Classified & Directory Integration
You may have noticed new drop down menus on the Classifieds & Directory sections. This is to help integrate the two sections, making all the Directory categories one click away from the Classifieds & visa versa.

Website Links
We have noticed more people posting free adverts with a link to a non related website. To protect our own interests & our sponsors the classifieds guidelines have been amended with the following new line added.

"If you add a link to a website, it must be directly relevant to the advert & not in competition with the NFED or our sponsors. We reserve the right to remove any website link without notice."

Promotion via Forums
To further protect the interests of those listed in the Directory (our site sponsors) we are being stricter with the forums & only allowing site sponsors to be discussed. Any posts promoting services of individuals or companies not listed in the directory will be removed.

We do realise that this may all seem a bit big brother'ish, but we rely on our sponsors to keep the site, including the forums online. If they pay to advertise their services through the Directory, it is not fair on them to allow others to advertise free of charge through the forums that they are helping to provide.

We’ve had three separate problems this week which have all affected the performance or made parts of the site unavailable at times. We do apologise for any inconvenience, but I’m afraid that all the issues were out of our control.

1/ The classifieds are held on a different server from the rest of the site, due to their popularity and the amount of bandwidth they use. This server was subject to a denial of service attack earlier in the week, which slowed the classifieds down or made them unavailable at times. This has now been rectified.

2/ Since the classifieds have been moved, the amount of available bandwidth for the remainder of the site has been reduced. Unfortunately the quota given was half what I requested and the bandwidth was exceeded on the last day of the month. Once informed, the ISP adjusted the figure very quickly and the site was back online within a few hours.

3/ Since its launch, the NFED has used the Sitemeter visitor counter to measure visitor numbers, page views, etc. This is built into every page on the site & has worked very well for nearly 10 years. On Friday, they upgraded their software but didn’t get it quite right! Every website or page fitted with Sitemeter would no longer open in Internet Explorer 6 & 7. Worldwide, this must have shut down millions of websites including the NFED.

The problem has now been fixed and they have sent an apology, but I can’t risk a similar problem ever happening again and the meter has now been removed from the NFED. This does mean that we can no longer accurately measure visitor numbers, but we all know how busy it is and the site should load faster and be more reliable.

With the classifieds on a new server, we now have plenty of bandwidth for the site & with most people now on broadband & using larger monitors, we have increased the size of the photos allowed on the classifieds. The maximum allowed is now 450 pixels wide by 500 pixels high. The number of adverts per page has been increased from 20 to 30.

As you are all probably aware there have been a few problems on the forums over the last few days. We are well aware that the forums have been getting a bad name, which in turn gives the site a bad name despite all of our efforts & hard work.

We have considered removing the forums altogether, but there are well over a thousand members & many more lurkers, why should they lose out because of a very small minority.

The forums are intended to be a place to meet, learn, have some fun, and or a chat. They should be safe for all ages & abilities. Anybody should be able to post without fear of ridicule.

Because of this, we have made a few changes.

The members forum access has been changed to “Members Only” viewing. If you want to read the members forum, you must become a Network 54 member & an approved member of the user group. Both are completely free of charge & very simple to do, Click Here for details. Once you are a member, you can post unmoderated on any of the NFED forums.

• The forum rules will be more severely enforced.
• Posts or replies that break the rules or are intended to stir up trouble will be removed.
• Repeat offenders will have their user group membership revoked.
  Think of this as a “sinbin”. You can reapply & will probably be allowed back in, but this may take a while & we will be less tolerant.

If you do use the forums, please take the time to read the rules, ignorance is no excuse.

If you don’t agree with any of the above, I apologise but you will not be welcome.

Saving Your Forum Log In Settings

If you are fed up with constantly logging in, did you know you can change the settings & remain logged in for up to 3 months?

Click on the "My Account" link to go to Network 54.

Click on "Account Options"

Change "Auto Logoff" to quarterly or whatever you prefer.

You won't have to log in each time unless your cookies are cleared. Remember if you are using a shared computer, anyone visiting the forum will be logged in as you & will have access to your account.

Due to the amazing success of the classifieds we have now separated them from the rest of the site by moving the whole system to a new server.

This was carried out overnight and all links have been updated so all being well, you will not notice any difference at all. If you do find the classifieds are unavailable, please refresh the page by pressing control/F5 or better still clear your temporary internet files and browser history to ensure that only the new pages are viewed.

