Random ideas for better access

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I feel I’m missing many great tidbits getting published here. Very often, I dig up an interesting forum post by browsing the Recent Replies column.

– The right panel has a huge potential for optimisation. Space is being wasted because it’s too wide with not enough info in it (see attachment).

https://imgur.com/a/VDRFC

– The Recent Topics column is much too short. It has room for only 5 items. Plenty of good subjects go unnoticed.

– Recent Posts is also very short. Also, it’s not obvious which is which. Posts is Woody, whereas Topics is everybody else, right ? More specific names for both columns would be welcome.

– Some interesting innovations in Search for Topics… (New Posts since Last Visit…) Didn’t experiment much with them yet. Would love to see some of those links much higher in the page. Maybe all of them aren’t needed ?

– Advertising (which is nice, by the way : I like the products that are pushed) does not integrate well with the other material in the panel. Scrolling is interrupted when one is looking for a link. Maybe a 3-column layout would be more efficient ? (1 big column on the left white panel with the main content, 2 small columns within the right-hand “wooden” panel ?)

– I have been subscribing to the blog’s RSS feed, but it does not cover yet the Forum Topics… I find RSS is a fantastic way to be regularly updated.

– Too many words : we have Ask Woody’s blog, then there’s a Lounge, but there are also Forums… and Topics… my head is exploding.

– There does not seem to be a Preview command. I understand you can Edit, but there are times you’d rather not inflict your blunders on others…

– Apparently, there’s no way to delete an attachment once it’s uploaded.

– At some point in the future : do you really want to keep that faux-wood background ? Although I do get the pun, this is so 1980’s… and it interferes with readability.

That’s all for now, folks…

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woody

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@Clairvaux I won’t attempt to address all your points, but I can say that this is still being worked on, and may not be the final way it looks.

Re Blog/Lounge/Forum/Topics: The blog posts, where Askwoody started/starts, has had the Lounge attached, and the Lounge consists of Forums/Fora and Topics. The topics rest in the forum, even though I have mixed the names up myself, more than once 🙂

As far as I am aware, the RSS relates only to the Blog (home page items), not the Lounge.

The advertising is what is paying for all of this innovation, so it really needs to be quite prominent, hopefully without being obtrusive. Likewise, the Donate via Paypal and Support on Patreon buttons.

Preview is definitely on the wishlist, but we don’t know if that’s even possible, at this stage.

I’ve tried to find how to delete attachments too, and I couldn’t figure it out. I don’t think it’s currently possible (but thank you for confirming my attempts weren’t faulty!).

And I believe Woody quite likes the theme, woodgrain and all 🙂

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HiFlyer, woody

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Thanks for the suggestions! (And thanks Kirsty for the follow up.) Lemme tackle them one at a time….

I’m limited on what I can do in the right sidebar. Each component of the right sidebar is a “widget.” Depending on the widget, I have some control over its contents. But there’s no way to stack widgets next to each other.

The way we have the site set up, there are four inter-related components. The blog is the main page. At this point, I’m the only one who can post to the blog. The Lounge is composed of Forums and sub-Forums. (I prefer “Fora” but I’m just pedantic.) Each Forum (and sub-Forum) may contain Topics. Each Topic may contain entries called “Replies” (you might think of them as comments). So it’s a Lounge hierarchy, grafted onto the side of a blog.

That’s what I get to juggle.

I just boosted the Recent Topics list to ten entries. Note that the Recent Topics list shows Topics that are “fresh” – the ones that have most-recently-changed Replies. I can change the title “Recent Topics.” Any suggestions? “Fresh Topics”? UPDATE: I just realized that I haven’t a clue how Topics are ordered in “Recent Topics.”

I renamed “Recent blog posts”

The “Search for Topics” list is automatically generated. I’m going to root around a bit and see if I can cut a few of them out. Which ones should get the axe? Also.. not sure where I could move it.

Advertising is a pain in the butt. Unfortunately, it’s my major source of income. The site doesn’t pay for itself yet, but hope springs eternal. Three columns would be very difficult for people with smaller monitors. Yes, the ads interrupt scrolling, but that’s a minor offense compared to advertising on most sites these days.

