There have been some confusion and misunderstandings about why the move to this new site happened.

In my initial welcoming message when we launched last Monday I explained some of this, but I will now try to include all the details as well and explain as best I can.

First, let me take you back to the start of 2007. My enthusiasm for the site had hit a new low. We were getting tired of the slow speed of the Rivals network as it could take you minutes to post something and also all the intrusive pop-ups that sometimes took over the site and nothing was done about it. No one listened to what we had to say about it and we were largely ignored when we passed on your complaints.

Promises had been made for many years about a site upgrade, but deadlines were never met and no plans were ever presented to us. The site was still using a platform that was over 7 years old and was really starting to get outdated. Sky took over Rivals but we never heard anything from them and the lack of feedback from the top in general was appalling. It just felt like we were all doing our thing and no one really cared about it.

It turned out this feeling was pretty universal for many of the Rivals publishers who felt mistreated and so the plans for a new network surfaced. Why let some big corporation dictate how our sites would be when we could do a better job ourselves?

This brings me to one of the main topics of confusion about the new network; ownership. 51% of the network is owned by the publishers themselves, meaning there is no top man making all the decisions. We have an equal share and an equal say. We do this together as a team.

A couple of people have obviously had to be our main contacts for updates and for dealing with the programmers, and among them were Phil Sumbler. Some people found out he had registered the network name and that he was also the chairman of Swansea Trust. This then led to wild speculation about this network being politically motivated, but that's just nonsense. Phil just registered the site and has now even stepped down from the network due to the work strain. This site and this network will be completely independent.

The other 49% is owned by external investors which was needed if this network was ever going to become reality. Money was obviously needed to get the network going and to set everything up.

It was impossible during the time before we launched to share this information with everyone as one breach of confidence by someone, or just by reading the message board, Rivals would have found it. They would obviously have locked us out of admin and as you will have noticed, we were still running the site as usual up until the point we decided to move. It was absolutely essential it was kept secret and all the other Rivals sites that were moving were doing the same thing as us. We apologise for not being able to tell you all about it until the minute we moved, and certainly would have if it was possible.

The plan was all along to launch on Friday before the season started. As you may have noticed, we never met that deadline as the network wasn't ready. We did launch on the following Monday however and in hindsight, that was too soon as well considering the problems we've had since then. The problem was that some sites had already resigned from Rivals and advertised their move and so it was important we went live ASAP.

Some of the problems we encountered after launch could not have been noticed during testing and every new network like this will have its teething problems the first couple of weeks no matter how much you test it beforehand. We have now got topic sorting and many other problems taken care of on the message board and people are working all day every day to add more features in the coming weeks. It's certainly not perfect yet, but we're getting there.

This is my 11th year as editor of RamZone and it's great to finally be listened to and that my input is being valued and taken into account. We will also be able to bring forward your views in a much better way than before and at some point when we believe we have done all the upgrades and added all the features we want to this site, we will still ask for your opinion and change whatever you're not happy with. This is YOUR network more than anyone else.

It is our belief that we will be able to make a better site for you that is the main reason for moving. In addition to having a bigger say in how things are made, we have a lot more and better technical opportunites on this site and we hope you will enjoy the new features that will be added to the site as we go. We will be providing a much more stable and faster platform once it's all up and running properly and will also be adding a thread view to the message board which will be working much in the same way, and hopefully even better, than on Rivals. The choice is yours about which message board view you want to use!

It's not just about the message board, though. The entire RamZone team is moving to this site as well and we have added more contributors to the site since last season. This is the 22nd new story since we left Rivals and we believe all of them are of high quality. Daily columns, match previews, match reports and other features will continue on this site this season.

364 people have registered an account so far and 315 topics have been started on the message board. We feel that is pretty good considering the site has been down for some time due to server upgrades and a few people have struggled to access the site.

This should now all have been taken care of and we hope you will join us as we go from strength to strength from now on.

If Rivals manage to keep their promise this time, they will be launching a new design later this year and I've seen the early draft (which was probably released due to the rumours about the new network and after I had made up my mind about moving). Things will probably change before it's ready, but I've seen the direction they're going; a lot of automated content and little space for the publisher to operate in. You can bet they will be launching a new message board as well.

It looks like a combination of the official site design and a community site like Facebook or Myspace, and although I'm sure some people will like that, it's not what I think RamZone should be all about.

We have nothing to hide so if you have any more questions, just send an e-mail to ramzone@online.no or pop the question on the message board.

You have the choice about which sites you prefer to visit, but we hope we will make that choice easy for you by having the very best Rams' fans site on the Net.

You can find the RamZone Message Board here!

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