I'll keep this thread up for a bit while we're figuring things out... feel free to post questions, suggestions, or any feedback about the board here.
Questions or suggestions for this board?
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Tim & Pookey
Member
I can copy over the rest of the sticky posts and other relevant information. That seems like it would be pretty high priority.
Tim & Pookey
Member
Or, instead of “copy”, we could link to those posts on FDMB and send people there. Just trying to figure out how we’ll explain to newbies how to test, dosing methods, etc…
Also, if anyone wants to tackle making the logo more fun I’m open to that.
I like the logo! It's cute!
Tim -
You can’t copy any of the templates, sticky notes, FAQs, etc. They are proprietary to FDMB. We’ve had issues with people plagiarizing the material.
You can’t copy any of the templates, sticky notes, FAQs, etc. They are proprietary to FDMB. We’ve had issues with people plagiarizing the material.
Tim & Pookey
Member
No problem at all! Curious to get your thoughts on what else we should have here. Do you think there would be any issues if we had links to FDMB in the sticky posts here?
On the FDMB, the Forums under More Topics are only visible to someone who is logged in. This allows some privacy for people. Is this possible with this version of the software?
Tim & Pookey
Member
This should be all set.
I think you need to give consideration to what the purpose of the site is. If this is meant to be a back-up to FDMB, historically the "back-up board" was for a chat only purpose. There were none of the features available since the people using the back-up board were already members, had spreadsheets, etc. When we had outages, they were not prolonged. What's going on now is an exceptional situation. If this site continues to be active past the current emergency, then the site is in competition with FDMB.
Tim & Pookey
Member
Good point. I will try to disable or hide this site when the FDMB is back online and keep everything here on standby.
I do not want to compete with the FDMB or fragment this community.
Maybe it would help to share my motivation - personally I enjoy the tech side of things like this but never really had a use case. So, I thought if I could help the amazing people here and learn a new platform it would be a win-win. I owe you all so much for helping me with Pookey - the last thing I want to do is do something wrong by this community.
Some of us have been here long enough to remember there was a back-up board. The original owner of the board, Rebecca, was not tech savvy and had her nephew, Robert, would help out. We went through several migrations of the board to different servers and there was considerable glitchiness -- hence the need for a back-up. The down time has never been this long. I'm delighted that there are members willing to volunteer to help and who have the technical skills to do so. This is truly a community of caring people (and their cats!).
@Tim & Pookey Is there any way to store pictures posted by members in threads in a separate directory/partition (my tech ignorance is showing!) and archive them or I don't know - even delete them after an x number of weeks/months. Like you said in Ivy's condo, all these pictures add up over time and consume too much space. We don't want to do these with photos in stickies though.
Laurie & Petey
Active member
That's actually a great idea and Tim I'll bet xenFORO has a solution for that, cause every board would run into this problem.
Tim & Pookey
Member
Yes, basically! On the backend you can link a separate database in the cloud which would get us a lot of inexpensive storage. The problem is the platform this site runs on, XenForo, to upgrade their built in storage is expensive.
Yesterday we used 15-20MB total which is nothing basically… We should be good for a while without any changes, but if this board sticks around I’d set this up for sure.
Tim & Pookey
Member
This is something I’m looking at but on the front end. How cool would it be to have a photo gallery on the homepage or wherever with pics from people’s threads. Ranked by most liked/reacted and change out every day or couple days. I feel like pics get lost in the threads sometimes…
This board should be kept as a back up just for Lantus users, at least for now. Maybe remove the other sections for now? I've been a member long enough to remember the old back up Lantus board. It wasn't used much when FDMB was working just fine.
Random thought - maybe require approval of new members? Just thinking about newbies who somehow hear about this board and try to join but are still in the very early stages of the diabetes journey. Maybe those people can be directed to the main FDMB or the FB group? I know there are other cat diabetes forums out there but the quality of advice may be questionable (I looked at Reddit once. It was such an unfriendly environment and I saw one dangerous advice about shooting a full dose at a BG of 40. And don't even get me started on YDC....)
Random thought - maybe require approval of new members? Just thinking about newbies who somehow hear about this board and try to join but are still in the very early stages of the diabetes journey. Maybe those people can be directed to the main FDMB or the FB group? I know there are other cat diabetes forums out there but the quality of advice may be questionable (I looked at Reddit once. It was such an unfriendly environment and I saw one dangerous advice about shooting a full dose at a BG of 40. And don't even get me started on YDC....)
