3 years, 9 months ago-
Posts
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Looking at the diagrams listed. It occurred to me that I don’t see a place to store pictures or designs to submit to the USFG members. So, is it not the USFG intent to provide equivalent archive capability as on the USFGFacetingList website?
Hi Tom And Members
Great new look and function for members only.
It would be nice to have a links tab with a member only supplier category breakdown. As in rough, laps, machine etc.. I would buy from a member first as they are faceter’s and are willing to help answer any questions we may have on products and supplies. It is also a good way to meet some good people with a common coal to cut a beautiful gemstone.I second the comment made by Dennis Anderson about the forum. I would prefer a full functioning forum such as phpBB which includes features such as threading, quoting, private messages, signatures, message preview and so forth.
Meanwhile, still looking around figuring out how the rest of the site functions.
A few more comments on the site…
1. On logout, one is left with a blank page. It would be nice to have something — either a “come again soon / you are logged out page” or the site home page — so we would see that indeed the logout had completed.
2. Under member profile > settings there is a link for profile visibility. It looks like we should be able to change the settings. There is a “save settings” button at the bottom. But I am not seeing the method to edit existing settings.
3. Under profile > edit, the fine print under some of the options indicates which items are included in the membership search. (It took me several passes before I actually read those notes! And actually, I think the faceting machine field also works.) On my initial setup I entered the abbreviation for the state (CA in my case). Not very helpful for searching out other members who might be nearby. Perhaps the instructions can be changed to encourage full state name or else have it changed to a drop down list where spelling won’t be a factor either?
4. Please specify actual dimensions for the profile and cover images. While the software will adjust the images, my preference is to post what I want to see and not have the online software lower the quality by resizing. Also, when I uploaded what appears to be the exact size needed, the site wanted me to “crop” the image before it would accept it even though it was complaining that I had used something less that 150 pixels.
5. Perhaps a “resources” page or library section could be added so that folks can be directed to other good, related sites?
Thanks.
Found one more. Well actually two – I don’t see a way to edit my previous post.
The good news is that the search on the state turned up someone who appears to live nearby. I don’t see any way to email or private message to introduce myself to that member.
HI Mary,
Thanks for your comments and suggestions. If you look just above your post the is a very light (too light in my opinion)there are several links to manage your post. I will look into making this ore visable and user friendly.
Thanks,
Tom Maxwell
Would it be possible to search the member directory by location? Such as state or city a member is from? Ooppps, I see that it is, sorry. Just didn’t have anyone come up nearby unfortunately.
Hi Tom,
Above each of the posts, I see two links on the right. One takes you to this part of the page where you can add another post. The other just puts that post at the top of the window.
The contrast (lack thereof) was a big problem for me. Eventually I discovered that if I tilted the laptop screen back further, it would appear so I could then tell where one post ended and the next started. A more contrasting theme would probably be a huge help.
Thanks.
Note: After I posted this comment it appeared with “edit” option. The previous posts I made do not have that option.
A good idea Jeff and we do have that feature as you have said. We do have that information from members who sign up by filling out the membership Application and mailing it in. Those using PayPal do not have to furnish anything other than email address and credit card information. This has presented a problem when we don’t get at least a correct First and Last Name (no user names or nicknames) along with an email address. Without this basic information we have difficulty crediting your account. Unfortunately it is up to each member to fill out his profile with whatever information he chooses to shave with other members. The USFG Privacy Policy states we will not share any information outside of the membership. I hope this clarifies thing a little and other members see this and complete their profile. It helps the members communicate with each other and helps the USFG keep the membership current.
Great suggestion John. This feature is already the planning stages in the will be added sometime in the near future. I especially like it as I am an Ultra-Tec Rep, a stocking dealer for Gearloose and other lapidary and faceting related items.
@looks good!!
Hi everyone,
Thanks for the great feedback and suggestions! We have made some adjustments today that you can read about here:
https://usfacetersguild.org/web-site-updates-real-names-usernames-public-names/
We have also darkened the text for the post editing buttons. (Posts can be edited for up to 5 minutes after they are posted.)
