Ta-da!

Introducing the next big thing: Blipfoto's very own discussion forums.

Us Blippers are universally recognised as one of the most talkative species on the web, but until now our chattering has been limited to comments on each other's journals. That's great, but it does tend to constrain what we talk about.

We hope the forums will encourage us to talk about other things - stuff happening on the site, photographic techniques and, for the photo-geeks, what's in our camera bags. There's a forum specifically for new blippers where we can all offer a bit of friendly help to our latest recruits, and even somewhere to talk about last night's TV.

To make sure they fitted snugly into the site, our forums have been built from the ground up. The Blipfoto Boffins have been working hard on this for some time, and a small group of contributors have been helping us test over the course of the last week (thanks, folks). We're pretty confident we've ironed out all the problems, but do let us know if you spot anything untoward.

We've got a few more forum-related features up our sleeves, but we really want to see how people use the basic set up before we start adding more bells and whistles. If you have any suggestions of your own, get in touch.

Currently, there aren't any rules specific to the forums - we think our existing contributor rules will cover what happens in there just fine. However, we know that forums are a bit like motor vehicles and have a tendency to bring out in the worst in people, so we'd like to take this opportunity to re-iterate the 'be excellent to each other' principle - if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.

We really hope you enjoy this exciting new part of the site. You can access them any time you're signed in by clicking on 'Forums' in the left hand menu.

But before you rush on over, there is one other thing we need to mention. With the number of contributors now using Blipfoto, the volume of material we hold and the amount of traffic the site receives, we realised we couldn't neglect the legal aspects of what we're doing any longer. (Actually, if the truth be told, our lawyer got us in a headlock and wouldn't let us breath until we said 'terms of use' three times.)

We've been very careful not to impose any new restrictions or change the ethos of Blipfoto - this is really about protecting our contributors and their work, those of us behind the scenes, and the site itself. There are three separate legal documents: the Blipfoto Terms of Use, an 'Acceptable Use Policy and a Privacy Policy. You can find them all here:

http://www.blipfoto.com/legal.php

Next month, we're going to be asking all contributors to agree to the Terms of Use if they wish to continue using the site. That gives you a few weeks to review these documents and understand what you'll be agreeing to.

Why are you still reading? The forums await...!