RSS is my #1 source of updates, too. You can use a feed like

https://askwoody.com/forums/feed/?post_type=topic/

I’d like to get a feed set up for Topics, but unfortunately the feeds in bbPress are buggy. See https://bbpress.org/forums/topic/where-is-rss-for-topics/

If you figure out something that works, let me know! In fact, if you could write up something about RSS feeds to post in the Knowledge Base, that’d be tremendous.

We need a Preview button in the reply edit pane. I have that in as a request for Phase 2, which should get under way shortly – I just sent out a request for bids yesterday. I’d also like to improve the reply editor while we’re at it.

I don’t know of any way to delete an attachment, aside from deleting the entire reply. That may be fixed if we get a better reply editor.

And the woodgrain.. yep, that’s 1980s style and gives the whole site a decidedly old-fashioned look. It was created by an old friend who’s since passed away. I tried changing it a couple of years ago, but met with no small amount of resistance.

Keep those suggestions coming. I hope we get Phase 2 rolled out soon.

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HiFlyer, Elly

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Thanks for the feedback !

Yes, Recent Blog Posts, Recent Topics, Recent Replies, that begins to make sense for my personal limited bandwidth…

If Recent Topics are admitted into the column (as opposed to simply sorted) according to freshness of replies, and you wanted to reflect this fact, you could call them Active Topics. But then, Recent Topics might be a better name, even if the real filter used is date of last reply and not date of original post.

That’s because most people would be looking for, well, Recent Topics. Suppose the rule applied is date of last reply. We might have, from time to time, a one month-old thread that climbs back into the list, either because it’s been suddenly revived, or because people are still arguing about the subject one month later. It’s unlikely, however, that there would be both enough old threads revived in that manner, and that the more recent Topics would attract no replies at all, so that the actual freshest original posts would get squeezed out of the list (which would be a bad thing).

Most people would be eager to know about the last Topic posted, even if it has not attracted any replies. Calling the column Active Topics might suggest that recent, inactive ones wouldn’t necessarily be included. Whereas Recent Topics reflects both the actual, main contents of the list, and most people’s motivation for looking into it. Also, old revived Topics are also recent, in a way, so that seems all right to me.

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woody

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Sorry, I forgot two things while answering Kirsty and Woody.

> I would love to contribute to the Knowledge Base, unfortunately I’m something of a noob in RSS. I’ve only ever used Quite RSS and the RSS function of legacy Opera.

> I don’t want to give the impression that I’m ranting against advertising. In fact, I like it (here ! elsewhere… it depends.)

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A random idea for better access…

I subscribe to topics, and comments are sent to my e-mail. I’ll check my e-mail, but not otherwise be on-line. I read the comments and then, if further interested, will click on the link on the bottom. That brings me to the topic and comment in Woody’s Lounge just perfectly. But if I want to log-in to comment, rather than do it anonymously, I am suddenly taken to a totally different page (Forums). I don’t want my password “remembered”, which might allow me to be logged in when I click the link. I want a dumb browser that remembers and keeps nothing.

It would be nice to stay on the page I am logging in on, rather than bounce somewhere else.

I don’t know how other people access a site like this, and how their navigating works for them. It was totally disconcerting for me, to be tossed somewhere else just because I logged in. I’ve already deleted the e-mail and link that got me here, so I have to dig it up, just so I can figure out where I was when I wanted to comment… I’m sort of used to it now, and delete e-mails slower, but it was a way to get lost. Even though the Forums let me navigate through them, I wasn’t paying attention to what Forum and Topic I was in, so I don’t know where to navigate to… and as the volume of fora and topics and comments grows it is only getting worse.

Not the only non-techy here… 🙂

but only sometimes lost, disoriented, confused… Now where was that topic, “Totally Confused” that helped me clarify what my problem was and know I wasn’t alone?

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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PKCano

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I just put my comments in a different place https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/mvps-please-check-here-every-day/#post-93425

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Sorry, you can’t see that. I think I expressed the same thing, so I’ll repeat here:

@woody
IMHO
I didn’t want to put this in “Totally Confused,” rather here for your consideration. I know you’re excited about the Lounge and the forums. But I wonder if you have moved things too fast for the majority of the site users, many of whom are not technically gifted.
Now that you have the Forums link at the top, maybe the Home screen on login would be easier (at least for a while longer) to give people more time to adjust to the new structure. After all, they have been looking at the blog home screen for years and it is kind of an abrupt change. It’s almost like it disappeared if you are a registered member. I can understand their confusion. And for the MANY non-techie readers, it may not be intuitive to click on the “Home” button.
Just saying…

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Elly

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It looks like the best solution is to have login stay on the same page. Right now it redirects to the Forums main page. Instead, when you’ve logged in, you should stay right where you are.

