Hi everyone.
Given the recent events on the forum, feedback I have received directly via telephone, emails and forum posts and conversations and suggestions we have had at the office, I thought it prudent to post a message up to update you on what is happening. This post is being placed in OT however I will link to it from BT and WP as well.
I apologise in advance for the length of this post but I think it’s important, especially for the newer members, that there is an understanding of what hitched is all about.
So, first things first, I’d like to answer a question that was posed on the forum and in an email to me yesterday:
“Are we correct in interpreting your response to say that the memberships of people who are still planning their weddings are of more value to you than the ‘old marrieds’?”
I have to be completely honest here and say that if we are measuring ‘value’ in a financial way, this is absolutely the case.
By definition, hitched.co.uk is a Wedding Planning website. It is the largest, longest running, most visited, most successful and overall best wedding website in the UK. It contains hundreds of thousands of pages of information that help a bride and groom plan their big day. We have somewhere in the region of 10,000 different companies advertising with us that expect a return on the fees they have paid us and that return is generated from wedding planners and not from people who have already planned their wedding. We are a business, a very successful one too and in order to continue to grow and deliver for all of our advertisers, we need to ensure that when someone visits the site they are made to feel very welcome.
That being said, the help that many of the ‘old marrieds’ (please note that this is not a term we use!) give to the people in the wedding planning forum is incredibly important and therefore as a support network, everyone is very valuable.
What however is worthless and indeed damaging to us is comments made by individuals in the forum that effectively alienate, offend or upset current and potential users of the site and therefore stop them from using the site for their wedding planning process. This is exactly what caused the issues yesterday and lead to the suspension of some members.
I do however have an update for you on yesterday’s suspensions.
I would like to think that both I as an individual and us as a company are very fair and understanding. We listen to reason and act according to what we think is right in any situation. We have listened to all of your feedback and I have personally had a direct conversation with one of the members who was suspended yesterday and effective immediately, she has been reinstated. I have not heard from the other suspended members so their exclusion currently remains in place. As and when I hear from them, we will make a decision on an individual basis about their future membership on hitched.co.uk.
One of the big benefits that many of you find through hitched during your wedding planning process is the support network that it provides. This is obviously delivered initially through the forum where many of you become good friends. Following a request from members many years ago, we introduced an ‘Off Topic’ and ‘just Married’ forum so that following your weddings, you could return to the site and continue to socialise with your friends after your bid day. Over time, this has grown to include the Baby Talk forum which is now incredibly popular. There are some major developments planned for Baby Talk which we are working hard on at the moment so this forum will see some really big changes in the coming months. Further news of this will come soon…
One thing that has become apparent is that we need to look at and amend the forum rules. We will be doing this imminently and when we do so we will take into account everything that we know about the forum and the way it is used in order that it is easy, friendly and convenient to use. Once again, watch this space…
I also believe we need to address the way in which the forum is moderated to ensure that we are being responsive, active and fair and this is also something we are going to be working on.
For the time being however, all I ask is that you treat everyone on here in a fair, friendly manner. If you want to start an argument, or a slagging match with somebody or are just here to cause trouble, please go and do it elsewhere. This is not what we are here for. We are a friendly forum and whilst it is inevitable that there will be posts and topics that you do not agree with, rather than inflame a situation, please move on to a post that perhaps is more to your liking.
In the short term however, whilst all of the forum rules as shown here (https://www.hitched.co.uk/chat/content/ForumRules.aspx ) remain totally in place, there are a few things that I want to emphasize are totally unacceptable:
1 – Any libellous, insulting, antagonistic, racist, aggressive or otherwise abusive remarks about any individual or company either within forum posts or the PM (Private Message) system
2 – The posting of any swear words in such a way as to circumvent the forums built-in swear word removal system (including in signatures). It’s not rocket science to work out how to swear on a forum by replacing characters and using keyboard tricks. It is however totally, 100%, completely and utterly unacceptable.
I’d now like to take the opportunity to give the rest of the hitched.co.uk website a bit of a plug because the wedding forum itself, whilst a busy area of the site, only makes up for a very small percentage of what the site has to offer and actually only accounts for a small percentage of the visitors. Here’s some site statistics about hitched.co.uk:
Over the last 31 days, the site has received the following:
910,247 visitors of which 580,721 of them are unique visitors
These visitors have generated 6,492,766 page views of the site.
The discussion forum accounts for 12% of all of these page views.
