Happy Birthday Ostomyland! We are 12 today, and without the support of our wonderful members and readers we would never have made it this far. So, thank you very, very much everyone.

As promised today is the day I’m launching v2.0 of the wiki. The links on the menu on the left hand side have been updated, and you can also click here to go to it. As with all wiki’s this is a project that is a continual work in progress, it isnt an exhaustaive Ostomy encyclodpaedia… yet. And also like other wiki’s YOU (yes you, the one reading this!) can add and edit pages. Full instructions are on the wiki homepage. If you do create a page, dont worry over the formatting, I’ll tidy it all up if anything goes wrong. Just have fun playing with it.

v2.0 of the wiki contains almost 250 pages of ostomy related health and product related information. Thats over 100 pages more than it’s previous incarnation.

I’m delighted to be able to announce that the new Ostomyland Community message board is now live. You can access it via the links on the left hand side menu, or by visiting us directly at the new link of http://www.ostomyland.org/ostomyboardipb/

Thanks to everyone for their patience over the last 48 hour during our message board downtime. I hope you enjoy the new board with it’s many new features such as free blogs, integrated chat and integrated photo galleries. And of course we’ve not forgotten the Ostomy Support forums which are still there as always to offer advice and support from ostomates for ostomates.

The new blogs feature is going to be a great resource for ostomates to chart their progress since the operation, and to let future ostomates read what to expect pre-and-post op. And of course the blogs can be used for off topic blogging as well, I’m not limiting the use of them to ostomy-only content.

The galleries will feature all our members photos that they want to share with us, and will help future ostomates see how life goes on post op, and that having an Ostomy is not the end of the world.

The integrated chat room access link is a great boon to the board, giving members a simple one click access into the channel. When you are logged in you just need click on the Chat Room tab on the message board, and you’ll be taken directly into the room, with your board username as your chat room nickname.

There’s a lot of new features to the board, and I appreciate it’s a lot to get used to. To try and help members adjust to the new features I’ve created a series of “How-To” help videos, showing you how to use the new features of the board. You’ll find the videos in the board’s “New Board Tech Help” forum, the link to which is here:
http://www.ostomyland.org/ostomyboardipb/index.php?/forum/2-new-board-techie-help/

As members of our community will already be aware, we have some new message board/community software in the works. I’m pleased to be able to announce that the Ostomyland Message Board will be upgraded to the Invision Power Board system during the weekend of September 12/13/14th. During this time our message board will be unavailable to allow us to work on the database and website.

The new software will give us lots of new features that will help make Ostomyland more streamlined in it’s use as well as offering new services such as free blogs for all members, integrated one-click access to our chat room, facebook connect features and free photo gallery service.

We are asking all members whom have stored private messages on our message board to make copies of them, as these will not be converted over to the new board. We hope to be able to convert about 99% of all member accounts and current threads/posts, but there is always the chance of corruption during the conversion process so we are also advising members that if they have any favourite threads to make back ups of them just in case they do get lost in transit – so to speak. Full details of how to do this can be found in the full announcement linked to below.

Message Board Downtime and Upgrade Announcement:
http://www.ostomyland.org/ostomyboard/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=8840

We’re busy giving our message board community and chat room a recamp. In the near future you’ll be able to log into the chat room via the message board, making connection and chatting considerably easier.

In the meantime we’ve just launched our newly updated Chatroom Stats page. Automatically updated by Pooh (the channel bot) every ten minutes, the stats page shows the top 25 chatters usage statistics along with photos of them, random quotes for each of the 25 (which can often be hilarious when taken out of context), and lots of fun facts such as most used words, who said the most along with charts and graphs of chat room usage.

It’s a really fun page and a firm chatter favourite, so even if you dont join in the chat room why not check out our new stats page. You can find it at:

http://www.ostomyland.com/olandstats/

Want your picture on the stats?
If you are a chat user, and want your picture added to the script ready for when you break into the top 25 users, then please email the photo to me as an attachment, or preferably a URL to its location on the internet. I also need your channel nickname and any reserve names you may have (such as away nicks etc)  and I’ll do the rest!

