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New things for the forum: what would you like to see?

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MLE (Emily Cotton)
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 3566
Joined: August 2008
Interest in HF: started in childhood with the classics, which, IMHO are HF even if they were contemporary when written.
Favourite HF book: Prince of Foxes, by Samuel Shellabarger
Preferred HF: Currently prefer 1600 and earlier, but I'll read anything that keeps me turning the page.
Location: California Bay Area

New things for the forum: what would you like to see?

Post by MLE (Emily Cotton) » Mon July 7th, 2014, 9:43 pm

I want your forum feedback!

Hey, all you forum friends, I have a rather belated announcement. At the beginning of the year, BB asked me if I would be willing to take over the site as she was unable to give it the time it needed. My first thought was horror that this useful and friendly site, with all its wonderful, non-commercialized information on reader's tastes, might vanish as it did once in 2008, (as some of us old-timers might remember).

But I have a difficult time keeping up with the constantly-changing internet, so I asked my daughter what she thought. (For the record, that's Mercina, and she's a member-lurker of some years, but almost never contributes.) Being a busy businesswoman, she looked over the possibilities, checked out some vbulletin classes, and assured me that with a little serious updating and some new bells and whistles that could be added, marvelous things could happen.

And then for a while her dress-rental business got very active, she had to rent a new, bigger shop space, I was going nuts dealing with my 98-year-old Mom who decided to move in with me, and everything was put on hold. However, the light is showing at the end of our various tunnels. Mom has gone off to torment another of her many offspring, Mercina is in her new space and only slightly less frantic, and we are turning to the needs and wants of the forum.

As we are only starting the vbulletin courses, I'm not altogether sure of what can and can't be done, so no promises. But I always find that I learn better if I start with objectives in mind. So please post any ideas you have.
Thanks.

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mercy
Newbie
Posts: 2
Joined: March 2011
Location: Livermore, Ca
Contact:

Post by mercy » Mon July 7th, 2014, 11:48 pm

Hi everyone! I'm "the daughter" I have been reading historic fiction my entire life and am looking forward to seeing this forum grow. I have been looking at various forum add ons we can use and I'm leaning towards one which allows for a more social media type interaction. I am still researching options but am hoping to have some of the changes implemented over the next few months. What would you all like to see?
"Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better." -Maya Angelou

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DianeL
Bibliophile
Posts: 1029
Joined: May 2011
Location: Midatlantic east coast, United States
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Post by DianeL » Tue July 8th, 2014, 12:27 am

Mercy, welcome(-ish ...)! :) MLE - congratulations? ;)

I honestly can't think of any way to improve on what we've got. I'm a Virginian, though. We hate change:

How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb?

Five! One to do the actual changing, two more to stand off to one side tut-tutting and discussing how much better the original light bulb was, and two more to write the history of the socket with Civil War maps and citations ...
"To be the queen, she agreed to be the widow!"

***

The pre-modern world was willing to attribute charisma to women well before it was willing to attribute sustained rationality to them.
---Medieval Kingship, Henry A. Myers

***

http://dianelmajor.blogspot.com/
I'm a Twit: @DianeLMajor

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Brenna
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Posts: 1358
Joined: June 2010
Location: Delaware

Post by Brenna » Tue July 8th, 2014, 1:35 pm

[quote=""DianeL""]Mercy, welcome(-ish ...)! :) MLE - congratulations? ;)

I honestly can't think of any way to improve on what we've got. I'm a Virginian, though. We hate change:

How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb?

Five! One to do the actual changing, two more to stand off to one side tut-tutting and discussing how much better the original light bulb was, and two more to write the history of the socket with Civil War maps and citations ...[/quote]

Having lived in VA for 4 years, I got a real kick out of that!

The only modification I would make (and I don't know if this is possible) would be to condense things and remove duplicates, especially in the ERA and Author sections. I think that would just require some "cleaning up" but if there is a way you can write code or something so that it doesn't happen anymore, then clean up wouldn't be necessary.
Brenna

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Mythica
Bibliophile
Posts: 1095
Joined: November 2010
Preferred HF: European and American (mostly pre-20th century)
Location: Colorado
Contact:

Post by Mythica » Tue July 8th, 2014, 2:52 pm

Thanks for asking what we'd like to see! I only thing I'd really like is URLs automatically converted to the title of the webpage. At the moment, if you just copy and paste a URL, it looks like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Daughter-Gods-Nov ... 8&sr=&qid=

But there are forums where pasting a URL automatically makes it look like this:

Daughter of the Gods: A Novel of Ancient Egypt - Kindle edition by Stephanie Thornton. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

This would make posting links to ebook deals and upcoming releases sooooo much easier because I wouldn't have to manually type out or copy/paste the book title and author name, and then manually insert the URL.

