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Community Announcement from nickcharalambous

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nickcharalambous
superstar - founder
704 posts
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Dear Cockleburrians:

It has been a little more than a month since this forum took a bold step toward a brighter future with Lefora, a San Francisco startup that wants to revolutionize the Internet's oldest and best community spaces: discussion forums.

Many of you eagerly embraced this new format. Others have not.This message is to announce some major improvements Lefora has agreed to make to the user experience to address some of the biggest concerns.

First, you'll see a return to a familiar flat forum with quoting ability on all replies. All topics will be paginated, meaning that you will be able to click the last page to find the latest reply with no scrolling. Because there will be only 50 posts a page maximum, you will also notice a considerable increase in speed.
Lefora also has agreed to increase the size of the text box to help with your composition of posts. You will also have more time to edit your posts after they have been submitted.There also will be better labeling of the smart text editor and visual editor to aid those who like to embed photos, videos and other files.
You may notice a change in the look and the feel of the site. To those who have become famiiar with and enjoy the new format we ask for your patience in adjusting once more. To those who have asked for improvements, we're confident you'll approve.

The decision to move to an externally hosted platform was not made lightly. We wanted to ensure Cockleburrians would be able to enjoy the best possible user experience well into the future.

As a reminder, here are just some of the many advantages of this forum over PHPBB, our previous platform:

  • - Access to 3rd party widgets to add to the sidebar (like the old flash RSS headlines reader)
  • - Thumbing up/down on posts
  • - Email Notifications
  • - Tracking Notifications
  • - Tagging posts
  • - A 'simple' smart text edtior that automatically detects videos andphotos and auto-embeds them in a post.
  • - Automatic spam dectection (Lefora is blocking hundreds if not thousands ofspam posts from our forum each day)
  • - Great google indexing of the content on the site. There are a numberof SEO features Lefora implements that phpBB doesn't have, such as 'staticURLS'; keywords in the URLs; using HTML Header tags appropriatly fordescribing the content; providing a sitemap to google, etc.
  • - Dynamic member profiles. On phpBB, it's just your username and some IMhandles. Here it's rich data taken from all over the site, including your most recent posts, including photos and videos.
  • - Simple new member signups - a new member can join in just 10 seconds on Lefora, just filling out 3 fields. On phpbb, the process is many times longer and can be confusing.
  • - Lefora blog importer can import your blog and any RSS news feed to help seed conversations.
  • - Automatic Daily Backups offsite to ensure the safety of your data
  • - No hassle security maintance. Lefora is kept up to date with the latest patches to ensure there are no security holes (unlike phpBB which you mustpatch from time to time)
  • - The 'headlines' page that welcomes potential new members to the site bygiving them an overview of what's hot.

I encourage members to continue to email me about issues you see and we will continue to address as many as we can.

I'll leave you with a quick reminder of two pages you can bookmark to make your cocklebur experience faster and better. Both are listed under "quicklinks" on the sidebar.

The first is a page that displays all the posts, latest first. www.thecocklebur.net/forum/post.

The second is a page that is very similar to theCocklebur's old front page, listing the latest topic replied to by posters. http://www.thecocklebur.net/forum/category/all/page1/

Thanks for supporting the cocklebur community!



God bless, Nick
__________________
"Where there is no vision, the people perish."
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21 July 2008 05:08 AM
republikin
fanatic - member
2368 posts
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Thanks Nick!

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22 July 2008 01:57 AM
art-kaldas
fanatic - member
4026 posts
0 permalink

Nick,

The latest changes you have made to the format are steps in the right direction. However, I am still hoping that topics with the most recent replies will become the headlines, since “readers only” look mostly for the headlines.

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22 July 2008 02:51 AM
petunia1
fanatic - member
1262 posts
0 permalink

I am getting "with the program", Nick.  Love the new 14 minutes to edit.  Art, I don't understand what you mean by headlines. Do you mean a page with the most visited forums listed?  I believe there is a number beside the present headlines for number of visits.  The most recent posts are listed by times and I find that going to that site and backtracking to the last time I was online works well. When I reach a subject of interest I go to that topic to read most recent posts.  I understand your point that casual readers (once a week or even once a month) might be having problems "catching up".  I would suggest they go to the present "Headlines" and only go to forums that are of their primary interest.  Obviously, they are too busy to "come and play" everyday like some of us. Cool

We are gaining new memberships and first time posters everyday.  Laughing
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22 July 2008 02:52 PM
art-kaldas
fanatic - member
4026 posts
0 permalink

Petunia,

Thank you for asking the question.