When it comes to planning your wedding, we like to think that we give you, the members some fantastic tools that help you plan your big day. These tools are all accessible through the members menu bar which is shown at the top right hand side of the main menu. In fact it’s probably worth mentioning some of these tools because many of you are probably unaware that many of them exist:
My Wedding – This keeps track of your plans and via the ‘to-do’ list gives an overview of what you will need to do and by when.
Budget Planner – Track your budget and compare it to your allocated amount. This is also useful for reminding yourself of expenses you may not have thought of.
Wedding Website – Build your own wedding site totally free of charge.
Scrap book – As you browse through hitched, images of dresses, venues, flowers, etc that you like can instantly be saved into your scrapbook and they are all stored here.
Moodboards – These are really cool. Use your saved scrapbook images or any number of the thousands of images that we have saved to create a mood board to help you visualise your wedding day.
Guest Manager – Use this tool to create and manage your guest list. You can import, export and group your guests together and track all of their details and status’s.
Dress Designer – This is a fun ap that lets you design a dress that you like and then searches our database of thousands of dresses to find something similar.
This area also where you manage all of your preferences.
There are other really clever tools coming very soon and they are all free to use. Here are a couple that are virtually ready and will be introduced very soon:
Table planner – A free to use table planning tool that is so simple to use. You create your room layout, table layouts and then drag your guests to the seat you want them to sit in. You can add ‘don’t sit next to’ and ‘must sit next to’ lists and click a button and it will do it all for you. This is really clever and should be launched in the summer.
The hitched.co.uk Gift List – Hold all of your gift lists in one very simple easy to use application. You can add products from virtually any UK store into the hitched.co.uk gift list and be secure in the knowledge that anything your guest buys becomes a transaction directly between the store and your guest therefore eliminating any middle man from the equation. Should be launching mid summer.
So, in summary we want to make your experience of hitched.co.uk a pleasant and enjoyable one. We try as much as we can to let it flow without the need for intervention from ourselves or our moderators. If sometimes we suspend people or do things that not everyone agrees with, please note that we only do this with the best interests of all of our visitors in mind.
Thank you for using hitched.co.uk and please feel free to email me directly with any questions.
Thanks
Darren
Darren.noel@hitched.co.uk
Hi everyone.
Given the recent events on the forum, feedback I have received directly via telephone, emails and forum posts and conversations and suggestions we have had at the office, I thought it prudent to post a message up to update you on what is happening. This post is being placed in OT however I will link to it from BT and WP as well.
I apologise in advance for the length of this post but I think it’s important, especially for the newer members, that there is an understanding of what hitched is all about.
So, first things first, I’d like to answer a question that was posed on the forum and in an email to me yesterday:
“Are we correct in interpreting your response to say that the memberships of people who are still planning their weddings are of more value to you than the ‘old marrieds’?”
I have to be completely honest here and say that if we are measuring ‘value’ in a financial way, this is absolutely the case.
By definition, hitched.co.uk is a Wedding Planning website. It is the largest, longest running, most visited, most successful and overall best wedding website in the UK. It contains hundreds of thousands of pages of information that help a bride and groom plan their big day. We have somewhere in the region of 10,000 different companies advertising with us that expect a return on the fees they have paid us and that return is generated from wedding planners and not from people who have already planned their wedding. We are a business, a very successful one too and in order to continue to grow and deliver for all of our advertisers, we need to ensure that when someone visits the site they are made to feel very welcome.
That being said, the help that many of the ‘old marrieds’ (please note that this is not a term we use!) give to the people in the wedding planning forum is incredibly important and therefore as a support network, everyone is very valuable.
What however is worthless and indeed damaging to us is comments made by individuals in the forum that effectively alienate, offend or upset current and potential users of the site and therefore stop them from using the site for their wedding planning process. This is exactly what caused the issues yesterday and lead to the suspension of some members.
I do however have an update for you on yesterday’s suspensions.
I would like to think that both I as an individual and us as a company are very fair and understanding. We listen to reason and act according to what we think is right in any situation. We have listened to all of your feedback and I have personally had a direct conversation with one of the members who was suspended yesterday and effective immediately, she has been reinstated. I have not heard from the other suspended members so their exclusion currently remains in place. As and when I hear from them, we will make a decision on an individual basis about their future membership on hitched.co.uk.