I just put that in as a request for the devs. Thanks!

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Elly

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I think – think – that all you have to do is click the browser’s back arrow. but I’ll see if it’s possible to have the page stay the same on login.

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Elly

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So, in testing this, when I use the back arrow, it doesn’t load as me having logged in… doesn’t say Elly…

Edit 1- So it doesn’t look like I’m logged in, but it did post my comment appropriately.

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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@ Elly

After logging in, and hitting the back button,…. try the re-fresh button–does that update that you’re logged in, and are you on the page you wanted to be?

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Elly

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Yes, refreshing the page shows me logged in, and even though I didn’t look logged in, I was able to comment as myself without refreshing…

But, without refreshing, the page showed me no edit button (as if I was anonymous), so that is why I posted separately about the edit 2 test.

Interesting mix of logged in and not.

I hope Woody can see that logging in keeps me in place. Whoops, I can see that just in logging in I go to the top of the page and lose my place in the comments…

Just a learning curve, I guess.

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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Edit 2- (the edit button disappeared fast on the above post) Then, when I log in, I do it at the top of the page. The back button takes me to the top of the page. I can simply scroll down on a topic with few replies like this one, but on a topic with many replies it is time consuming and difficult to find the post I wanted to comment on.

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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OK. Best solution is to have a login stay on the same page.

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Elly

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Woody

woody wrote:

Best solution is to have a login stay on the same page.

And, same Reply #, if I’m understanding Elly’s request correctly.

But, if Elly has just been scrolling a long topic, there will be no way for the software to know where to go. She would have to first click the Reply # so it gets placed at the top of the page, and then log in, now the software would know which Reply # she had been interested in to Reply to.

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I’m thinking that the Wordpad/Notepad solution is working. It isn’t part of the Lounge, but I can’t imagine a way to log in at the level of the right comment and staying there. I’m just happy staying on the same page… there’s a logic to logging in and staying on the same page. I know how I got there, and I can scroll back. I can manage the rest…

Someone had brought up pages for the threads… If there were pages, it would mean less long distance scrolling! That might be way easier to implement…

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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@ Elly

Yes, I noted that same problem back on the Test Lounge.

My solution has been to keep WordPad open, I click on the Reply # that I’m interested in creating my own Reply to, then copy and paste the URL to WordPad (for safe keeping), (if I’m waiting awhile before logging in, I might save several URLs in WordPad to go back to once logged in) then Login, and then paste the URL that I copied back into the Navigation bar, hit the go button–it takes me to the exact Reply!

A little extra *work*, but it works!

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Elly

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I could use Notepad that way! I don’t think I have Wordpad. That might be a good solution to not getting lost! With the increased volume of comments, it was becoming an issue more often. I can cut and paste efficiently. Thank you, trying it right away…

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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There’s a few solutions here @Elly fixed my problems and they sound the same as yours. There’s a few different things to try. If your uncomfortable with the level of security you can mess around to get the optimum that your happy with i.e. add and subtract the solutions until you get what you need to the level of security that you req. Sorry for the late post. Hope it works out for ya. 🙂

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/ie/en-US/b03bf56d-0435-4743-9e13-2edaab05ba18/internet-explorer-11-keeps-logging-me-out?forum=ieitprocurrentver

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Elly

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Having taken the plunge into the site and explored some of its nooks and crannies, I think I can now explain why I feel confused about the general navigation experience. That’s because of the structure. First, let me recall the principles laid out by Woody, which are simple enough :

woody wrote:

The way we have the site set up, there are four inter-related components. The blog is the main page. At this point, I’m the only one who can post to the blog. The Lounge is composed of Forums and sub-Forums. (I prefer “Fora” but I’m just pedantic.) Each Forum (and sub-Forum) may contain Topics. Each Topic may contain entries called “Replies” (you might think of them as comments). So it’s a Lounge hierarchy, grafted onto the side of a blog.

Here are, in my opinion, the reasons why interacting with the site is somewhat off-putting, and not flowing naturally.