If you don’t know how to clear your temporary files, here are a couple of useful links.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/using/howto/customizing/clearcache.mspx
http://www.clearallhistory.com/delete-temporary-internet-files-deleting.html

This change will take the pressure off of the rest of the site, which should allow everything to run more smoothly. It has also increased the available bandwidth which has been causing problems as the site has become more popular.

With the new hosting package, came yet another domain name. The NFED can now be reached by using any of the following:

http://www.nfed.co.uk
http://www.newforestpony.co.uk
http://www.southernhorse.co.uk
http://www.newforestequinedirectory.co.uk

If after doing all of the above, you still have problems viewing the classifieds, please contact us. It is possible that one of the links has been missed.

Steve

The Classifieds are working really well, but as the foaling season is well under way we are getting a lot of adverts submitted without a full description of each animal advertised or required details missing, these adverts will not be approved.

If you have several foals to advertise, each one must be listed separately, with a description and price.

You can put more than one on each advert (within reason), but if you decide to post more than one advert, the easiest way is to type out each advert in MS Word. Submit your first advert in the normal way and then use your back button to go back to stage one & you will see that you name & address details are still there. Copy & paste in your next adverts description, select the correct category & submit. Just repeat as necessary.

The new Classifieds Gallery is intended to show several photographs of a single horse, vehicle, property or item. It cannot be used to show several animals or items in the same advert. It is only available with an approved advert & at our discretion.

We are still getting adverts submitted without the required full contact details; many of these are looking for loan ponies or selling tack. We DO NOT allow anonymous advertising, particularly if you are advertising tack or expecting to take a pony on loan. If required information is not supplied, the advert is deleted without notice.

As from today, any adverts that are awaiting payment will be removed from the waiting list without notice after 7 days if payment has not been received.

Until now, we have been allowing up to 4 weeks, then notifying the advertiser by Email. This has often caused confusion if they have more than one advert and with the amount of adverts being submitted everyday, any adverts approved after this length of time would be so far down the list that they would not get the noticed.

We often have up to 100 adverts awaiting approval/payment, it takes a long time to go through the list & Email each advertiser & the response really doesn't make it worthwhile. Those that intend to pay, do so when they submit their advert & although the odd person does forget, the majority of the others have no intention of paying.

Steve & Claire Kitcher

You may or may not know, the NFED is technically owned by my wife, equine artist Claire Kitcher trading under the name CK Art. Between us we run the NFED and several other websites including the New Forest Livestock Society. Claire paints full time, I do all the picture framing, produce the prints and over the last 4 years have built up the NFED Photo Service (Event Images) covering mainly equine events around the area, I also have a full time job.

We also have several yearlings that we would like to spend more time with and of course, regularly riding our horses. We have now come to the point were there are just not enough hours in the day to do everything and something has to change.

We have decided to concentrate on what we do best and wind down the photo service which is less specialised and very time consuming. There are now more and more people offering to cover events than ever before and although we have a really good set up and can offer a good service, feel it would be more beneficial to us to spend our time concentrating on the other areas.

The Brockenhurst Sponsored ride was our last booking and we have informed all of our regulars that we will not be covering events next year. We will still cover the Boxing Day Point to Point and are available for commissions or yard visits, both of which take a lot less time. The event-images website will remain online, but will be updated accordingly.

The NFED is working really well and with more time to keep on top of it, it will get even better. There are new websites starting up all the time, either copying us or offering a similar service. We have the advantage of being already established, everything is carried out in house, making us far more efficient and cheaper than the others. The site has now become very large and people rightly expect a professional service, we need to make the time to offer this service. We also need to spend more time contacting businesses to further develop the new business directory.

Through Claire’s business, we have access to the majority of equestrian prints that are available. We would like to offer these through the NFED Gift Shop with the buyers being able to choose how each print is framed. This will be a unique bespoke service with collection or local delivery only.

Claire has plenty of work and loads of ideas. She has now stepped down from the Woodlanders art group and will be working her way through a backlog of commissions, whilst working towards biannual solo exhibitions and new prints.

I hope to be able to offer to build and run more websites, as I normally turn them down due to lack of time. The picture framing business, although not advertised is continuing to grow and to be honest makes a pleasant change as there is no computer involved!

Finally, I hope to return to enjoying photography. It has been a hobby for 30 years, but running around shows has certainly taken a lot of the fun out of it for me. We have met some lovely people and had some great laughs, but it our turn to get out on the horses and let somebody else photograph us!.