I'd give some thought to photos. Many of the sticky notes include photos (e.g., microdosing). People will also post a video (e.g., their cat's unusual behavior that they want others to observe and comment on). Videos can use a great deal of space. If there's a photogallery, linking it to an outside spot may be a reasonable approach.
Tim & Pookey
Member
Good thoughts! What to do with new members is tricky. Because if they go from here to FDMB and have a question they’ll get stuck. If they just post here in main we can set them up with whatever links to FDMB they need.
There is a sticky in the main forum here that asks for basic information about the cat and does link to FDMB. But I could try to make that more clear.
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Tim & Pookey
Member
Good point. Maybe there could be a checkbox when uploading to allow a photo to be used in an album or something like that. I’ll keep researching for now.
Mary & Jude
Active member
Tim, Can Angela, Bhooma, Chris, Elise, and any other "experts" I might have left out receive the "well-known" member designation? Many of us know them, but if someone new comes into the group, they might feel more comfortable receive dosing advice from them if they know that they are trusted advisors.
Tim & Pookey
Member
Great idea! Right now it's based off messages and reactions received and progressively scales. Doesn't seem like I can easily bypass this for individual users without disabling the scale feature (which is nice). So I gave them a separate tag of "Trusted Advisor". Let me know what you think of the name... other options could be "FDMB Hero" or "Dose Whisperer"...
Is Elise here?
Mary & Jude
Active member
I'm not sure about Elise. She was in the FB group. Maybe she's not here.
This actually might be something to ask @Wendy&Neko and/or @Sienne & Gabby (GA). "Advisor" alone might be better than "trusted." On the FB group, they are designated "moderators" and "administrators." I'm always thinking about legal implications, and "trusted advisor" might come back to bite someone.
Tim & Pookey
Member
Disregard - I found a way to insert a blank for the default titles. We’ll stick with “Well-known Member” 
Marje & Gracie is also a mod, but she's on holiday and I hope we'll be back to normal on FDMB before she gets back!
I'd rather we not fuss with different tags for people. FDMB changed people to Well Known after a certain time period and number of posts. New people can look at the date joined or date of diagnosis to get an idea how much experience people have. We also don't like the idea of designating people as advisors. Part of that is indeed the legal implications. A quote from FDMB:
I'd rather we not fuss with different tags for people. FDMB changed people to Well Known after a certain time period and number of posts. New people can look at the date joined or date of diagnosis to get an idea how much experience people have. We also don't like the idea of designating people as advisors. Part of that is indeed the legal implications. A quote from FDMB:
Agree with Wendy. I’m still on holiday but trying to poke my head in
Eva eva
Member
I did try to copy and they don't copy well.
Eva eva
Member
I agree with techy back up. The situation we are in right now has the potential to be a lot longer than we want to see. If Tim can be in contact with the main person who runs the site, we have a back-up person at the helm at all times. I am not wanting to inflame this unfortunate situation we are experiencing. But every venture needs plan B.
More of a feedback for those who are able to be in contact with Robert - designate a second Admin as a back up for FDMB. I'm not sure how FDMB is set up but if possible, auto send a welcome email to all newbies as they join with basic info and links to back up boards in case FDMB doesn't work (are there back up boards for ProZinc, etc?). Once FDMB is back running smoothly, add a sticky or announcement with links to back up boards and also note this on the main FelineDiabetes.com home page since sometimes newbies find that first.
This board doesn't need to hide or be disabled when FDMB is running again. Just put up a sticky / announcement to let people know to post all FD questions on FDMB since they won't get any responses here. The old back up board was left as is and there have been a few times where Lantus users would post non-FD things / social stuff there privately for one reason or another. I think there were only two sections on the old back up board, Lantus Land and Community.
This board doesn't need to hide or be disabled when FDMB is running again. Just put up a sticky / announcement to let people know to post all FD questions on FDMB since they won't get any responses here. The old back up board was left as is and there have been a few times where Lantus users would post non-FD things / social stuff there privately for one reason or another. I think there were only two sections on the old back up board, Lantus Land and Community.
Tim & Pookey
Member
Could use “Community/Other Topics” for that, or “The Meme Den”.
Tim & Pookey
Member
Thank you for sharing such a well-articulated post. I completely agree that the priority should always be making sure cat parents, especially those newly facing a diagnosis, have access to clear, trustworthy, and easy-to-navigate information, whether it’s on this board or the main board. That’s great feedback on the new user improvements too.
That said, I also want to emphasize something just as critical, this community functions thanks to the moderators and long-time members who donate an incredible amount of their time and experience to help others. Their input carries a lot of weight when talking about what this site is and the future of it.