One of the big benefits that many of you find through hitched during your wedding planning process is the support network that it provides. This is obviously delivered initially through the forum where many of you become good friends. Following a request from members many years ago, we introduced an ‘Off Topic’ and ‘just Married’ forum so that following your weddings, you could return to the site and continue to socialise with your friends after your bid day. Over time, this has grown to include the Baby Talk forum which is now incredibly popular. There are some major developments planned for Baby Talk which we are working hard on at the moment so this forum will see some really big changes in the coming months. Further news of this will come soon…
One thing that has become apparent is that we need to look at and amend the forum rules. We will be doing this imminently and when we do so we will take into account everything that we know about the forum and the way it is used in order that it is easy, friendly and convenient to use. Once again, watch this space…
I also believe we need to address the way in which the forum is moderated to ensure that we are being responsive, active and fair and this is also something we are going to be working on.
For the time being however, all I ask is that you treat everyone on here in a fair, friendly manner. If you want to start an argument, or a slagging match with somebody or are just here to cause trouble, please go and do it elsewhere. This is not what we are here for. We are a friendly forum and whilst it is inevitable that there will be posts and topics that you do not agree with, rather than inflame a situation, please move on to a post that perhaps is more to your liking.
In the short term however, whilst all of the forum rules as shown here (https://www.hitched.co.uk/chat/content/ForumRules.aspx ) remain totally in place, there are a few things that I want to emphasize are totally unacceptable:
1 – Any libellous, insulting, antagonistic, racist, aggressive or otherwise abusive remarks about any individual or company either within forum posts or the PM (Private Message) system
2 – The posting of any swear words in such a way as to circumvent the forums built-in swear word removal system (including in signatures). It’s not rocket science to work out how to swear on a forum by replacing characters and using keyboard tricks. It is however totally, 100%, completely and utterly unacceptable.
I’d now like to take the opportunity to give the rest of the hitched.co.uk website a bit of a plug because the wedding forum itself, whilst a busy area of the site, only makes up for a very small percentage of what the site has to offer and actually only accounts for a small percentage of the visitors. Here’s some site statistics about hitched.co.uk:
Over the last 31 days, the site has received the following:
910,247 visitors of which 580,721 of them are unique visitors
These visitors have generated 6,492,766 page views of the site.
The discussion forum accounts for 12% of all of these page views.
When it comes to planning your wedding, we like to think that we give you, the members some fantastic tools that help you plan your big day. These tools are all accessible through the members menu bar which is shown at the top right hand side of the main menu. In fact it’s probably worth mentioning some of these tools because many of you are probably unaware that many of them exist:
My Wedding – This keeps track of your plans and via the ‘to-do’ list gives an overview of what you will need to do and by when.
Budget Planner – Track your budget and compare it to your allocated amount. This is also useful for reminding yourself of expenses you may not have thought of.
Wedding Website – Build your own wedding site totally free of charge.
Scrap book – As you browse through hitched, images of dresses, venues, flowers, etc that you like can instantly be saved into your scrapbook and they are all stored here.
Moodboards – These are really cool. Use your saved scrapbook images or any number of the thousands of images that we have saved to create a mood board to help you visualise your wedding day.
Guest Manager – Use this tool to create and manage your guest list. You can import, export and group your guests together and track all of their details and status’s.
Dress Designer – This is a fun ap that lets you design a dress that you like and then searches our database of thousands of dresses to find something similar.
This area also where you manage all of your preferences.
There are other really clever tools coming very soon and they are all free to use. Here are a couple that are virtually ready and will be introduced very soon:
Table planner – A free to use table planning tool that is so simple to use. You create your room layout, table layouts and then drag your guests to the seat you want them to sit in. You can add ‘don’t sit next to’ and ‘must sit next to’ lists and click a button and it will do it all for you. This is really clever and should be launched in the summer.
The hitched.co.uk Gift List – Hold all of your gift lists in one very simple easy to use application. You can add products from virtually any UK store into the hitched.co.uk gift list and be secure in the knowledge that anything your guest buys becomes a transaction directly between the store and your guest therefore eliminating any middle man from the equation. Should be launching mid summer.
So, in summary we want to make your experience of hitched.co.uk a pleasant and enjoyable one. We try as much as we can to let it flow without the need for intervention from ourselves or our moderators. If sometimes we suspend people or do things that not everyone agrees with, please note that we only do this with the best interests of all of our visitors in mind.
Thank you for using hitched.co.uk and please feel free to email me directly with any questions.
Thanks
Darren
Darren.noel@hitched.co.uk
