Forces Online

It’s been a while, but what a journey it has been.

Back in July 2025, the team encouraged me to take a break. There were no issues at all — it was simply a case of juggling priorities and taking some time to recharge.

During that break, I spent some time in Mid Wales and decided to take a trip to Fishguard. As a child, with a family background split between Wales and Southern Ireland, I travelled to Ireland many times on the ferry from Fishguard. However, I hadn’t been back since my Armed Forces days, largely due to lack of time.

Of course, I took a laptop with me, and as luck would have it, it rained every single day!

For many years I have been a dedicated WordPress developer, and all of our websites were individual WordPress projects. While WordPress is a fantastic platform, I often found that achieving certain functions required multiple plugins, which could lead to conflicts, compatibility problems, and additional coding challenges.

Although I deliberately stayed away from Forces Online during my break, I started experimenting with AI and developed a couple of online utilities. That proved to be a real game changer. The projects involved PHP and SQL coding — areas I had previously found challenging. Having been involved in web hosting since the early 1990s and always having some form of website project on the go, this opened up entirely new possibilities.

Since that holiday less than twelve months ago, we have completely transformed both our look and our services. We have moved away from WordPress and onto custom-coded systems while continuing to use the same hosting infrastructure. Some of the utilities we have developed have even replaced paid services, helping us reduce costs and increase flexibility.

The main development work has now been completed, and I’m pleased to say that a former member has returned to the organisation and become involved with the new systems.. Tim has said that his mental health is more supported and his feelings of worthlessness has disappeared.

For me personally, I can now clearly see the direction I want Forces Online to take. The systems we have built are designed to help larger charities and support agencies reduce the time it takes for people to access the support they need.

Over the coming weeks, you’ll start to see many more updates from us as we move from the development phase back into actively managing and growing the platform.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us on this journey.