Oh, and don't get rid of the spoilers tag! I'm on another forum that doesn't have one and its so annoying.

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Lisa
Bibliophile
Posts: 1153
Joined: August 2012
Favourite HF book: Here Be Dragons by Sharon Kay Penman
Preferred HF: Any time period/location. Timeslip, usually prefer female POV. Also love Gothic melodrama.
Location: Northeast Scotland

Post by Lisa » Tue July 8th, 2014, 3:32 pm

Thanks MLE and Mercy for taking this on :)

If there could be an easier way to post hyperlinks that would be handy. The current method is sufficient if the user is on a desktop or laptop computer, but it's a pain in the neck when using a tablet.

I think this has been discussed before in the e-book deals and freebies thread, but in that thread in particular, it would be handy if we could have the same as on the Amazon forums where the user simply copies and pastes a hyperlink right into the reply box, and it gets converted to hyperlinked text that shows (only) the book title automatically. Maybe this is a right reserved to Amazon to use across their own domain though, and it wouldn't work on all hyperlinks anyway (if we are not linking to a book it's irrelevant).

I guess you guys could see what's available anyway. Ideally a tablet/mobile version of the site would be handy (bigger reply box so we don't have to keep zooming in, simpler functionality overall etc) but that sounds like a massive undertaking! I'm sure some ways of making the site more tablet-friendly will pop up in the vbulletin courses though.

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princess garnet
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Joined: August 2008
Location: Maryland

Post by princess garnet » Tue July 8th, 2014, 4:06 pm

[quote=""DianeL""]Mercy, welcome(-ish ...)! :) MLE - congratulations? ;)

I honestly can't think of any way to improve on what we've got. I'm a Virginian, though. We hate change:

How many Virginians does it take to change a light bulb?

Five! One to do the actual changing, two more to stand off to one side tut-tutting and discussing how much better the original light bulb was, and two more to write the history of the socket with Civil War maps and citations ...[/quote]

LOL from DC! :D

User avatar
MLE (Emily Cotton)
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 3566
Joined: August 2008
Interest in HF: started in childhood with the classics, which, IMHO are HF even if they were contemporary when written.
Favourite HF book: Prince of Foxes, by Samuel Shellabarger
Preferred HF: Currently prefer 1600 and earlier, but I'll read anything that keeps me turning the page.
Location: California Bay Area

Post by MLE (Emily Cotton) » Tue July 8th, 2014, 6:13 pm

Good suggestions, all.
I'm fairly sure that the streamlined linking/naming function can be set up. It seems to be standard on many sites.

I confess that I have yet to deal with the newcomers--it looks like the site just approves people automatically, but I notice that hardly anyone has posted in the 'Introduce yourself' thread, and I fear that may be my fault. I am only now going to go look at the nuts and bolts of the forum. I haven't yet gone to change my title to 'administrator'.

On the tablet and smartphone -ability of the forum, Mercy tells me that we have to buy that software soon or the site is gonna die on the vine because it isn't easy to use on mobile devices. But the mobile upgrade is expensive, and although the $$ has already been set aside, I want to at least understand a little about what I'm buying first.

Keep the suggestions coming!

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Elizabeth
Avid Reader
Posts: 268
Joined: February 2009
Contact:

Post by Elizabeth » Tue July 8th, 2014, 8:14 pm

[quote=""MLE (Emily Cotton)""]
On the tablet and smartphone -ability of the forum, Mercy tells me that we have to buy that software soon or the site is gonna die on the vine because it isn't easy to use on mobile devices. But the mobile upgrade is expensive, and although the $$ has already been set aside, I want to at least understand a little about what I'm buying first. [/quote]

Emily, I'd love to contribute toward the upgrade. Do you or Mercy have a Paypal account that can be used for donations? Or perhaps just a snailmail address where a check could be sent? This forum was the first place I connected with many of the friends I have in the historical-fiction community and I'd like to give back a bit...
THE RED LILY CROWN: A Novel of Medici Florence.
THE FLOWER READER.
THE SECOND DUCHESS.

www.elizabethloupas.com

User avatar
MLE (Emily Cotton)
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 3566
Joined: August 2008
Interest in HF: started in childhood with the classics, which, IMHO are HF even if they were contemporary when written.
Favourite HF book: Prince of Foxes, by Samuel Shellabarger
Preferred HF: Currently prefer 1600 and earlier, but I'll read anything that keeps me turning the page.
Location: California Bay Area

Post by MLE (Emily Cotton) » Tue July 8th, 2014, 8:24 pm

Thanks, Elizabeth! I'll PM you.

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