Dec 29, 2007 10:25 AM
Forum Update
Hi Folks,
I want to give you an update on our progress with the Cool Running forums. I've read several complaints that the progress has been slow and I am hoping you will give us a pass since these two weeks are consumed with Christmas and New Years. Nevertheless we continued working on improvements and you'll begin seeing results real soon.
First and foremost the biggest complaint surrounds logging into the system. This is a bug that we did not anticipate and when we transitioned over. This is our top priority and I want to assure you that we are working on resolving this problem. We have also received other suggestions such as improved navigation between forums, changing the width of the forum page and adding a signatures feature. One of the first changes you'll see is new navigational tools added next week.
We will also be posting polls on various suggestions to gauge their importance among community members. The will help us in prioritizing. I can't promise we can deliver on all of your suggestions, but I promise we will let you know the reason if we cannot.
Our new forum software has a host of features that were not available previously. Below is a list of what is available to you. Our plan is to continue to add to this feature list based on the input we get from you.
When Kevin and I started Cool Running 13 years ago it was because we were both avid runners - we still are! We want this site to continue being all about running. I promise that we will continue to work to make Cool Running the best running site possible. My hope is that you will continue to keep the discussion on our boards about running since this is the reason we are all here on Cool Running. For those who have suggestions on improving this community please feel free to post them in on the Suggestion Box - we are reading them. And for those trolls who are bent on the destruction of this forum . . . well I'll keep those thoughts to myself since it is the holiday season.
Thanks for listening and I'll post another update when we have made further progress. Happy New Year!
I want to give you an update on our progress with the Cool Running forums. I've read several complaints that the progress has been slow and I am hoping you will give us a pass since these two weeks are consumed with Christmas and New Years. Nevertheless we continued working on improvements and you'll begin seeing results real soon.
First and foremost the biggest complaint surrounds logging into the system. This is a bug that we did not anticipate and when we transitioned over. This is our top priority and I want to assure you that we are working on resolving this problem. We have also received other suggestions such as improved navigation between forums, changing the width of the forum page and adding a signatures feature. One of the first changes you'll see is new navigational tools added next week.
We will also be posting polls on various suggestions to gauge their importance among community members. The will help us in prioritizing. I can't promise we can deliver on all of your suggestions, but I promise we will let you know the reason if we cannot.
Our new forum software has a host of features that were not available previously. Below is a list of what is available to you. Our plan is to continue to add to this feature list based on the input we get from you.
- Blog - We finally have a blog tool and it has some neat features.
- Rich Text Editor - Great for cross platform exchange of documents. I used it to produce this post.
- Image picker - This feature allows participants to choose or upload an image and position it within their post.
- Attach files - you can now attach photos, videos, documents to your posts.
- Include images - Many of you are already including images in your posts.
- Embed Active or YouTube videos -I can see a lot of uses of this feature such training videos, race reports, etc.
- User Profiles & Directory - We had this in our other forum, however it was an add-on. Now it is fully integrated.
- Search forum contents - Because our old server could not handle the load we had to shut off this feature. The Active search is much more robust.
- Search for users based on profile content - Another neat search feature.
- View as PDF - Ability to save the discussion as a printable document.
- Tag clouds - Provides a visual depiction of tags with the most popular being larger.
- Tag filtering - View of messages by tag.
- Personalized RSS - You can now feed of your posts for syndication to other blogs and websites.
- Personalized email notification - This is one of my favorite features since it lets me know when someone has replied to my post. BTW this feature can be turned off for those who do not want to receive notification.
- Automatic content relation and suggestion - System automatically searches and displays suggested and related threads.
- Avatars - You can now include an avatar from our library or use you own customized avatar.
When Kevin and I started Cool Running 13 years ago it was because we were both avid runners - we still are! We want this site to continue being all about running. I promise that we will continue to work to make Cool Running the best running site possible. My hope is that you will continue to keep the discussion on our boards about running since this is the reason we are all here on Cool Running. For those who have suggestions on improving this community please feel free to post them in on the Suggestion Box - we are reading them. And for those trolls who are bent on the destruction of this forum . . . well I'll keep those thoughts to myself since it is the holiday season.
Thanks for listening and I'll post another update when we have made further progress. Happy New Year!