Dont forget though that you have to be in the top 25 chatters for the photo to show, so thats as good an excuse as ever to join todays weekly support chat meeting (8pm UK / 3pm EST ish)  and have a good ol’ chat! Chat room is also open 24/7 for off topic chat or impromptu support chats.

We already have a twitter page which covers the main Ostomyland site, which talks about the site’s announcements and new content. But now, we have another twitter page which is called Ostomyland Chat – which is for tweeting about the chat room and board communities, and @’s are welcomed to that twitter page too!

So, why not check us out sometime over on Twitter – the links are below!

New Ostomyland Chat/Community Twitter Page:
http://twitter.com/olandchat

Original Main Ostomyland Content Announcements Twitter Page:
http://twitter.com/ostomyland

If you’ve never joined the Ostomyland chat room in the past, now is a great time to do so, as we’ve just uploaded our brand new “How To Connect to the Ostomyland Chat Room using our Java Client” video. All you need to access the chat room is a browser, so why not watch the video and give it a try.

Hint: Play the video in full screen. Click to pause the video, and click on the full screen icon.

Useful Links:
Ostomyland Chat Page
Ostomyland Chat Meeting Info

Hard though it may be to believe, it’s now 2 years since beebee found the funtrivia site. This allows us to create our own tournaments, and so – on July 1st 2007 – Ostomyland’s Daily Trivia Quiz was born.

Since then, 112 people have played in the tournament.
MikeNZ has appeared in the Hall of Fame an impressive 23 out of a possible 24 times!
Karen and vampirlover are there 20 times.
rachie and Mitzi 18, Hovis 17, Lory, Gramapat and ant649 have appeared 16 times, while RedWingsFan has been there 15.

Karen has been in first place for the month a staggering 8 times, but ant649 is close behind with a total of 5 times! Meanwhile, MikeNZ has been second a massive 6 times.

But everyone who plays can gain points and cyber prizes…which in my case is just as well!

Have you played the Quiz? If not, come along and join in!
Ostomyland’s Daily Trivia Quiz

See you there!

Ostomyland recently applied for the Health On-Net Foundation’s “HONcode” certification, and Im pleased to be able to announce that we’ve been successful!

The Health On-Net Foundation is a non governmental organisation that aims to guide the growing community of healthcare consumers and providers on the World Wide Web to sound, reliable medical information and expertise.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s Saturday! The weekend is here, and Ostomyland that can only mean one thing. . . yes, it’s time for our weekly IRC chat ostomy support meeting. Every Saturday at 8pm BST (GMT+1), and lasting most of the evening, you can join us in our chat room for the meeting. Ask other ostomates questions, shoot the breeze with people in a similar boat to yourself, or just watch what everyone else says and jump in when you feel ready too.

If you’ve not joined us in the chat room before, why not make today the day! You dont need to have any sepereate software, you can join Ostomyland’s chat room using your own web browser. Simply click here to go to the chat webpage, scroll down to where it says “Java Chat Windows: take your pick…” then just choose what size of chat window you want to use and click on it’s link. Once the new window has loaded, just enter your nickname, click connect and then chat away!

Cant make the meeting today? Dont worry, its on every week and the chat room is open 24/7 for impromptu support and/or off topic chat, although we cannot guarantee that that will always be someone in the chat room every minute of the day – in fact we can all but guarantee that that will NOT be the case, lol. UK and US weekday evenings are usually the best time to find people in the chat room away from the weekly meetings.

Visit the Chat Room:

http://ostomyland.com/mainsite/ostomyland-chat-room/

World Time: There is a clock at the top of this post showing you what the current UK BST (GMT+1) time is to help you work out what the starting time of the meeting is.