We are a website and forum set up to provide a point of reference, education and
assistance to new people coming into the BDSM lifestyle.
The name of the Beaten Track was chosen to represent a path that people have
decided they wish to follow in the scene. To tread the beaten track is to stay
on the path that has been trodden successfully by others, in safety.
Within the name of the Beaten Track is the acronym recently associated with
the scene; "Risk aware, consensually kinky"
So many people discover an interest in this particular scene and enter popular
websites, forums and contact sites in a bid to learn, and start their journey.
Regularly when they ask for advice they are shot down in flames and ridiculed.
They may attend munches and are faced with what they describe as cliques. The
Beaten Track has been set up to try to address this growing chasm between long
standing members of the scene and people just starting out.
As a result of the intolerance newcomers are facing, we have a growing number
of people who are being dishonest about their experiences within the scene.
Because they are not given access to sensible and verifiable information, they
resort to lying about what they know, to be accepted. We discovered people entering
the scene having read fantasy stories and novels such as the Story of O and
thinking that this is what actually occurs, that this is what the scene is all
about.
We were faced with stories and anecdotes of people that believed that to tell
any submissive to 'Kneel' made them a Master, rarely addressing the emotional
factors and care responsibilities that have to be considered to make this lifestyle
safe. We discovered attitudes of people who felt that being a Top meant they
could act exactly as they saw fit, rarely addressing or considering the consequences
of their actions, and the effect it could have on the sanity and wellbeing of
the people they interacted with.
Many people have been scarred physically and emotionally from bad experiences,
often caused by a lack of information, knowledge or safety! This is not just
a problem caused by a Top; everyone has a responsibility for their own safety
and welfare whether Top or bottom. Common sense and knowledge are the best forms
of protection that you can adopt.
The ethos and aim of this site is for the community to educate, create understanding
and to offer constructive advice and help to new people who are unsure of how
to proceed, either by articles on personal experiences or via peer skill articles.
We aim to be friendly, approachable and never flame a person who is genuinely
seeking advice and guidance. We want to demonstrate that there is not 'One true
way' of doing this, but that there are many approaches, many attitudes, and
many different things that work for different people. We seek to encourage tolerance
and acceptance within the scene and of different kinks and lifestyle choices.
The Beaten Track website is a community, run by the community and managed by
the community. Contributors to the site have been initially selected and invited
to contribute because of their diversity, their particular lifestyle interests
and practices, their specialist skills, reputations for safety and for the consistent
advice and support that they often offer to others within other sites and in
real life.
We hope you will all enjoy using the site, that you will learn, help to create
the community and be tolerant of others.
It is with great sadness that I have to announce that we are seriously considering closing the site down.
There is very, very little real activity on the site, and the only posts made at the moment seem to be people signing up to promote porn sites. These don't appear to be bots, but are probably people paid to join forums like this and stick links up.
So, will the community rally round and get the site up and running again? Or will we close down permanently after being around for just 2 years.
Comments are welcome, and posts in the forums are always welcome... but unless something happens we can't afford to keep this place going.
Hope you understand.
D.
We are pleased to announce that the upgrade has been completed, and we have only had a few little problems occur.
During the upgrade we have addressed a couple of issues highlighted to us by members; including the following;
1) The site was difficult to read and therefore use
2) The site didn't really feel like a community
3) A blog system would have been interesting
4) There was no way of putting up more than one picture
The first major thing we did was to seriously examine the way the site looked. We have kept the main core elements, such as logos and icons, but changed the overall colour scheme - it may not look much, but we have tried to make it easier to read and use. We hope you like it!
Second is the introduction of a Friends system. Now, members can keep track of who their friends are and what they are doing on the site, and we have also added an extra "Profile Page" for people to write more about who they are. Remember, we are not a personals site, but if you want to add into your profile you are single and looking, then feel free - but we won't be adding a function to be able to search for single people though... there are other sites out there that are far better at that than we'll be.
Third we have introduced a blog system. This is fairly powerful and has many functions that a commercial blogging site has, such as the ability to manage categories, etc. and we hope it will fulfill your needs.
Finally, we have added a Gallery function to the site. This will allow members to upload pictures to the site so they can share them with others. This is a tricky feature though, and is still experimental (basically means it isn't perfect and it may not work 100% at the moment, and we are hoping to find something better in the near future). However, please feel free to use it and see what happens.
That's about if for now - we are looking at introducing an in-built chat function in the very near future, to allow all our members to chat together. We will also be looking at adding the MemberMap back as well, so keep watching!
As ever, if you have any feedback or problems, or want to suggest a feature, please leave a post in the forums.
You will have hopefully noticed some new features that we have been busy adding over the last couple of days. Unfortunately as with any work in progress this has rendered some parts of the site at less than full functionality, however we are fixing those still and full operation should soon be back.
To add a friend to your network, first you need to enter a label (group name) such as real life friends, online friends or shagbuddies You can then add friends to this group. You will need to type in the full nickname as it appears on their profile, it will not accept part nicknames unfortunately.
To add a blog, you first need to enter a catagory, such as whine blogs, bdsm blogs, vanilla blogs. You can then blog to your hearts content once you have at least one catagory set up.
Please add any glitches or bugs on the site that you notice to the forum, and we will deal with these as soon as we get the opportunity.
Important Announcement
I will be upgrading the forum software in the next day or so. This will probably result in the loss of some of the special forum functions, such as the Member Map.
I endevour to get these items up and running ASAP once the upgrade has been completed.
Whilst the upgrade is being performed, I will be looking at some added functions and features to the forum as well - more news on that soon.
Thank you.
Admin
The difference between a truly dominant man and a controlling one is that the dominant man needs and wants consent, whereas the controlling man doesn't even understand what this word means. (Frank Nelson)
You can then add friends to this group. You will need to type in the full nickname as it appears on their profile, it will not accept part nicknames unfortunately.