Lack of hierarchy

The Lounge is grafted onto the side of the Blog. It means they are at the same level. Who’s boss ? The Lounge, or the Blog ? We don’t know.

Redundancy

The Lounge has been launched because the comments were overwhelming the Blog. But the Blog lives on. So now we have duplication. There are abstracts of the Blog in the Lounge, one-liners at the top of threads, with a link to the “real” blog post, which is in a separate space.

This is confusing, because there’s no clear leader. The Lounge is on top — sort of — because that’s where we will have long and passionate conversations, and it’s also the Shiny New Thing. But the Blog is also on top — sort of — because that’s the only place to read Woody’s articles in full.

The Blog could be the clear leader if the comments were still appended at the end of each blog post, with links to the contributors’ own topics on the side (hence, hierarchy and a clear reading path) ; or if the Blog was at the top of an outline of the whole underneath hierarchy, the way a traditional forum’s homepage shows a table of contents, with the mods’ posts being promoted as stickies, or in a box on the top of the page.

Navigation riddles and inverted reading

As a result, search for one’s of Woody’s posts, and where will you land ? On Woody’s post ? Wrong ! On its abstract in the Lounge, where you will be able to read the comments to it. But… wait… I haven’t read yet Woody’s post in full ! So I need to click on the link to the Blog… read the article… maybe get already a bit frustrated because some blog posts are only a few lines long, so no great difference from the abstract… then… where are the comments ? Oh, yes, I have to click back into the Lounge.

Legacy dependencies and jumping through hoops

I’m vastly ignorant here, because I don’t know the blog’s history, so please excuse any mistaken assumptions. But my perception of it is of an appendage to Woody’s articles in InfoWorld. Woody’s “day job” (or one of them) is at InfoWorld, which has, or used to have, a comment space ; but Woody’s fans are more Woody-centric than InfoWorld-centric, and prefer to follow him at his place — while making forays into InfoWorld (that’s my case, anyway).

To wit, many of Woody’s blog posts used to be one-liners with a link to his article at InfoWorld (less so now).

So in a way, Woody’s blog was a tool for his readers to better congregate around him and comment his InfoWorld coverage of Windows, and for Woody a tool to better interact with them and get input.

Now we have a Lounge, which once again detaches comments from Woody’s main writing. But Woody’s Blog remains as such, hung between InfoWorld and the Lounge. Is such a separate space really justified ? And what about the two degrees of separation that now exist between the Lounge and InfoWorld ?

Incidentally, the trip back from InfoWorld to WoodySpace is also fraught with dangers now. There are many more hurdles for InfoWorld readers eager to imbibe with Woodyness.

Suppose I’ve just read Woody’s article Vulnerability in Microsoft SMBv3 protocol crashes Windows PCs. I am informed that The discussion continues on the AskWoody Lounge.

So I eagerly click on the link, expecting to land at Ask Woody Lounge. Unreasonable hopes ! Inflated illusions ! I miserably crash at Ask Woody Blog, where I learn much less than what I have just read (there’s just a one-sentence abstract leading back to InfoWorld), and I don’t get the discussion I have been promised : for that, I need to click further on the Lounge-wards link !

But wait : if I really want to read all that Woody has to say on the subject, I still have to make a stop at the Blog. Just clicking through won’t be enough. Because there, there are two “updates” with two links to outside articles, which are neither in the InfoWorld article nor in the Lounge abstract.

So, sometimes I might not get any benefit at all by checking Woody’s Blog on a specific subject, whether I come from the Lounge or from InfoWorld (because the linked post will just be a one-liner leading to the main InfoWorld article) — and the Blog will still be a hurdle to navigation between the Lounge and InfoWorld ; and other times there might be original content there, which will neither be in InfoWorld nor in the Lounge. And there’s no way to know in advance.

Ambiguous branding

What is exactly Woody’s brand ? Ask Woody ? Ask Woody Blog ? Ask Woody Lounge ?
The feeling we get from the new site is ambivalent. In some places, it seems that Ask Woody Lounge is promoted as the new brand. However, the Lounge is but an appendage in the hierarchy, the banner still says Ask Woody, and the Home page is at Ask Woody Blog. This ambiguity translates in some interface names, which contribute to the confusion.

Now what ?

