we have decided to crop it down to just a cultural and club-news forum and at the same time, reactivate the comments box on all news articles posted on this news site.

We gave it a whirl for just over a year, but the fact of the matter is that facebook is much more popular that online forums nowadays, with users finding it more comfortable to make their comments there, rather than go to and log onto a news forum. The half way house, so to speak, is to allow comments on the news website (here) for our registered users.

The snag with allowing comments on a news site is that you tend to get targeted by spammers, which is a pain, and phpBB online forum boards have a much easier system for dealing with spammers than a WordPress website, like our own.

As for the shortened version of the online forum, we hope that our readers will take advantage of its space to post their own cultural news (gigs and painting exhibitions, for example).

Anybody that is running a club that wants to have forum space for its members can do so on our forums free of charge: just let us know who you are so that we can set up a separate board for the club.

That’s all Folks, and a thanks from the Seaside Gazette Team for using our news site.