Day 386 - June 18 - Community Housekeeping

Well, waddya think? We've been up on the new site for a bit over 24 hours, and Brad is frantically working to address the bugs that show up anytime we have such a major upgrade as this. Because many of you may not be familiar with this sort of website format, I want to briefly help y'all out as you find your way around our new Community home.

First, I want to encourage you to log in and fiddle around with all these new features. There's a whole bunch of really neat stuff available to you now that's been designed to make it easier for you to take part in this community, and the best way to get familiar with them and find your way around is to spend a bit of time doing just that. The menu bar across the very top of the page, for example, will take you to the usual places you'll remember from the previous site - Blog, Guestbook, and Home, for example - but you'll also notice new things in that bar as well. Let me give you a quick rundown -

Home - Just what is says. The front page of the website. This is the page you'll want to Bookmark or add as a Favorite.
Guestbook - The same as the previous site. Allows members and non-members alike to post notes.
Blog - This is also the same as the previous site, where I will continue in the vein I've been blogging for the last year. We may need to get a new name for this section...
Happenings - this is new page where the admins can post information which affects the community as a whole. Check it out today and you'll see a How-To article on updating your profile, and a welcome message. This page acts like the blog - newest posts will be at the top.
Forum - this is the discussion area of the site. Take the time to explore this area - under the "Categories" tab you'll see sections for all sorts of discussion topics. You can start, watch, and/or comment on any topic here. The "Recent Discussions" and "My Discussions" tabs will help you stay on top of what's going on, and you will can get and manage email notifications so you stay abreast of all this stuff.
Community - this place has all the personal profiles, member photos, and many facebook-type features, most of which I haven't even begun to explore. Have fun!
Archives - self-explanatory, in my opinion.

Each of these pages has many features to explore, and you'll notice many of them stay the same from page to page - the Chatterbox, for example. I hope y'all find these new features to be helpful and enjoyable to your ConnorWatch Community experience!

Finally, let me assure you that we are aware of the bugs, glitches, and other items that are popping up in the strangest of places - header bars that are the wrong color, windows that are seemingly endless, or formatting errors of one sort or another, to name a few. If you run into something like this on the site, take the opportunity to check the Forum pages to see what errors have been found already, before you start contacting Brad. He's swamped with all these things and is working hard to fix them as quickly as possible, and it helps him if you take the time to see if what you're running into has already been brought to his attention. That way he can devote his limited time to fixing things, instead of troubleshooting a problem only to find he is already dealing with it!

There's a search window on each page if you can't find what you're looking for; there's messaging features for members in the Community section; there's so much just for us - the family that is ConnorWatch. I pray it meets your needs as you continue the journey with us.

Eric

Oops, I almost forgot. Once I get up to speed on the "Happenings" page (it works differently than this blog - see, I have to get used to some new things too!) - anyway, once I get up to speed, this sort of posting will go into the Happenings page instead of here. That will keep the original purpose of this blog intact. Sorry for the interruption!

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