The Army Rumour Service
Encyclopedia
The Army Rumour Service (ARRSE) is an unofficial British Army
website
and forum
. Known colloquially as ARRSE - from "ARmy Rumour SErvice" - the site styles itself as the unofficial voice of the British Army. It gets more than 5 million page hits per month; is regularly mentioned and has been quoted by the mainstream news in the national press;, mentioned in a debate on service voting in the House of Lords
; and supporter of various charities.
. Users can expect to find both reasoned argument and general chatter within the site.
The site is run by one of the founders and a team of volunteer moderators with experience or expertise in the areas that the forum covers.
The site was originally created using MS Frontpage. It soon became apparent that this was not up to the task and this was soon replaced by YaBB (Yet Another Bulletin Board). This was a significant improvement and supported the rapid expansion of the site. Unfortunately it was based on a flat file structure which created vast numbers of individual files that soon made backing up a nightmare.
The next upgrade to the site in saw it move to a fully fledged content management system
named PHP-Nuke
. This operated on a Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP system and gave a significant improvement in functionality, reliability and speed. Unfortunately PHPNuke also had a reputation for poor security and this led to the site being hacked by some Brazilian hackers in May 2004. After almost a week of downtime the site was restored and since then security has been the number one priority of the site administrators. The drive for increased security led to a further change of software to CPGNuke, an offshoot of PHPNuke.
The latest version of ARRSE operates using DragonflyCMS version 9.6.1 and also uses the following Open Source projects for other parts of the site:
The site underwent a major overhaul in September 2010 with many of the forums being rationalised into groups so that the page refresh rate was significantly increased.
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
and forum
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
. Known colloquially as ARRSE - from "ARmy Rumour SErvice" - the site styles itself as the unofficial voice of the British Army. It gets more than 5 million page hits per month; is regularly mentioned and has been quoted by the mainstream news in the national press;, mentioned in a debate on service voting in the House of Lords
House of Lords
The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....
; and supporter of various charities.
Aims
The aim of the website is to provide a useful, informative and amusing site for people with an interest in the British ArmyBritish Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
. Users can expect to find both reasoned argument and general chatter within the site.
Sections
The site is divided into several sections- Forums
- An image gallery
- A dancing eggs section
- Chat rooms
- An Instant Message facility.
- A Military equipment online shop
- A list of members
- The ARRSEPedia. A somewhat irreverent military encyclopedia using MediawikiMediaWikiMediaWiki is a popular free web-based wiki software application. Developed by the Wikimedia Foundation, it is used to run all of its projects, including Wikipedia, Wiktionary and Wikinews. Numerous other wikis around the world also use it to power their websites...
. In their own words "The content is humorous, serious, sensible, stupid, decent and just occasionally a touch offensive."
History
ARRSE came into being in January 2002 started by a couple of army officers after a drunken discussion in a Salisbury pub. The original concept was "borrowed" from the Professional Pilots Rumour Network (PPRuNe) where some of the early site users frequented the "Military Pilots" forum. At the time there was no single outlet for army discusion except for a couple of boards started up by former students of the (then) Army 6th Form College. To begin with, the top brass in the army and MoD were not happy with an outlet that they couldn't control and tried to compete with ARRSE by setting up an official site that over time became the current ArmyNet. The fact that users were not afforded any anonymity on the official site meant that ARRSE flourished, especially after the press began to use it as a source of easily obtainable quotes. Around 2007, a holding company called OliveNet was formed to manage ARRSE and the other spin off sites Rum Ration and Rear Party. The RAF forum eGoat is entirely unconnected with any of the OliveNet sites.The site is run by one of the founders and a team of volunteer moderators with experience or expertise in the areas that the forum covers.
The site was originally created using MS Frontpage. It soon became apparent that this was not up to the task and this was soon replaced by YaBB (Yet Another Bulletin Board). This was a significant improvement and supported the rapid expansion of the site. Unfortunately it was based on a flat file structure which created vast numbers of individual files that soon made backing up a nightmare.
The next upgrade to the site in saw it move to a fully fledged content management system
Content management system
A content management system is a system providing a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based...
named PHP-Nuke
PHP-Nuke
PHP-Nuke is a web-based automated news publishing and content management system based on PHP and MySQL originally authored by Franscisco Burzi. The system is controlled using a web-based user interface. PHP-Nuke was originally a fork of the Thatware news portal system.PHP-Nuke was originally...
. This operated on a Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP system and gave a significant improvement in functionality, reliability and speed. Unfortunately PHPNuke also had a reputation for poor security and this led to the site being hacked by some Brazilian hackers in May 2004. After almost a week of downtime the site was restored and since then security has been the number one priority of the site administrators. The drive for increased security led to a further change of software to CPGNuke, an offshoot of PHPNuke.
The latest version of ARRSE operates using DragonflyCMS version 9.6.1 and also uses the following Open Source projects for other parts of the site:
- Media Wiki
- OTRS Ticket Response System
- SQL-Ledger Accountancy Software
The site underwent a major overhaul in September 2010 with many of the forums being rationalised into groups so that the page refresh rate was significantly increased.
External links
- The ARRSE site
- Rear Party - the site for spouses, partners and 'significant others' of serving British servicemen and women
- Rum Ration - the sister site to ARRSE for members of the Royal NavyRoyal NavyThe Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
and Royal MarinesRoyal MarinesThe Corps of Her Majesty's Royal Marines, commonly just referred to as the Royal Marines , are the marine corps and amphibious infantry of the United Kingdom and, along with the Royal Navy and Royal Fleet Auxiliary, form the Naval Service... - ArmyNET - the British ArmyBritish ArmyThe British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
's official secure online information exchange service - MODoracle Ministry of Defence/British forces unofficial online community
- E-Goat - The RAF unnoficial rumour network site and forums.