Question On Forum Operation

    Does everyone here find it convenient enough to bookmark the "Dashboard" or other page as the place where you come to check the forum? I would hate to think that lots of people are going to the "home" page first and having to scroll down past the large section of unchanging text every time they want to see new posts.

    The competing considerations are: (1) we need some significant unchanging text on the home page so that new users will understand he purpose of the board from the first visit, which competes with (2) we want repeat visitors to have a page they can bookmark to bypass that text on return visits.

    The page that is supposed to work best for repeat visitors to bookmark is the DASHBOARD. That page contains only the brief Announcements panel followed by a table of the latest threads and posts. That's the page I have bookmarked to visit every time I come back to the forum to check for new posts.

    If anyone is finding that system to be unwieldy and has alternate suggestions, please let me know. No one has ever complained to me about the way this is set up, but I'd like to be sure that things are as efficient as possible.

    Good to know, Cassius! I've been clicking "New" under the same drop-down menu, which seems to yield similar results. I'll start using dashboard. I did at first find the sheer number of sub-forums to be quite daunting, but the system works well once one knows how to use it.

    Yes, great comment -- that is exactly why I added the "New" links.

    And the rest of your comment is why I raise the issue. I know that navigating the forums is unwieldy, so that is why there is a "recent posts from across all forums" table, as well as a "most commented posts" table, and also the "General Discussion Forum" table. Between those three I am thinking that would cover most of the ways that someone would want to try to navigate, so that is what is included on the "Dashboard" page.

    On the other hand, the main landing "Home" page has boxes that feature highlights from the Gallery, Files, and Longer "Blog" articles too. I am thinking that new people will flip through that home page and see a sample of pretty much all of the content, but I doubt that most people will want to flip through all that every time they visit the forum.

    But in my own experience I am doing exactly what you are doing - more than anything else I am using that "New" link to find everything that's recent.

    I have the home page bookmarked but I don't look at it-- the red numbers on the top menu by Forum and Gallery, or sometimes at notifications-- that is where I go, to see what I haven't read.

    Thanks for these replies. Does anyone have any issues with how the forum appears on a telephone? Once again the red dots at the top left and right are probably the best way to navigate rather than opening menus.

    This forum software seems to be very strong in its "responsiveness" and therefore appearance on telephones and tablets, and that's one reason it justifies the cost rather than using public domain software.

    In fact I gather a lot of people use ONLY their telephones nowadays, so they may not even realize that the "sidebar" exists.

    Typically, I access this homepage (and FB) between twice a day and once every 2 days on a laptop and usually not from a smartphone.

    I mostly go down straight to the bottom and click on "Unread Posts" but ignore many links because I feel that I spend too much time reading instead of producing something new.

    The only inconsistency of the interface is when I open the tab under "Notifications", "Moderation" or "Conversations" because a white on red number indicates how many new items there are, the links under the tabs usually do not lead me to anything which I did not yet read. Nevertheless, those numbers shrink and eventually diappear the more I go through the unread posts.

    1 Yes Martin I observe that too. Hopefully the programmers will update and fix that.

    2. As to the sidebar, based on what I see from my tablet, I think what happens is that if the "show sidebar" button does not appear then the software automatically repositions the sidebar so that the same material shows up if you scroll to the very bottom of the page.

Finding Things At EpicureanFriends.com

Here is a list of suggested search strategies:

  • Website Overview page - clickable links arrranged by cards.
  • Forum Main Page - list of forums and subforums arranged by topic. Threads are posted according to relevant topics. The "Uncategorized subforum" contains threads which do not fall into any existing topic (also contains older "unfiled" threads which will soon be moved).
  • Search Tool - icon is located on the top right of every page. Note that the search box asks you what section of the forum you'd like to search. If you don't know, select "Everywhere."
  • Search By Key Tags - curated to show frequently-searched topics.
  • Full Tag List - an alphabetical list of all tags.