Just a short note to say that over the weekend the community passed the 1,000 members milestone
Given we launched the site less than 3 months ago, that's a fantastic level of growth and it's all down to you lovely people who come on regularly and write about your progress and give support and encouragement to fellow Couch to 5kers. Any new visitor will see that this is a place they can feel comfortable, meet good people and spend quality time.
It's such a pleasure to oversee the community (and dish out the graduate badges :-)). Roll on 2,000 and beyond!
John
Written by
JR21
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Ive only been a member for a couple of weeks, but it is such a lovely friendly place to air your thoughts and views. Everyone is so friendly. Thank you for your support xx
it's a really great community to be part of, so busy in here now I'm hunting 4/5 pages of blogs for folks I've known from the beginning also loving the love for the badges
This is great news - I know I couldn't have done it without all you lovely people so here's a HUGE thank you!!! The support and sense of community here is amazing! Love you guys
Maybe now is the time to look at splitting the blogs down into different categories? It is just that sometimes they come and go onto the next page so quickly that you can't keep up
Possible ideas newbies, graduates, injuries, competitions, park runs etc etc
The reason i suggest it is because I do dog agility and the web site for that (agilitynet.co.uk) is split up into different categories and it's works well.
The other thing I think is a shame is that people don't put on the area in which they are based. I can understand that because putting in the post code gives too precise an area but again this could be incorporated into the forums eg members in N Hampshire, Sussex etc ???
This is great news, it has been very busy lately! As so many of us keep saying it's such a friendly and encouraging community
I would still prefer if we could all have our own "blog" each which would be brought to the front page when it's updated. Sometimes I want to report on my progress but don't feel it warrants a whole new blog post. If we had our own "threads" that we could update it would be much easier to follow individual members. Something like what Carole and Shelley are doing here: couchto5k.healthunlocked.co... - except it would move to the front page when updated.
As others are saying, everything moves so quickly now that blogs can be missed and get buried.
Also might be helpful to have a FAQ's section for new members as I notice a lot of the same questions pop up regularly. e.g how to download podcasts, recommended treadmill speeds, stretches, what to do on rest days. Maybe link back to some of the questions that have received lots of responses/advice.
And I agree with the sections idea, especially one for graduates. I like to encourage the people still doing C25K and things get a bit messy with everything just lumped in together.
Sorry for sticking my oar in haha! I've been an admin on another internet community for a number of years so have a bit of experience in this sort of thing.
Thanks for all your feedback everybody. There's lots of great ideas in there to make the site easier to navigate and use and I'll definitely be having a look at what we can do.
Re the volunteer badges, they're kind of a way of showing your commitment to the community and we gave them to people who came across from the old forum we ran on NHS Choices. If you become a volunteer you get an email when there's a new post or question (which these days is a lot of emails). I'd be happy to give anyone that status if they want it.
Just thinking that this forum has doubled in size since I joined it! I don't usually have that effect on things
Oh, and just to remind you, JR, that some of us have also suggested C25K T-shirts so we can advertise it while doing our runs, business cards to give to people who look like they're struggling to run in the park, compulsory awareness training for GPs (and I'm sure lots of us would be happy to go and tell them about it) and OBEs for all you web-type peeps, including Queen Laura. By tomorrow lunchtime if poss.
Aww the only thing that would worry me about you super duper graduates having your own section would be that you wouldn't come along and visit us newbies who still need your encouragement, motivational words and inspiring stories
couchto5k.healthunlocked.co... T-shirts would be great. This is a great community and it is lovely to have so many people posting but like others say it is becoming difficult to keep up with it all. I used Macmillan forums for quite a long time and any new addition to a blog brought it to the top of the list making it easier to keep up with new posts. It would be good to have a system like that. NatG, I'm sure many graduates will always offer encouragement, we will always remember how we got started and will always want to keep spreading the word
I have found the forum adictive - I really enjoy seeing other posts with tips for what to do after w9 (I felt bereft without Laura!)
I have found like others that using the 'old' podcasts useful substituting jogging for the walking, I was finding repeating w9 too repetative but wasnt too great at doing my own music (wrong tempo and difficult to pace myself)
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