When a “reader only” opens the Cocklebur Forum, he/she is faced with three tabs: Forum, Headlines, and Members. The one on display is the Headlines. So, if the “reader only” does not find his topic of interest among the displayed headlines, he/she usually moves on. Example: I started a new thread last night about a town hall meeting at Hopewell Fire Department. But since this thread never made it to Headlines, it was lost in the shuffle.

So, I am suggesting that all threads with the most recent replies be displayed under the tab Headlines, in order to show “readers only”, in a simple and intuitive, way the most recent topics being debated.

Posted: July 22, 14:40.

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22 July 2008 06:35 PM
jdtippett
fanatic - admin
6521 posts
0 permalink

Since The Cocklebur is a "FORUM" why would lurkers faced with those three tabs not click on the "FORUM" tab instead of the "HEADLINES" tab?

I have absolutely no problem with people reading without participating. We all do it all the time on sites all over the worldwide web, and I personally "lurk" on more sites than I post on.

But if I'm too stupid, or too lazy, to figure out how to negotiate one of those sites, it's just not up to the operator of that site to hold my hand and show me how or to change his site to cater to MY preferences. Without people posting, the forum ceases to exist. Without people "lurking" it still exists for those who care enough to go even slightly out of their way to keep up with what's going on.

As of this moment, we have 647 members here, of which probably less than 50 post with any regularity. Considering how easy it is to register, why would someone who isn'st interested in posting not, at the very least, be interested in registering an anonymous screenname? Nick doesn't even require you to fill out the profile information, you know.

Seems our little community has a bunch of people who want all the benefits of membership with none of the responsibilities. I just don't understand why it is incumbent upon Nick or Lefora to cater to them.

I don't mean to sound harsh, Art, and I continue to think your input on this board is valuable to all of us (even when some of us don't agree with you always.) But I think Nick can only go so far to help those who aren't willing to help themselves. We've already lost threading, which I didn't like at first but had grown quite comfortable with before it went away. What else are we going to have to give up to make you happy?

Let's see if a little tutorial helps here:

Finding Recent Posts, Tutorial 1:

1. If you are not registered as a member, when you see the main page of The Cocklebur, click on the "FORUM" tab. It will take you straight to the index of topics, with the most-recently commented on topic at the top, the next most-recently commented on second, etc., etc., etc.

2. If you can't even figure that out, REGISTER AS A MEMBER. If you do that, any topics that have been commented on since your last visit will show up in BLUE.

3. If even that is beyond your limited capabiliies, look to the right of the screen and you will see "LATEST POSTS BY POSTER." Click that. The entire text of each recent post, starting with the most recent, will appear - all 45,000 posts since this forum was first created more than two years ago.

4. If that still doesn't work, call Art and he can come over and hold your hand while he guides you through the process.

5. If that still doesn't work, you probably aren't capable of understanding anything we have to say here anyway.

 

__________________
"Would you like to play a game?" - Department of Defense computer in "WarGames"
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22 July 2008 06:57 PM
art-kaldas
fanatic - member
4026 posts
0 permalink

JDTippett,

I will settle for a simple solution: Let us make the Forum tab for All Topics (every topic from all categories) be displayed on the front page, rather than the Headlines tab.

Posted: July 22, 15:25.

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22 July 2008 07:20 PM
republikin
fanatic - member
2368 posts
0 permalink

WOW (War of Words) If only we were as smart as JD. What a wonderful world this would be.

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22 July 2008 08:05 PM
sshm
fanatic - member
2778 posts
0 permalink

Exactly republikin . . .

. . . and I thought I was the arrogant one around here. Leave it to our resident curmudgeon copy editor who loves his senior coffee to earn THAT title.

Then again, republikin, if you meant that other WoW (World Of Warcraft), I would have sworn that JD closely resembles a Troll Mage ... for obvious reasons . . .

__________________
"I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you . . ." - Neo
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22 July 2008 08:26 PM
jdtippett
fanatic - admin
6521 posts
0 permalink
Republikin, I'd be happy if you were as smart as SSHM. Wink
__________________
"Would you like to play a game?" - Department of Defense computer in "WarGames"
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22 July 2008 08:41 PM
petunia1
fanatic - member
1262 posts
0 permalink

VOR,

Check out time of posting at the top of this forum!
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22 August 2008 02:56 PM
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