If you are a forum regular, then you may have noticed lots of little changes in our Care section layout over the last few days; with minor and major name changes in most forums and lots of new sub-forums appearing. The most obvious changes are two entirely new forums. Our practical advice and information guides in the green fields at the head of the various forums have also moved around.
The Guinea Pig Forum is now a whopping 18 years old and it is the only surviving independent general guinea pig forum that goes back to before the rise of social media. We have got lots more information and experience available since when we started out because the guinea pig world has moved on so much thanks to exchange of information o the internet and the rise of social media and huge advantages in veterinary medicine. We are also doing lots more things as a mutually supportive community.
The new layout gives all those areas where we give special support their due place and hopefully makes our various Care forums more navigable.
We have also plenty of new easily accessible storage space for our extensive information resource in the form of sub-forums at the top of each forum. Think of them as our bookcases where you can go and find more practical advice and in-depth information on what is going on in the main forum.
Our Support Corners are where we specifially give ongoing personalised practical and moral support as a community.
- We have a new Sexing Corner where we can help double check the gender of any new arrivals, any surprise babies or any piggies you have concerns about before you try to introduce them to new company.
- And we now also have a new dedicated End of Life and Bereavement Support Corner for helping those of us whose piggies are coming towards the end of their lives or have left us for the Rainbow Bridge by being there for them with moral support, understanding and helping to work you out the best way forward for you. We are not doing anything new; we just have our own dedicated space for it now.
We kindly ask you to just open one support thread in a Care forum for each case and bookmark it so you can come back to it as things develop and we can give you personalised support all the way through. You get the best of what you need for your own situation throughout without having to explain the background all the time because we can refresh our memory of where you stand if needed or check what has been said and ruled out or in before.
It also allows those of you who want to do their own searches to follow a case from start to end. Of course, we are always happy to hear back about the outcome, happy or sad! You are incidentally also helping other piggies down the line by allowing others to follow your own real life cases and not just get to hear all the horror stories or the miracle cures but very little about the vast majority in the middle.
In order to navigate our revamped forum better, I have written some more guides to explain our quirks and help you make the best of it. You can find them at the top of our Introduce Yourself forum.
But here they are as well:
Huge thanks go to @sport_billy , our previous forum owner, for all the hard and tedious nuts and bolts work in the old forum basement to pull off his transformative miracle without crashing anything. It was anything but easy and nobody but you could have done it without any mishaps.
I also want to thank our supportive and creative tech wizard @MattW for his magic with embedding our information hyperlinks to make our various information guides more visible. We cannot repeat all the little practical tricks and tips every time but they can really help you and also give you a step-by-step overview of what you are dealing with. It is all the little things that often throw us most.
Big thanks also to @BossHogg , our current owner, for giving me his full and unstinting support for pursuing my vision of what our forum can be and for the revamp of the Care section. .
And lastly - but very much not least - I want to thank all of you who are part of this amazing community. Without your ongoing and continuing support, this forum would not be here anymore.
When @sport_billy , @BossHogg and I took over the running of The Guinea Pig Forum (where we had been regular members of) 11 years ago on behalf of the then owner, we had a shared dream of having and keeping a friendly place in the face of a lot more challenges than we could ever expect.
However, it is YOU who have not only made our shared dream come true but who have allowed us to grow it into something truly exceptional and unique and who remain with us to keep on pushing into new territory simply by helping each other and by being the best we can be for the sake of our beloved piggies. Without your backing we could not keep on dreaming.
For this we thank you from the bottom of our heart.
Please let us know what you think of the changes. We really like to hear from as many of you as possible.
The Guinea Pig Forum is now a whopping 18 years old and it is the only surviving independent general guinea pig forum that goes back to before the rise of social media. We have got lots more information and experience available since when we started out because the guinea pig world has moved on so much thanks to exchange of information o the internet and the rise of social media and huge advantages in veterinary medicine. We are also doing lots more things as a mutually supportive community.
The new layout gives all those areas where we give special support their due place and hopefully makes our various Care forums more navigable.
We have also plenty of new easily accessible storage space for our extensive information resource in the form of sub-forums at the top of each forum. Think of them as our bookcases where you can go and find more practical advice and in-depth information on what is going on in the main forum.
Our Support Corners are where we specifially give ongoing personalised practical and moral support as a community.
- We have a new Sexing Corner where we can help double check the gender of any new arrivals, any surprise babies or any piggies you have concerns about before you try to introduce them to new company.
- And we now also have a new dedicated End of Life and Bereavement Support Corner for helping those of us whose piggies are coming towards the end of their lives or have left us for the Rainbow Bridge by being there for them with moral support, understanding and helping to work you out the best way forward for you. We are not doing anything new; we just have our own dedicated space for it now.
We kindly ask you to just open one support thread in a Care forum for each case and bookmark it so you can come back to it as things develop and we can give you personalised support all the way through. You get the best of what you need for your own situation throughout without having to explain the background all the time because we can refresh our memory of where you stand if needed or check what has been said and ruled out or in before.
It also allows those of you who want to do their own searches to follow a case from start to end. Of course, we are always happy to hear back about the outcome, happy or sad! You are incidentally also helping other piggies down the line by allowing others to follow your own real life cases and not just get to hear all the horror stories or the miracle cures but very little about the vast majority in the middle.
In order to navigate our revamped forum better, I have written some more guides to explain our quirks and help you make the best of it. You can find them at the top of our Introduce Yourself forum.
But here they are as well:
Huge thanks go to @sport_billy , our previous forum owner, for all the hard and tedious nuts and bolts work in the old forum basement to pull off his transformative miracle without crashing anything. It was anything but easy and nobody but you could have done it without any mishaps.
I also want to thank our supportive and creative tech wizard @MattW for his magic with embedding our information hyperlinks to make our various information guides more visible. We cannot repeat all the little practical tricks and tips every time but they can really help you and also give you a step-by-step overview of what you are dealing with. It is all the little things that often throw us most.
Big thanks also to @BossHogg , our current owner, for giving me his full and unstinting support for pursuing my vision of what our forum can be and for the revamp of the Care section. .
And lastly - but very much not least - I want to thank all of you who are part of this amazing community. Without your ongoing and continuing support, this forum would not be here anymore.
When @sport_billy , @BossHogg and I took over the running of The Guinea Pig Forum (where we had been regular members of) 11 years ago on behalf of the then owner, we had a shared dream of having and keeping a friendly place in the face of a lot more challenges than we could ever expect.
However, it is YOU who have not only made our shared dream come true but who have allowed us to grow it into something truly exceptional and unique and who remain with us to keep on pushing into new territory simply by helping each other and by being the best we can be for the sake of our beloved piggies. Without your backing we could not keep on dreaming.
For this we thank you from the bottom of our heart.
Please let us know what you think of the changes. We really like to hear from as many of you as possible.