By now, it must be obvious what I’m hinting at. To me, Ask Woody Blog has now been made redundant (as a separate space, not relative to its contents), and would have been far better off integrated in the Lounge. Ask Woody’s blog space is obviously… about Woody’s writing, so this should have stayed on top of the new Lounge, instead of being relegated to a middle-of-nowhere no man’s land.

This would also have allowed a no-holds-barred promotion of Ask Woody Lounge as the new brand, since the visual presence of Woody’s articles at the top would have made clear the relationship between Woody’s writings (including his books) and the Ask Woody Lounge brand. Ask Woody Lounge is Woody’s place, when you can read his articles, be informed about his new books, ask him questions and lounge with similarly Woody-minded individuals (this including writing topics).

From now on however, I will suppose there are good reasons why the structure has been made so, of which I’m not cognizant, whether they are editorial, technical, organisational or otherwise.

I will therefore, in a following post, make a few suggestions to possibly reduce the confusion within the limits of the present structure.

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Clairvaux wrote:

Having taken the plunge into the site and explored some of its nooks and crannies, I think I can now explain why I feel confused about the general navigation experience. That’s because of the structure.

@Clairvaux
Let me see if I can make thins a little clearer.
AskWoody.com is the Blog. That’s “Home” on the main menu at the top. The Articles on the main screen used to be all lumped together and you navigated back (Older Topics) and forth (Newer Topics) with links at the bottom of each page.

Woody just built a storage place (Lounge) on the side of the Blog. In this Lounge there are rooms full of filing cabinets, and now the Articles can be categorized. The door to this Lounge is the “Lounge Forums” button in the top menu.

In the Lounge you have different Forums (rooms) – AskWoody Central, AskWoody blog, AskWoody Support, Code Red, Tools, Knowledge Base and Outside the box. Lets take a look at the structure:

AskWoody Central (room)
MPV forum (file cabinet)
Suggestions about improving the Lounge (file cabinet)
Tips for using the Lounge (file cabinet)

AskWoody blog (room) – this is where we keep the links to each of the front page topics

AskWoody support (room)
Windows (file cabinet)
Windows 10 (hanging folder)
Questions Win10 (manilla folder in Windows 10)
Windows 10 beta builds (manilla folder in Windows 10)
Windows 10 cumulative updates (manilla folder in Windows 10)
Windows 8.1 (hanging folder)
Questions Win8.1 (manilla folder in Windows 8.1)
Windows 8.1 patches (manilla folder in Windows 8.1)
.
.
.
Other Platforms – for Windows wonks (hanging folder)

So now, instead of just the single room (AskWoody blog) we have space for all sorts of other topics and a way to keep some semblance of order – well maybe not quite yet, but soon, we’re working on it.

EDIT: Well, it didn’t come out with the indentions between room, file cabinet, hanging folder and manila folder like I wanted. Imagine an outline structure.

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woody

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You’ve succinctly summarized the problems I had and have with integrating the blog and the Lounge.

Solutions? Remember, they have to be implementable – on a shoestring!

And realize that most bulletin boards of any size have enormous problems with fragmentation – it’s hard to come up with a framework that minimizes duplication.

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Elly

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Some thoughts…

1) May we have a time zone stated after the posted time? You may be in CST, which changes to Central Daylight Stupid Time at some point, but the time zone would be nice. Gives a clearer reference point.

2) Replace “Last post 2 weeks, 3 days, 1 hour, etc.” with the date and time.

3) On the “About Woody” page, last sentence of last answer is incorrect. There is a reference near the right hand middle of the page “Doubts about the following ad?

Tnx

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1.  regarding @Clairvaux’s comment from above:

“Navigation riddles and inverted reading

As a result, search for one’s of Woody’s posts, and where will you land ? On Woody’s post ? Wrong ! On its abstract in the Lounge, where you will be able to read the comments to it. But… wait… I haven’t read yet Woody’s post in full ! So I need to click on the link to the Blog… read the article… “

This appears to still be happening.  I’m only on my 2nd day in taking time to experience this site, and I have noticed this bouncing back and forth between 2 similar-looking pages

[now the way it appears is that one page is in the Blog and has a few lines from Woody at the top and one page is not in the Blog and only has one line from Woody at the top, but they both have the same comments thread showing below Woody’s line(s)], and I have found it frustrating.

