In September 2003 many mailing lists hit the web, including a BMC 1100 mailing list. This was my first attempt at using such a facility. I'd either end up with an active list or see the tumble weed rolling across the screen.

Within the first month 137 messages had been posted and membership was hovering around the 20 mark. Activity soon began to grow and more and more members joined up.

2004 saw a steady stream of messages posted and new members joining, things always move on, and people were using daily digests more and more to receive their messages. And to make the process easier I began working on a forum. I wanted to offer members the chance to post pictures with messages and the ease of having all pictures hosted on the same board. Little did I know the amount of work that would be required to get such a facility set up.

I looked around the internet to find a solution that would meet all the needs of the users and be as reliable as the yahoo mailing list. I downloaded and tried numerous packages before finding one that would integrate with the current website layout and still have powerful features.

The test forum was placed on-line early in January 2005. After testing it was released on the 19th January 2005. Shortly afterwards an influx of members made me realise that it had potential to run itself using a separate domain name, www.ado16forums.info.

Ever since then the mailing list has seen a steady decline in activity and has such closed itself down. The statistics show the demise of the board since the forum was opened. The number of messages posted each month are shown below:

In two years the mailing list attracted 103 members who posted a total of 2,248 messages. Already in the short time the forum has been open it has attracted 54 members who have posted a total of 883 messages.