Hi Fred - thanks for the comment...
"EXCELENT! I totally agree. THANK you."
Good!
"Get rid of Rants & Opinion, weird energy, free energy, let the web sites that want to host this do so, but here we talk about wind, solar, hydro and off grid and remote living. Make life easy project."
weird energy, magnets and magnetism, free energy - are allready gone. I think well leave rants and opinion - because sometimes folks need a place to complain about the board... discuss political issues related to renewable energy etc..
We may set it never to show on the front page though - but my guess, is that with voting - most rants wont show there and if they do, we'll decide if they stay or not.
"May I offer a couple suggestions??"
Of course!
"Make the search bar or button highlighted and highly visible. LARGE..this will cut down on the amount of repeated questions. increase the bandwidth etc.."
Yes, we will promote 'searching'... but again, if folks ask simple questions that seem redundant - well, thats the nature of any discussion board. Probably those sorts of postings will not get voted to the front page, but remain in catagory only.
We'll also encourage folks to search on the page where you submit messages... and well add a bit of text explaining how voting works - and where stories will go before they get posted. Once folks post a message... it will not appear anywhere - except in the 'voting' area, and it will stay there untill it either gets voted to 'catagory only' - 'catagory and front page' - or 'dumped'. There will be a time default (probably 12 hours or so) - so that if it doesnt get voted somewhere, it will be default go into catagory only.
"Highlight Classified areas. Once this gets going and people begin to buy, sell trade the inflow will double."
Yes... we'll think about that! I think classifieds can be valuable if folks use it. It has inspired some fun trading over the last year.
"The menus need to be updated. most important topics highlighted. Wind, water or hydro, solar, remote living ect... One click link. multi links not necessary."
Yes, now that we've eliminated some catagories, and this board will mostly be renewable energy (with a bit of remote living because there is a crossover of folks there) - we could expand the catagories a bit perhaps. This sort of thing is very easy to change.
"Put some adverts for your self and or company on the side lines to help increase sales and help you out with funds ect.. I don't think anyone will really mind. It is your board and you have a right to make a living. Every other web board has them, so should you. As stated in my post, you should recoup some of the costs at the very least to help pay for the internet usage. server costs and some of the programming labor costs, not to mention the huge amount of extra time spent doing all the editing and sorting.. people do not realize what goes into effort required to hosting such a major chat board. I have done this so I know what's involved. 25% of the space or less should be devoted to adverts. Don't ad any popups, they are annoying at best and shun usage."
Yes, perhaps... Im not to keen on blatant advertising really - we'll see though. We probably will promote our shopping cart a bit more on otherpower.com at some point. That site gets a lot of traffic. Our server definitely is pretty expensive - it's a nice system with lots of bandwidth and lots of websites on it. We host a couple sites for other folks and small companies too.
"Stay away from java script, since it does not work on all browsers and causes conflicts with computers that are not compatible. Shuns users, but looks nice, major pain in the butt."
I agree.
"Highlight the diary sections, they are the best of this board in general. The topics are clean and very little arguments since we know this is a major topic area and coming from a personal point of view."
Yes- and perhaps a bit of explanation about what that area is for, and how to use it.
"Is there anyway to make sure that emails are correct and not spoofed for registered users? My email appears on the top of all headings, allows other users to contact me. Not a problem. Also unregistered users should not see my email address. Only registered users with a valid email should see other users with a valid email address. No spoofing, adds credibility to registered users."
Its optional... users can choose to - or not to display their email. If someone is abusing the system - we have their actual email address.
"Highlight IRC chat, get people into the live area, this will reduce the overflow of smaller questions. In fact I would out it as a main topic area to reduce the overall congestion. The HTML IRC works great and would allow people to get answers right away rather then having to wait. Reduces bandwidth I think."
We dont run the IRC... so I dont wanna bring too many folks there unless JimU wants us to. IRC is getting pretty busy these days!
"As Tomw said, THANK YOU!!"
Thankyou Fred! Its tricky - no matter what we do here, some folks will love it and some will hate it. Regarding free energy and such - Im really not opposed to, and respect the opinions of folks who are interested - and have even more respect for those who are actually experimenting with it! The bottom line though - it is controversial, it is not (in my opinion) workable... and I prefer, at this point - to keep the board a non-controversial place where we can discuss workable ideas and systems for off-grid living and renewable energy in general. There are lots of good places out there to discuss other things... I prefer not to have it here anymore. Even our old catagory of magnets and magnetism... there is a bit of crossover - but in my opinion a lot of the questions folks have that come from our magnet website are not related to the main subject of this board. We may actually put up another discussion forum, seperate from this one - for wondermagnet.com.
"Did I say THANK YOU!"
Actually... yes, you did ;-)
www.internetfred.com