Instant messaging and phone apps such as Snapchat or WhatsApp seem to have taken the place of (relatively) old style internet forums.
Many forum members have complained that the adverts on this website in recent times often obscure the content submitted by members, but this website and it's forum were always designed to be used primarily by laptop or desktop computers, whereas smart phones lend themselves more to the instant messaging apps that I referred to.
In the Haymarket era, this forum was regarded by editorial staff as the online voice of the readership and also of the journalists who contribute to blogs and advice sections on the website as a whole.
Future PLC who now own this website / forum have indeed increased the amount of advertising on this website / forum since they absorbed the Practical Caravan brand, but so far there has been no feedback or acknowledgement from Future plc that they are even aware of the existence of this internet forum.
The current editor of Practical Caravan magazine continues to add articles to this website, although he has never to my knowledge posted on the message boards. To be fair, historically not many of the Practical Caravan journalists have ever done so so this is nothing new.
This forum is fairly well established with a nucleus of loyal and knowledgeable regular contributors that the brand are lucky to have as followers.
The younger generation tend to use the instant messaging apps to find or to exchange information, unlike many of us here who tend to build friendly online relationships over time.
The instant messaging crowd don't want to be anybody's online friend, they simply get the information that they are seeking and move on. This would explain why some newer forum members ask a question and never reply, and are never heard from again.
I think that it would be extremely difficult and time consuming to launch and to establish an internet forum such as this one nowadays, the world wide web has moved on and is constantly evolving so any new admin would be playing catch-up for evermore.
There are better and more efficient platforms for information sharing now, I administer the internet profiles of two of the choirs that I'm associated with, and website traffic is virtually zero, both websites are used simply as archives.
The choral Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp platforms that I admin attract regular followers, enquiries etc, and things such as advertising posters for forthcoming events and photographs can be uploaded from any camera-phone with no fuss and no need for third party photo hosting involvement.
Perhaps this might explain (but not excuse) the apparent lack of support from Future plc?