After 16 years, 2 months and 23 days it is time for me to call it a day.
As many of you know I have been unable to maintain this forum for some time, despite my best efforts. It has fallen into a state of disrepair which has driven many away from it. This is something I never wanted or expected to happen.
When I set the website and forum up in 2003 I was a first year university student looking to meet like minded people to discuss my fledgling hobby with. It quickly spiraled out of control. The demand for an online discussion forum for WWII re-enactors was immediately obvious and something I had to grow into understanding and being able to support, as a new re-enactor and as a young man.
There have been highs and there have been lows. I am incredibly proud of having created the online home for so many of us with the same interest yet equally disappointed at not being able to maintain it in the long term. In hindsight I wish I had handed it over some years ago to someone more capable and with more free time than I. The friendships, events and groups which have been formed as a result of this forum have moved this hobby on greatly and for that I will always be humbled.
There is still a place for the WWII Re-enacting forum in the world, at the very least as an archive to help new re-enactors learn and find groups they want to join and at best as the centre of all WWII re-enacting discussion in the UK and beyond. Despite the rise of Facebook and other social media formats, nowhere can offer the breadth of knowledge and detail this forum has within its archive. With almost 60,000 topics and 823k posts, aggregated into one place, across dozens of discussion areas, nothing can compare.
I am now looking for a new owner of the forum to reinvigorate interest, generate usage and to maintain it as an archive to our hobby and the second world war.If you have experience of running message boards, PHPBB (or other) and are capable of web development and coding, and want to lead this hobby into the future, please contact me @
chris@wwiireenacting.co.uk. You will be given free web hosting, bandwidth and support by my company to help transition the forum over to you. My only stipulation is that you are as passionate about this hobby as I am and want to help others learn and grow into WWII re-enacting.
Chris