Board changes -- Making the board look like YOU want it to.....

[(unknown)]

Thanks to everyone for their comments about future board changes, via postings and email. No bricks with attached messages have come thru our windows yet, for which we are grateful ;~)

We've been keeping informal track of all the feedback we get. So, I've loosely classified the our users this way:

1. Folks who are into one thing (usually a facet of homebrewed electricity -- wind turbines from scratch, hydro, etc.) and get irritated at having to read postings about magnet experiments, perpetual motion, science fair projects, and Minto wheels. Many of these folks have suggested making a separate board for this stuff.
   
2. Folks who want to see everything on the board. The more links they have to click to get everything at once, the more irritated they get. The Dans at Forcefield fit into this category. We try to watch everything that's going on with the board, and weird science is just as important to us as anything other category....though most of our experiments fall under homebrew wind and alternators.
   
3. New folks, Google, and our RSS syndication feeds. We want the front page clean and lean for these folks. And we plan to send our RSS feed of the front page out all over the net.
   
   

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SO -- the end result, when we make all the changes, if that if you are not happy with how the Otherpower Scoop "front page" serves your needs, all you should have to do is change the URL with which you access the board. You can bypass the new front page this way. If you are interested in only homebrewed electricity, use: "http://www.fieldlines.com/section/homebrew/">http://www.fieldlines.com/
section/homebrew/

 to access the site, and you'll see all messages in wind,solar,hydro,controls, and homebrew electricity.

With just the front page, you'll still see the newest section headlines in a box on the side, and can click to sort all newest postings from everywhere.

If you want to see everything on one page, just like the front page is now, there will be a link to do that, and again you can make that your main access URL -- from your perspective, you'll see the same front page you always have.

Thanks to recent feedback, we plan to sub-divide remote living the same way, with sections on water, dwellings, engines etc.....and all postings in those subcategories will show up in "remote living", just like "homebrew electricity" and it's subcats work.

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Everyone's input will be *essential once we start voting stories to the front page. We are looking at the front page as what our entire community presents to the world as our best postings.

Obviously we'll work up a good FAQ for all this!

Other features that will be turned on are email notification when there's a new reply to your posting, automatic RSS feeds, and more....

Thanks again. These changes should start happening this week.

ADMIN

[stop4stuff]

Hi,

The changes sound good

Will it involve more work for admins?

It seems like there are so many good topics and postings it'll be difficult to keep track of what was where and where whatever will be...

like, i posted to homebrew electricity/wind section a (IMHO) brilliant article about a horizontal savonius setup with Lego, sticky tape and paper...

no comments, no input... nowt.

Have you seen the format over at HV community?

http://forum.4hv.org

Not sure about the colour scheme, but tesla coils are cool.

And the posting/reply/top story system seems to work really well.

paul

[wooferhound]

 I would like to clearly understand what areas are grouped under what links.

So I'm not looking at areas thatb are duplicated somewhere else.

and I'm not missing something that I'm interested in...

[JW]

Hi all,

 I have been watching the board as ADMIN have been making the recent changes. Good job guys. I like the new look. The only thing I might suggest, is changing the title of the "weird science" catagory. Something else like "Odds and Ends" or "Alternative Ideas" etc.

-JW