Come and spread the Mumsnet love locally!

[KateMumsnet]

Hello everyone,

Have you found your new Local site yet? We've given all 170 of them a lick of paint, and we hope they'll really help to make parents lives easier (our mission, in case you didn't know )

But we need your help! We're asking every MNer to nip over to their Local talk board and help a local parent out. Share your hard-won local knowledge on a thread - or ask your own question about what's going on near you: local schools, clubs, businesses - anything and everything local! The more bustling the Talk boards, the more useful they'll be - prizes to be won (including our exclusive MNHQ mugs usually available only to slebs etc!)

We're also on the lookout for a number of Local editors to keep Mumsnetters up to date about what's on in their area, on an ad revenue-share basis. Sound interesting? Ping us a mail on [email protected] and we can send you more info.

If you're already signed up to a Local site, you can see threads about your area in the 'Local' tab at the top of Active Conversations. If not, find your local Talk board via your Local site.

Cheers all! As ever, it's a work in progress and we're keen to know what you think - let us know in the thread below.

MNHQ

Not sure how to get onto MN local. Tried searching and on topics but not there. Add to the app and we'd be there.

Never - as it happens it was Hampshire I was talking about already being too big. It must be 50 miles from the Farnborough corner to the other side of the New Forest. I can see the argument for merging us with P and S as many people in wider Hants probably have a fair amount of knowledge about one or both but not about market towns 40 miles away.

As an illustration of the lack of traffic on MN Local (which will continue until MN Local is available on the App), anyone who posts on MN Glasgow local board is eventually, once someone notices the post advised to post on the MN Scotsnet topic to get a decent response.

Yes prettybird! Forgot to mention not being able to NC, very irritating!!

I won't use them until I can name change on them. I see them as the absolute easiest way to be outed on MN. I would like to have a separate name for posting on the local boards to my usual posting name.

Also my two local area boards cover a huuuuuge area, approximately 110 miles from north to south. One of the counties used to be three separate counties prior to boundary changes and the county as a whole is still very much split into three different areas that have very little to do with each other and is too wide an area to make the local board appealing.

Perhaps MN could consider allowing local editors to create sub sections within the local boards to account for local geography?

I think the local MN sites don't take off because local fb groups do the job so well already, whereas the main MN site is unsurpassed. My local fb pages are extremely active, answers within minutes, plenty of reviews, and extremely local. Borough-wide does not feel that local for London, for e.g. That said I'm willing to get involved in my local MN if a rep is needed. Will check

Borough-wide seems to work well for us in Merton, Yogafire. We meet up in Wimbledon, which is really easy for us all to get to. It feels like a very handy local group of like-minded women. All of us are MNers, after all, and that is quite a significant thing to have in common.

Hello from Ealing in West London! We would really appreciate your input on our brand new site.

Plus we have some fantastic competitions running on our Talk at the moment to win tickets to Ealing Comedy, Jazz and Blues festivals!!!

Scrowy I have a different user name on my local board, so it was always possible. Agree it's an easy way to be outed, hence me using a different name there. I live on the border of 2 counties which constitute pretty much the whole of East Anglia, so a huge area.

Oh yes this isn't the user name I have for the local boards, my local board user name is the one that I signed up with many moons ago and which I have since posted personal stuff under on the main boards.

I don't use that name anymore, I have been Scrowy for some time but if I used my previous name on the local boards (my only option) I may be identified and previous posts under that name could be looked up.

I want to change my name on the local boards before I will use them.

I would also like to be able to name change. This isn't my local name, but like Scrowy my local name is one I have also used in the past to post personal things elsewhere on the site. It's hard to offer advice about schools etc without saying or implying which school your child goes to, for example.

We have some fantastic competitions running on the Nottingham site too

Right now you can enter competitions to win a family ticket to PAW Patrol Live! at the Motorpoint Arena, or to the Smooth Cinema drive-in movie festival. I have a few more tickets to Dinosaurs of China up my sleeve too.

In fact I'd say there are too many competitions and not enough talk on our Talk Board at the moment. I can address part of that, by running competitions via our e-newsletter and on social media instead - but that means you'd need to sign up to receive the newsletter to see them all. You can do this via your newsletter options

Yes, our Talk Board is often dominated by 'moving to Nottingham' and school advice threads - and these are fantastically useful to those posting.

If you'd like to chat about what you've see at the theatre, which park is your favourite, where's best for cocktails, or to arrange a local meet-up you are very, very welcome to do that - and people do generally respond

Yeah TheCommoner I can totally see the MN link as working well from a get together pov

I'm in Trafford and would love our local to be more active - but how to achieve it??

Maybe the local sites would be more appealing if people in the area posted on them? Just a thought...

Must be a right pain in the arse for those who were motivated enough to use Local years ago and now can't change their special local names. That would put me right off too.

Love your user name shitalopram
am trying to wean myself off the stuff at the moment!

I did try posting on local boards back in the day but the lack of replies made it pointless

Good points about the name change issues. @KateMumsnet - did I remember some talk about being able to change names now or soon, or did I dream that ?

I'm not actually local to my "local" site. I'm in the next borough, not sure if it got set automatically or if I made a mistake when registering. I am in London, so local only makes sense if it is ueber-local, catchments etc for everything from school to GP are so tight that a borough 1 mile away is largely irrelevant.

Think I'm being stupid. Is there a way to "join" your local site or do you just bookmark the page on your browser and check it?

@bubblesagain

I'm going to be annoying and point out that the local site is really crappy for tabbing navigation (accessibility). On the mumsnet site, when you use tab to navigate, the element you have tabbed to becomes highlighted with a border blue box so you know what element or menu item you are clicked on. When tabbing on the local site nothing is highlighted so you have no idea what you have tabbed across to as the focus css currently has outline none, which means for tab accessibility their is no indication when an element is selected.

www.outlinenone.com/ more info on why that css styling is important.

It's a 20 second fix and would be helpful.

Hi bubblesagain

Thanks for this feedback! We've passed it on to our tech team and it's something we'll definitely be looking at.

@AnarchyKitty

Hmmmm... I've just popped over to my local and it's dead. I'm up for reviving it if possible, do you think becoming an editor for it would help get it moving?

Hello there! Yes, part of the role of being a local ed is posting on the boards and trying to drive traffic to it. If you're interested do please send us a mail to [email protected] and we'll come back to you asap.

@Somerville

Are there different rules for advertising on Local? From a peek at mine, all the posts are from spammers at this point. I wasn't sure whether to report or not.

Hey Somerville, thanks for flagging. Any advertising threads should have an MN sticky icon next to them. If there's no icon and you think it looks off by all means report! We're always happy to take a look and clarify matters.

@Zoflorabore

I still haven't met in person irl who's a MNer and I would be very happy to shake the Liverpool board up! My dp's default question when he gets in from work is " you on Mumsnet again? " I loves it.

Thanks Zoflorabore!

There never seems to be anyone on my local, last thread was in april this year