Daniel,

How about adding a feature to the forums whereby very popular threads (or possibly nominated 'interesting' threads) get copied to and referenced from a new page called favorites or popular or something like that ;) so that we can look back at them easily?

For instance I remember sometime back a fairly long thread talking about 'extreme' pronto use, where someone or other left their pronto hooked up to their pc in such a way they could dial into the pc and control the pronto from anywhere.. I would like to check back to this thread but the last time I used the search page the speed of it scared me off ;) Also there are probably several of this type of topic that I have missed completely given that I can't check the site all that often and so I wouldn't know what to search for..

The forums or particularly the Pronto forum is mainly full of run-of-the-mill problems - discreet codes for device-X please, reboot-problems, prontoedit problems etc etc and occasionally someone posts something that provokes a really interesting design discussion or something.. It would be nice to be able to look back through these easily without the other stuff... The run-of-the-mill problems are fine, but it would be nice to be able to get to the 'deep' stuff easily!!

Anyone agree or disagree? I know it might mean more work for ya Daniel, sorry!! ;)

Is there 'unlimited' or 'enough!!' disk space available on your web-server for this sort of thing to be feasible?

Also something /just/ occured to me, a completely different suggestion ;) On the bottom of 'this' page, the submit a new message page, it would be good to have a fairly obvious link pointing to the 'relevant' FAQ, suggesting that should be read by the uninitiated before posting a question...

Thanks for listening!

Laurie

I understand your first suggestion, and have experienced the same sense of loss - am I missing something? The problem I see with it, though, is who and how can someone decide which are interesting topics and which aren't. To you (or anyone) it seems obvious, but ten different people will give you ten different sets of preferences.

Besides that, the fact that it couldn't be automated would make it a daunting task. It could be automated simply by thread size, but I wouldn't say the longest threads are necessarily the most interesting. Often, I avoid them just because of their size.

Daniel has made it easier to find longer threads, though - they are now broken into multiple pages, so you can page through the forum looking for those, if you think the more interesting threads are the longer ones.

I like your second suggestion, and I second it. That is a good place for a tactful prompt to check the manual, FAQ and do a forum search before asking a question - with pointers to them right there.

I think the formum search is a good point. I think a lot of times people do not use the great search this site has. If you really want something specific the search really does work good.

Sorry for not being around lately -- I've been busy programming a new "feature" for the site, which should be up next week. It was a bit more complicated than I figured. I'll see about the links a bit later...

Something occurred to me, and I'm not sure if this is what Laurie meant, but in regard to having a prompt and link to the FAQ - this should probably be at the "New Thread" window, not necessarily at the "Post a reply to this thread" window.

Perhaps a automatic Backup-System should store all old Forum-Massages to ZIP-file...

Tom,

That was what I meant at the time because /that was/ the page I was on, I only realised later (doh! how observant am I??) that /this/ "replying" place was sort of different! I agree with you, it should go /there/ and not /here/ ;)

Having said that I suspect Daniel uses the same bit of Jscript to produce this form in both places so its probably easier to leave it in both places.. I guess it /could/ still save someone minor embarassment here! (If he's gonna do this one! I'm curious now Daniel!!!)

Laurie

Laurie, I think Daniel will do it. It's a good idea, and he wrote at the end of his last message, "I'll see about the links a bit later..." When I say, "I'll see," or "We'll see," to my kids, it usually means that I don't want to commit to a, "Yes," now, but, "if you don't forget to bug me about it later, you'll probably get your way, if you do stop bugging me about it now." :)

Lol! I'll shuddup now then! ;)
Laurie

To tag on to Laurie's (what I think is) brilliance, how about having to choose a category from a list of the most common issues (graphics, pronto edit, buttons & frames, discrete codes, "the basics", programming, purchasing, etc.) when starting a new thread? Just like when placing ads with some sites, they force you to categorize your ad or else it won't be posted. If it's not properly categorized, people won't find it and won't respond to it anyway. This way, Daniel just needs a new index, and it'll probably speed up the Search feature if all it has to do is query within that category.