Interesting thought about the marketplace. We could have a community shop or affiliate link system, with “commonly recommended” products for new members, or even negotiated discounts on recurring items for existing members.
Money could go toward DCIN (or similar) or site improvements - whether that means updating guides, fixing broken links, or modernizing the site’s interface over time. It could be a low pressure way for us to support both the forum and some great foundations.
At the end of the day, this isn’t about creating competition - it’s about finding ways to work together and make things even better for everyone and their cats. If anything were to move forward, it would only make sense to do it hand-in-hand with the moderators and longtime members, in my opinion.
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FDMB used to do the affiliates things. This was years ago on the old platform. I'm an old timer who remembers that Hocks.com was the most popular affiliate one because that was where many US members bought insulin syringes and testing supplies from. The current main FelineDiabetes.com has a Shopping Partners link near the bottom of the page but none of the links are currently active / working.
YDC (or whatever it is called now) was once viewed as a competitor to FDMB. Not sure if that's still the case.
YDC (or whatever it is called now) was once viewed as a competitor to FDMB. Not sure if that's still the case.
Jack & Mopem'sMom
New member
Thanks for setting this up Tim. FDM management can be a lonely place at times, and the sudden loss of your support community is not good for a lot of people, from a mental health POV. Much appreciated! 
Many great points which we Mods have been trying to push for some time. Unfortunately, we do not have the ability to update links on the home page but we try to keep the ones in the forum updated. If, any time, a member finds a broken link in the forum, we ask that one of the Mods be notified so we can fix those.
The priority is getting the main forum up and running. We can then try, again, to see the webmaster a “wish list”. Thank you and I’m so glad you followed us over here.
We’ve already asked him about a backup admin. When a new member joins, they are sent an automatic welcoming message with basic info and links. If we can get a backup board agreed upon permanently with the Webmaster, as we used to have with Rebecca, we will update the message that goes out to new members. We can also pin a message on the main board for info on any interim backup board.
While the old backup board was for Lantus/Levemir users, this current interim one is for all FDMb users and that would be the goal with a permanent backup board…a place for all users.
Tim & Pookey
Member
Yes! I own www.sugarcatcentral.com, but currently don’t have it linked to this board! There has been some thought given to the name of this board so still working through that…@Tim & Pookey ,
You should consider purchasing www.sugarcat.org. It is a great domain name—easy to remember and well-suited for a non-profit, given the .org extension.
Or: www.sugarcatcentral.org
The current domain is quite long and difficult to remember.
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And redirect https://felinediabetes.org/fdmb// to www.sugarcat.org / www.sugarcatcentral.org
Edit: Never mind, I see that you have already purchased www.sugarcatcentral.com
At one point there was a sugercat FB group that gave iffy advice, so I'd be careful about using that name, or at least check if that still exists. We don't want to associate with that group.
There is a former group which was a spinoff from this group. They had a website but now are on FB and use “sugarcats”. They give very dangerous advice and we often get members in FDMB here because they’ve gotten such poor advice there so I don’t think we want long-term association with that name.@Tim & Pookey ,
You should consider purchasing www.sugarcat.org. It is a great domain name—easy to remember and well-suited for a non-profit, given the .org extension.
Or: www.sugarcatcentral.org
The current domain is quite long and difficult to remember.
Edit:
And redirect https://felinediabetes.org/fdmb// to www.sugarcat.org / www.sugarcatcentral.org
Edit: Never mind, I see that you have already purchased www.sugarcatcentral.com
Tim & Pookey
Member
For what it’s worth - I can’t find that group you’re mentioning, but I agree we don’t want any association like that. I have no attachment to the current name, it was just something I got from ChatGPT.
I believe their website is gone. I just checked FB, and they’ve changed the name to “Feline Diabetes Support Group”. They have pirated our spreadsheet format and many of our stickys.
There was a FB group called "Sugar Cats" but it was archived several years ago. They were separate from the Feline Diabetes Support Group but had several duplicate Admin/Mods. FB also has Diabetic Cat Help Tight Regulation Protocol that is associated with the other message board (DCH) that sent quite a few of its members to the FDMB due to their dangerous advice like not intervening with high carb food/Karo/syrup even if your cat dropped below 50 (2.8)
ETA: The FDSG is the one that pirated our spreadsheet and claimed it was their own. (along with a lot of other stuff from the FDMB) As they've drifted further and further away from what they were taught on the FDMB, they have also "edited" a lot of the things they took so they can say it's no longer the exact same things.
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