Why have it partially-mirrored like that?  Just have it in one place, with everything intact there (with the page including all the lines of Woody’s original blog post, so there isn’t this bouncing back and forth, clicking and clicking to try to find the full entry).  Then, if you want to continue to have 2 different links to the same thing in different places in the forum structure, you can do that, but that seems a bit redundant in itself.

2.  Is there a whole section of the righthand sidebar that is not visible to visitors who are not logged in?  The one that people are talking about above which has “fresh topics”, “recent topics”, etc.  I can’t see anything like that.

In the 2016 blog set-up, I could see the part of the righthand sidebar that listed the last 10 or so comments (made on any thread), but I don’t see that now, either.

3.  I also find the titles of some of the areas of the forum using words that to the casual visitor don’t have clear differences in their definitions, such as AW blog, AW central, AW support, which Clairvaux mentioned seemed to her to all meld into the same sort of idea, to be ambiguous and to have lead to some topics being organized in unexpected ways.

4.  Additionally, I think that knowledge base, tools, and support are not really distinct from each other, that some topics are mentioned in 2 or more of them, and that tools could be folded into knowledge base — and some support topics could also be moved to the knowledge base, or vice versa.  Maybe just having a support “big tent” that directly listed the knowledge base topics and tools topics (without parsing them out in different sub-forums) would suffice.

5.  I don’t see what the logic is in how the sub-forum names are listed in the righthand sidebar — it’s not alphabetically, it’s not by number of threads, it’s not by (my perceived) order of “importance” to Woody’s site or readers.
—

—-
P.T.

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Thanks for writing, P.T. It’d sure make things easier if you signed up for and used an account – even with a burner email address.

Remember I’m running this site on a shoestring. Right now, I just barely make enough to keep the lights on – and with the magnitude of developer support lately, in response to repeated attacks, I’m actually losing money.

anonymous wrote:

Why have it partially-mirrored like that? Just have it in one place, with everything intact there (with the page including all the lines of Woody’s original blog post, so there isn’t this bouncing back and forth, clicking and clicking to try to find the full entry).

The software I’m using – WordPress and bbPress – just works that way. In an ideal world, everything here would appear as comments to one of my blog entries. But then… how would folks ask questions? Like this one for example. Would I have to guess that somebody has a question about the forum structure, and write a blog about it?

Most blogs follow one of two formats: Either there’s a blogger with a few comments (that’s the way we used to do it, until the comments just took over), or there’s an open forum for comments, with the blog entries just being one thread of comments. AskWoody’s a hybrid — an imperfect one, to be sure, but it has some good qualities from both worlds.

anonymous wrote:

Is there a whole section of the righthand sidebar that is not visible to visitors who are not logged in?

Not any more. When the site first came under attack, about a month ago, we had to disable the “Recent comments” section on the right side. The site still isn’t working well enough to bring that “widget” back on stream. It’ll happen some day, but for now, enabling the widget redlines the server.

anonymous wrote:

I also find the titles of some of the areas of the forum using words that to the casual visitor don’t have clear differences in their definitions, such as AW blog, AW central, AW support

Good point. What would you call the blog, as opposed to the site infrastructure (that’s where you are right now), as opposed to the place to ask questions?

anonymous wrote:

I think that knowledge base, tools, and support are not really distinct from each other, that some topics are mentioned in 2 or more of them, and that tools could be folded into knowledge base

Fundamental problem there is that they aren’t distinct. There’s no easy way to separate the KB from questions, the tools from support, and on and one.

anonymous wrote:

I don’t see what the logic is in how the sub-forum names are listed in the righthand sidebar

It’s basically the way I think about the site. I built the site with that outline.

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@Woody:  I have missed a “mass” of information which is all listed under “Woody Support”.   I’ve only located some, months old which I feel many others may have as well.   My suggestion, which is only my personal feeling, is that ALL of these various questions and a few answers should be listed in other Blog topics.

If one looks at these listings there are numerous subjects which have very old messages which have never been read.  I think there are many which could easily be posted in the Blog topics.

This is only my opinion, however I feel that it would make a difference in “consolidating” these topics.   At the present time there are so many old  questions, etc.  just “pending” a reply.  This is not a criticism, only a thought that this method may be easier.   You have a wonderful website, and we all love it!!  Thank you for the outstanding assistance you provide to so many of us.     We owe you a large debt of gratitude!      Best wishes for a VERY, VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!     🙂  🙂

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