New Features

We've been implementing a lot of changes lately and I wanted to let you guys know about them without having to start a large number of threads. Most of these changes were because of requests in our Site Suggestions forum. Be sure you click the Watch Thread button in the top right to be notified of future updates. Here we go:

 

Appearance

We finally got the logo up and tweaked the classic theme a little bit to make it match. The stickies are now a different color to make them stick out better. You will also notice our new icon located on the browser tab.



Apple iOS users will also notice a shiny new bookmark icon.

 

Themes

New themes have been added and there will be more to come. To select a new theme, click in the bottom left of the page where it states the name of you current theme-- most of you will have Classic.

 

Resources

I have been working at filling out the Resources tab. The goal here is to create a resource library full of information that users can easily find, instead of having to remember which forum it was stickied in. It should also benefit new club members who are likely to feel a little disoriented at first. A nice side effect will be that forums with several stickies will have a bit of a cleaner look and we won't have to scroll past half a dozen stickies each time we go into the Firewood Neighborhood.

 

Smaller Features

A few smaller features may have snuck by you, like the addition of private notes in the Personal Details section. Feel free to put whatever you want in your notes-- no one else can see them.



And, of course, there are a lot of new smilies!

 

Prefixes

Prefixes have been added for the Site Suggestions and the FHC Classifieds forums. In the Site Suggestions forum, the prefix will plainly indicate the status of each suggestion or issue. These prefixes can only by added by site staff.



In the FHC Classifieds prefixes will be used to indicate what the author is intending with his advert. Once the item is no longer available, please change the prefix to read "No Longer Available" by selecting Edit Thread from the Thread Tools menu at the top of the page . Also, a special Karma tag has been made for some of our more special pay it forward type of items-- everyone is encouraged to keep the karma tradition going.

 

Tagging

Tagging has been enabled. To tag another user type @ and then begin typing their username. After a few letters, user name suggestions will begin to pop up.



To receive notifications when you are tagged, make sure you have the "Tags you in a message" box checked in your Alert Preferences.

 

New Category and Forum

If you look at the bottom of the forum list you will notice a few changes. The Smoke Signal is a new category made to house our new forum-- The Bulletin Board. The Bulletin Board is the place to look for rules, site news, and upcoming events such as get-togethers and competitions. Also, the old Site Suggestions forum has been moved into The Smoke Signal category and is now called Suggestions & Support.

 

Galleries

The long awaited galleries are now official and can be accessed by clicking on them in the navbar at the top of your screen-- this will launch a new window or tab in your browser.


One the first screen you will see categories to select from. Also, there is a link back to the homepage and, in bold, the word Gallery to denote your current location.


Once you've selected your category you will be brought to a screen full of thumbnail images. Click any image to view it full sized. Also, you will now notice the category title is in bold to denote you current location and a link back to the gallery has been added.


Finally you are seeing a full sized image. Below is a caption and links to go forward and backward in the current category. Also, the category name is still in bold but it is now clickable and links back to the thumbnails page.

 

Return to Top

By popular demand, a return to top link has been added to every message- both private and public. Simply click the word "Top" in the bottom right of you message and you will be magically transported to the top of the page.

 

The Wood Market

We've also added a new forum called "The Wood Market" where users can post about local firewood deals and ripoffs.

We ask anyone posting in this forum to please list the entire city and state name in the title.

Example: Seasoned Oak $50/cord Des Moines, Iowa

This will allow users to search the forum at a later time for a state name and quickly determine if the resulting finds are close enough to pursue. If only state abbreviations are used, users will not be able to search for them because each search must consist of at least three characters.

 

New Homepage

The new homepage has just been installed, it can be accessed by either loading firewoodhoardersclub.com or by clicking the home button in the navbar. The page is actually built within the forum software so you still have access to all of our forum's features while there.

 

Ratings & Reviews Forum

Another new forum has been added, but this one is different-- it is for rating products. The Ratings & Reviews forum features a five star rating system and all posts must be approved by a moderator to ensure that the ratings are genuine and to keep conjecture down.

 

Redesign of the NavBar

To accommodate the growth of this site and it's features, I have reorganized the Navigation Bar to make room for the new options. The Resources tab has had all the seldom used options removed and replaced with the Members list, our Photo Galleries, and the New FHC-TV page.

 

Faster Updates

You should now notice that your notifications are updated more often, which a realtime of less than 5 seconds from the time a post is made and you being notified. What more, there are some options that come along with this.



Go into your preferences and look at the live update display options. To have everything remain as it has always been (still with the faster updates) choose disable. Tab Icon makes a balloon notification similar to what you see on your inbox and alerts appear on the FHC icon on your web browser's tab. Tab Title makes a number appear before the title of the page in your browser's tab (this is shown in the above screen shot). Both will turn on both of these features. The Tab Icon may be hit or miss with some browsers, but I highly recommend the Tab Title option.

 

We have updated from the default flash image uploader (which some users have had considerable trouble with) to one powered by HTML5.