We have an amusing thread running on the forum this week – a spoof agony uncle theme.  This arose because there has been some talk on the forum as to whether adulterers need an agony column.  I know that over the last 15 years I have met most of the major agony aunts/uncles and usually been chastised by them on tV shows and on the radio.  Most of them, perhaps with the exception of Susan Quilliam, could not advise on how to feed a dog let alone handle a relationship.  Susan Quilliam, to her credit actually recognises that we are frail creatures and might not always make the most moral or wise decisions.  Others I have met have either been ‘God chatterers’  or poorly qualified psychotherapists dangling diplomas from the University of Southern Kansas or home grown loonies with certificates from the Wembley campus of Ikea.  So should Loving Links have a resident agony uncle/aunt?  Are philanderers in need of someone to share their problems and pontificate on their worries?  I am not sure on this one but I quite like the way our current spoof thread is heading.  Who knows it might produce a new Claire Rayner

On this, the most romantic day of the year the big question for all adulterers is ‘do I spend tonight with my wife or with my mistress?’  Difficult one that.  Even more of a problem if your mistress is not married.  This is a similar problem to Xmas arrangements, a philanderer is torn between being in passionate embrace or being a loving and attentive married partner.  This is a real quandry, what sort of alibi would allow a man the night off on Valentine’s?  Is it worth the risk?  Will your mistress be furious imagining you are bouncing under the duvet with your regular partner.  Xmas is less awful in that the mistress can imagine a xmas toys scenario but for Valentine’s the only scenario is dimmed lights and M&S £10 special for 2  and a ‘yes of course I still love you’.    I wonder how many affairs go awry after Valentines or how many adulterers find the guilt too much to handle?

I think I’ll just watch Eastenders!

Had a great time at the IDATE conference in Miami.  It was the first time I’d made the effort.   What struck me first was the preponderance of Russians and Ukranians in the dating industry.   Not that they were a ‘romantic’ bunch but they seem to know just how to work the internet.   But this is how the dating business has moved on in this age of sicial networks and google-domination.  Small, friendly sites like ours sit in the shadow of these huge dating networks and wonder how it all happened

We had some very interesting discussion groups on internet fraud and fake profiles.  This is a problem all sites seem to share especially the ‘free’ sites. We even had an FBI guy tell us about the latest detection methods they are implementing.  But where there is the possi bility of love, people will believe anything and happily send thousands of dollars via Western Union to help their new best friend out of a problem.

The conference organisers were very good and they laid on parties every night around the Miami night spots.  I might even return next year.

Well, here I am in sunny Florida except it wasn’t sunny yesterday it was pissing down with rain.  The Miami streets were deep in rainwater and I actually had to  buy an umbrella – I really should have packed one but the forecast looked sunny the other day.  I’m here to visit the IDATE internet dating conference which starts tomorrow.  I will blog here on apects of the show and trends that I hear about that might affect the extramarital dating scene.  Be back soon, I’m off to the pool.

Next weekend it’s off to sunny Miami for the annual dating site shindig I-DATE.  It’s got nothing to do with the weather of course, I’m going there for meetings with my software developers who are main sponsors of the event.  I’m sure we will be so involved in computer code that we won’t have a moment to chill out and enjoy Florida.  It should be a great show and I hope I will learn a lot of new stuff to make our site as interesting and helpful as I possibly can.  That’s the thing with technology, you’ve just got to keep up with it and software platforms keep on changing.  The worst is the different browsers – we always recommend Firefox on PC’s and Safari on Macs they just seem to work better that way.

I’m just going off to relax and read all about Nadine Norrris’s little affair with a married guy which I will comment on tomorrow.

Imagine you have signed up on Match.com or Guardian soulmates passing yourself off as a single.  You do a bit of flirting and get up close and personal with a willing single.  Suppose she/he could go online and instantly check whether or not you were really single or just another married guy on the make.  Well this is what the Chinese authorities are doing to stop infidelity and bigamy.  We add China to our list of countries where adulterers should tread carefully.

Apparently this is the busiest adultery week of the year and here at Loving Links we have certainly found this to be the case.  We have had record sign ups and we expect our site to grow well through 2011 in spite of the extraordinary amount of competition in the marketplace.  It doesnt seem to be working too well for free sites, I had a glance at loveisthebug site and it was almost devoid of users, there were only half a dozen women in London and only a few more men. This just goes to show that people are prepared to jon paid sites if the quality is high like here at loving links.   We are busy improving all aspects of our site and we recently upgraded our servers and are making major changes in our forum area.  We will keep you advised on all important changes as they happen.

Apologies for not blogging recently.  It was a combination of seasonal lethargy and the trauma of moving to a new web server.  At this time of the year bloggers relax and reflect on the year that has passed and try to get strength and purpose for the year ahead.  Xmas is traditionally an explosive time for relationships, with a lethal mix of the office party ending with an unwise shag and the tension of family and organisational stress.  Little wonder that January is one of the busiest months at loving links with record numbers of disgruntled husbands and wives signing up for some post-yule nookie.  Well, you won’t hear me complain, we are here to make 2011 a red hot vintage year for extramarital jinks and I will be blogging with a vengance as the scandals unfold.

So Shane Warne has apparently added the lovely (married) Liz Hurley to his scorecard according to the News of the World.  She seems to be running the affair quite openly too – going to a journo-laden restaurant  (San Lorenzo) where the ghost of Lady Di still walks.   I’m sure the press coverage this morning would not have come as any surprise to Liz and her PR team so it is obvious she out to make a statement of intent and it is not looking good for her marriage.

We just moved to a new big shiny server.  It has occupied my waking days for almost a week now and yesterday it all switched over with the minimum number of glitches until I logged in to the blog.  Disaster!!!!!  All my posts from last 18 months had vanished.  Gone, no more.  Our techs spent 5 hours tracking them down and eventually some of my glowing comments peeked out from a hidden corner of our old server.  Tomorrow I will start blogging again, for the moment I just tidying stuff up on the server.  Everything should run much faster and smoother on the site.