A Blog Post

Due to the age of the DCH forum and difficulties in upgrading to newer forum software, the decision was made to move the forum to Proboards.

The new forum can be found at http://diabeticcathelp.proboards.com

To avoid confusion, the old forum has been shut down.

Direct any questions to the new forum or the Facebook group.

At Diabetic Cat Help, our primary focus is to help those with diabetic cats use the Tight Regulation Protocol (TR) to achieve better blood glucose control and even remission. We are not a general feline diabetes support group. In addition to the forum, we also have a Facebook group dedicated to TR. The Facebook group is meant to be a gateway to the forum. No advice or dosing information is given on the FB group. To get that information, those who are interested must join the forum.

In order to join the FB group, we require that potential members read and acknowledge a set of rules that can be found here. New members are only added after acknowledging these rules. Failure to follow the rules result in removal from the group and a possible ban from future participation in the FB group and the Forum.

While this might seem harsh, it is important to follow TR closely to prevent possible harm to our cats. Bad advice could put cats in danger. Please note that these rules will be strictly enforced. One warning will be given upon a rules violation, and a subsequent violation will result in the banning.

There are many general diabetic cat help groups out on the internet. Before joining this group, potential users should decide if they are interested in learning about and following TR. If there is no interest, then this is not the correct group to join.

DCH has been around since 2010, and not much has changed since then. In the last month, I’ve been working on major updates, to make the site more usable. When the site was first created, smartphones had not yet gained popularity, and the first iPad was just becoming available. Most people in need of our services got to us through computer. In the past seven years, a lot has changed. One of the biggest complaints that we get is that our site is difficult to navigate using the smartphones that are so ubiquitous these days. Things are a bit better on tablets, but even they suffer from being smaller devices than what the site was originally intended to service.

These changes will remedy that situation. The update is being done in three phases.

1. A new website – The old website was done in a program named Joomla. This site is very dated and does not support the latest technology. As a result, I have not updated it. A new website was created to ease the burden of our use of Joomla. This site is already live. It looks a lot more modern and makes all current content available. The best part about the new site is that it is responsive. It looks just as good on a 4 inch iPhone as it does on a 27″ computer monitor.
2. Conversion of the new site to WordPress – The website that you’re currently reading is the WordPress website. In addition to making all of the current content available, WordPress will make it easy for our administrators and advisors to make new information available. The highlights of this site are a new blog section, a news section, and a page that highlights all of our OTJ cats. WordPress is a much more modern and updated technology and it will make it easier for us to keep everything updated. Just like the new website that this WordPress site replaces, this site is completely responsive.
3. Updated phpBB theme for the forum – Once the WordPress theme is in place, I will be turning my attention to getting the forum updated. Once done, it will be using a modern, responsive theme that will look great and be much more functional. By using a responsive theme, it will eliminate the need to use apps like Tapatalk to use the forum on small devices. The theme that I will be purchasing to use on the forum is modern and well supported. This will allow me to keep it updated more easily.

I’m hoping to have all of this done by the end of July.