Steve

For technical reasons, once again we have had to change our popular E-mailing list. All the addresses have been copied over, so it is just a case of everyone confirming their subscription by clicking on a link in an Email. The new mailing list software is supplied by Bravenet and should be far more reliable than the old software run on our own servers. It has a double opt in/opt out feature, which in plain English means you have to confirm your subscription when you join or when you leave. We have paid for an upgrade which removes adverts, your address is secure and you can leave at any time by clicking on the link at the bottom of the news letter. If you would like to join the mailing list, please Click Here.

The main difference you will see, is that Newsletters will now be in html rather than plain text. It is divided up into sections: What's New, Business News & Quick Links, other section will be added as required. If your Email program cannot handle html, you will see an alternative plain text version as before.

If you have news that you would like to send out, please Email it to the usual address. The business news section is strictly for the use of our affiliates or those listed in the Business Directory.

The Business Directory has now been replaced with the brand new version. The old directory has been archived and will remain online until the end of July. If you are listed in the old directory and would like to continue advertising your services through the NFED, please submit your listing in the new directory as soon as possible.

Adverts offering any kind of service for payment or business are not longer accepted in the classifieds.

Why Change the Directory?

The business directory is the original part of the site and apart from some minor cosmetic changes has remained unchanged for nearly 9 years providing free listing for all equestrian businesses and services in the area. Many of the listing were out of date and needed updating or removing. The new directory will encourage advertisers to update their own listing and if they are no longer required, they will be removed when they expire.

Listings are no longer free of charge; a nominal fee of £15.00 for 3 months, £27.00 for 6 months or £50.00 per year is being charged to cover the running of the directory.

In exchange we will now offer a far superior service to advertisers: Listings are greatly improved, the directory now has powerful search facilities, A to Z listings are supplied, a new Business News page with links from “What’s New” on the NFED homepage has been created and full support is included in the price.

We will be happy to run listings for anyone offering a service or running a business that does not have internet access. Directory listings will remain free of charge for Affiliates, Banner advertisers, Associations, Clubs and Charities.

We will be contacting everyone that has a listing in the original directory to inform them of the changes.

What You Must Do.

If you offer any kind of service or run an equestrian related business and would like to benefit by advertising it through the NFED, please list your details in the directory.

Submitting your listing in the new directory couldn’t be easier. Just go to the directory www.nfed.co.uk/directory.htm and click on the “submit listing” link. Fill in the submission form and select which categories are appropriate for your listings. You can use just 1 or enter the same listing in up to 3 categories providing they are relevant. (If there are no relevant categories, please contact us, new categories can easily be added if required.) Choose a password and submit your entry.

Payment can be made online by debit/credit card or you can post a cheque. We will send receipts by Email and a reminder when your listing is due for renewal.

Your listing will be checked by the administrator and providing everything is ok, it will be approved when payment has been received. We will also add your details to the advertiser A to Z and link to your individual listings.

Every listing has full support, meaning you can log in with your listing number and password to make changes or upload a photograph, or you can ask us to sort this out for you, the choice is yours. If you would like a free map link added to your details, please email us.

This is the biggest change made to the NFED since its launch. It was necessary and we apologise for any inconvenience caused during the change over period.

Steve Kitcher

Two new categories have been added to the classifieds: "Foals & Youngstock" & "Project Horses & Ponies". The first is self explanatory; the second is for horses that have problems or need a special or knowledgeable home for what ever reason.

If you already have an advert posted in an existing category that would be better suited to one of the new categories, please post a new advert & Email the editor with your previous advert details, the new advert will then be approved free of charge & the old advert removed.

To provide unbiased information on all aspects of equestrianism for the New Forest & Central South including: Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire & the Isle of Wight. Providing information is relevant to the equine community, it may be displayed without prejudice on this site. Any views or information published are not necessarily the views of the Editor.

Please use the submission forms if possible for your listings. But Email, fax, or post will be accepted.

If you have any idea's for the site, new subjects, etc, or you just find the site useful, please let us know. A bit of encouragement goes a long way.

If you appreciate the work that goes into running the NFED or profit through the site, please make a payment and help to keep this unique service online. You can pay immediately online by credit/debit card, or post a cheque. Due to the cost of banking transactions, the minimum we can accept is £8.00.

Thank you for your support..