People with epilepsy who want to share experiences and keep in contact with others via the Internet can now benefit from a new, more sophisticated message forum that has been launched by leading epilepsy charity, the National Society for Epilepsy (NSE).

Fast and easy to use, the new forum has been introduced following feedback from visitors to NSE's former message board which regularly received 80 visitors a day.

NSE web editor Anna Parikh said: "An increasing number of online users were commenting that they found the previous message board difficult to use.  We also had suggestions for features that would be useful to include, such as a search facility, separate boards for different groups of people, and better layout of messages and replies.  We've been able to incorporate all these additional features in the new forum."

The purpose of the forum remains the same: to give people who are affected by epilepsy the opportunity to communicate with each other - to ask questions, share experiences and support one another.  For many people it can be the one place where they feel understood.

To make it easier to use, and to protect people's privacy, NSE is not making it compulsory to register to use the forum. However people who choose to register benefit from additional features, such as private messaging.

The forum offers the following:
· the option to organise the forum into different categories.  At the moment we have a category for people recently diagnosed with epilepsy and one for parents of children with epilepsy.  There is also a general category for discussion of any aspect of epilepsy.
· the option to use 'smilies' and other emoticons to portray emotions.
· the facility to edit or delete your own messages.
· a private messaging system.
· a search facility, to find past messages on a particular subject.
· good security so that people who abuse the forum - for example by promoting commercial products or pyramid schemes - can be banned.

The new forum is powered by phpbb, which is a free off-the-shelf package for the set up of online communities.  It is being increasingly used for message boards across the Internet, so many people will be familiar with it.  It has been customised to look and feel like the rest of NSE's website.

 (21/8/04)