Hi Tom,
I may be in error, but what time zone is the new site running in? It seems like it is 7 hours off our USA time zones. Seeing the posting times and the calculations. Not trying to be critical here.
Greg Hays
@Hi all,
I’ll jump in and introduce myself as owner of RKA Studio, your friendly neighborhood Web developer. The last few weeks have been very busy ones getting the site launched but I finally have a few minutes to sit down and reply to some of the (great) questions and suggestions here. I’ll try to cover all of the topics without replying individually.
Logout whiteout: This is an issue we’re currently investigating.
Forum: We are currently testing a suite of upgraded features including quoting, bbcode formatting, and private messages. Our goal for the forums is for them to be a great conversation tool, but also for topics to be useful resources to future members and visitors to the site. So when looking at features to implement, it’s about finding a balance between those two things. For instance, threading can make it much easier to determine who is talking to whom during the conversation, but it also encourages a lot of digression and can make it much harder to follow a conversation after the fact. Another factor is usability on a variety of devices—to use threading as the example again, it was developed for desktop browsers at a time when screen resolution was low and there was a lot of resistance to scrolling. Now on touch devices like phones and tablets, it is far easier to scroll than to tap the correct skinny little link in a threading tree. Over 20% of American adults use mobile devices as their primary Internet device so usability on mobile is something we take very seriously these days.
The long and short is that we can add features as use of the forum grows and we are exploring this right now. I would like to get quoting in very quickly, and it may be possible within a week or so.
I’m not sure if all the questions about uploading photos are specifically about uploading photos to forum posts—but if they are, then the answer is yes, the “Attachments” box at the bottom of the reply tool already allows you to upload up to four photos of 3 megabytes (MB) apiece. You can also upload a GemCad file(s) as an attachment.
I will definitely be darkening the reply headers a bit and maybe adding a border to help separate each reply.
Member Directory and Member Profiles
Profile field visibility is locked for the foreseeable future, but there is not currently a handy way to remove this menu item entirely. You can, however, control whether your entire profile shows up in the member directory, and whether your profile is searchable in the member directory. Even if you remove your profile from the member directory, your board and officers still appreciate members filling out the demographic info to give us a clearer picture of the membership.
The cover photo dimensions are 759×225. The avatar photo is 150×150, though right now it is then padded down to 146×146. (I’ll probably remove this padding.) Keep in mind, both of these images change size depending on the device they are being viewed on. The best way to keep these images from being recompressed is to upload them in .PNG format rather than .JPG format.
For locating fellow members geographically, we landed on using a search bar rather than a map-based approach. There are a number of reasons for this, but at the end of the day it will be more useful. It does, however, rely on members entering info into their profiles. We refrained from auto-populating these fields with physical addresses out of sensitivity to members’ privacy. So members are encouraged to put as much info in their profiles as they feel comfortable, and the search bar can find anything in there.
Once you have found a member, there is currently not a method for private messaging. Private messaging is possible with our software but there is still internal conversation about whether to turn this on. It may help to hear from more members that this is a desirable feature. For the time being, you are free to type your email address or phone number into the “About me” section of your profile. Member profiles are not available to the general public, but forum posts are—so keep that in mind when publishing any information on the forums you don’t want the whole world to see.
Member/Dealer network:
There are a number of ways to implement this, and we are discussing them as Tom mentioned. In the meantime, it won’t hurt to mention in your “About me” section of your profile that you are a “Certified dealer of X” or “Oregon Sunstone rough miner”, because all this profile information is searchable.
Time zone: The site’s internal clock is set to UTC 0 since–despite having United States in the name–we’re an international organization with many members hailing from all over the world. If this ends up causing confusion for a bunch of our users, we could certainly discuss setting it to CST.
Ok, that’s all for now—if I missed any questions, happy to answer more. If you’d like to send longer-format feedback, please contact me at webmaster@usfacetersguild.org
Hi Everyone,
We have rolled out Private Messaging. You can read about it here:
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