JREF Forum Newsletter – 1st January 2007
A New Year and a New Newsletter
A few words to bring you up-to-date with some of the changes and tweaks we’ve been making to the Forum since the last Newsletter.
The New Look
A few minor changes were made to the JREF Forum Style just after the last Newsletter and it is now final. There was also strong feedback regarding removing the old style entirely so I have created a version of the old “Blue” scheme called “JREF Block Blue” and a less graphic intense version of the standard style called “JREF Block Red” and I’ve committed to keeping these style choices through minor upgrades for the foreseeable future. (You can choose what style you want to use by selecting it via the style drop down menu that is at the bottom left of most Forum pages. – See: Paul’s forum guide). Note: Some sections of the Forum will only appear in the JREF style no matter what you’ve selected - this is not a bug!
New Menu, New Section, New Button
I’ve been slightly re-arranging the NavBar menus (the line of menus directly under the JREF Forum logo), as a response to feedback we’ve had from Members. The first major change was removing the “FAQ” menu item and adding in a new menu called “Help”. Many newcomers to the Forum often did not know where to start to look for help about the Forum itself so hopefully the new Help menu will be a more obvious starting point and make finding the appropriate answer much easier. If you have any feedback on the Help menu (e.g. additional links) please drop it into a PM and send it to me.
As part of trying to provide better access to help information for all Members we’ve added a new subsection called (at least at the moment) “The Tutorials”. In this section we will over the next couple of months be providing guides specific to the JREF Forum and also short tutorials on Forum features. The first of these is now viewable, “A Guide to a Post”– check it out, you may find you learn something new about using the Forum – I know Paul A. did when he was writing it! If you have any feedback on the guide or suggestions for areas that need more explanation please send me a PM.
Also as a result of feedback, I’ve added a new button at the bottom right of posts –
- clicking on this will take you to the top of the page you are viewing, which should prove handy when reading a long thread and you want to quickly jump back to the NavBar.
Forum shirts
As I briefly mentioned in the November ’06 newsletter JREF Forum t-shirts (and other styles of shirts) are now available to purchase. Each one purchased will raise $9 for the JREF Forum, all the details can be found here.
New Forum Section & Section Name Change
We’ve added a new section to the Forum for discussing the ever growing and very popular “Skeptical Podcasts” and it’s named Skeptical Podcasts.
The “Computers, Links, and the Internet” section has been renamed to “Computers & the Internet” and the description changed to match. Several Members had pointed out that “Links” reference in the title was rather confusing when we have the snazzy “Links Manager” section specifically for links. By the way if you have never looked at the “Links Manager you should do - it provides a handy listing of many sites, organizations and resources.
The Future
“The Repository” is almost ready to be opened to contributions from Members, we are just finalizing some guidelines and hope to have them in place within the next week or two.
Profiles – just a hint but expect a major change to your profile in the next few weeks that will add a new and hopefully interesting difference to the Forum.
Darat
1st January 2007
A New Year and a New Newsletter
A few words to bring you up-to-date with some of the changes and tweaks we’ve been making to the Forum since the last Newsletter.
The New Look
A few minor changes were made to the JREF Forum Style just after the last Newsletter and it is now final. There was also strong feedback regarding removing the old style entirely so I have created a version of the old “Blue” scheme called “JREF Block Blue” and a less graphic intense version of the standard style called “JREF Block Red” and I’ve committed to keeping these style choices through minor upgrades for the foreseeable future. (You can choose what style you want to use by selecting it via the style drop down menu that is at the bottom left of most Forum pages. – See: Paul’s forum guide). Note: Some sections of the Forum will only appear in the JREF style no matter what you’ve selected - this is not a bug!
New Menu, New Section, New Button
I’ve been slightly re-arranging the NavBar menus (the line of menus directly under the JREF Forum logo), as a response to feedback we’ve had from Members. The first major change was removing the “FAQ” menu item and adding in a new menu called “Help”. Many newcomers to the Forum often did not know where to start to look for help about the Forum itself so hopefully the new Help menu will be a more obvious starting point and make finding the appropriate answer much easier. If you have any feedback on the Help menu (e.g. additional links) please drop it into a PM and send it to me.
As part of trying to provide better access to help information for all Members we’ve added a new subsection called (at least at the moment) “The Tutorials”. In this section we will over the next couple of months be providing guides specific to the JREF Forum and also short tutorials on Forum features. The first of these is now viewable, “A Guide to a Post”– check it out, you may find you learn something new about using the Forum – I know Paul A. did when he was writing it! If you have any feedback on the guide or suggestions for areas that need more explanation please send me a PM.
Also as a result of feedback, I’ve added a new button at the bottom right of posts –
Forum shirts
As I briefly mentioned in the November ’06 newsletter JREF Forum t-shirts (and other styles of shirts) are now available to purchase. Each one purchased will raise $9 for the JREF Forum, all the details can be found here.
New Forum Section & Section Name Change
We’ve added a new section to the Forum for discussing the ever growing and very popular “Skeptical Podcasts” and it’s named Skeptical Podcasts.
The “Computers, Links, and the Internet” section has been renamed to “Computers & the Internet” and the description changed to match. Several Members had pointed out that “Links” reference in the title was rather confusing when we have the snazzy “Links Manager” section specifically for links. By the way if you have never looked at the “Links Manager you should do - it provides a handy listing of many sites, organizations and resources.
The Future
“The Repository” is almost ready to be opened to contributions from Members, we are just finalizing some guidelines and hope to have them in place within the next week or two.
Profiles – just a hint but expect a major change to your profile in the next few weeks that will add a new and hopefully interesting difference to the Forum.
Darat
1st January 2007
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