- Joined
- May 2, 2001
- Messages
- 7,486
I have been enjoying trying new things on the site in recent months. We've added quite a few new stories and articles, for example. There are also several new ones coming out in the next week or two. I am always looking for new writers, by the way. If you have an idea for a technical article shoot me an email. I'd like to add some product reviews, too.
There are quite a few new sub-forums. Some are experiments and some are permanent. We'll see what happens.
The most recent new forum is the Outdoor News forum. That one has a lot of promise. It is getting easier (relative term
)for a site administrator to pull up tons of good news about guns, hunting, gun laws, new products, stupid hunter tricks, etc. on the internet. In some cases I have subscribed to automatic email lists at the various state Fish & Game departments. Other content comes to me in the form of an RSS feed. (Another new technical challenge for me.) Without this new sub-forum many of you would never been aware of the new blackpowder-only frog hunting season just announced in Ohio. ) Wouldn't want to miss that one.
Regarding another Outdoor News thread about tag draw deadlines coming up, Buffalobob replied that he knows a guy who missed out on a hunt last year because he missed a deadline.
I will be starting a monthly or bi-monthly Newsletter in a couple of weeks. It will introduce any new stories and articles. It'll also mention any new forum features for those who haven't been on the site in a while.
In fact, one of the main reasons for instituting a newsletter is to entice a return to the site of members who may not have been around for a while. The more the merrier! More traffic results in more new threads, more posts on existing threads and more diverse personalities and opinions as well as a greater breadth of knowledge.
We have a wonderful bunch of like-minded guys on this site. Having said that, many of the recent site add-ons have been done for the express purpose of increasing the sense of community on Long Range Hunting. My next major site improvement is also to be done with that in mind.
I am about to add regional sub-forums. Probably about 6 or so covering various areas of the US and Canada. For those sub-forums I may go to Moderators whose most important purpose would be to instill cohesiveness in the individual regional forums.
I am looking at adding some navigational features to enhance the utility of the Outdoor News...perhaps a way to sort the news by region, for example. Within each regional forum there may be a link to the news items that directly affect activities in that region. The navigational idea is still a work in progress.
A while back ss7mm made a great suggestion about a "Search Results FAQ" section that would be a compiled list of threads that come up with typical searches. For example, if you search for: "Parallax adjustment questions". In the FAQ, just after that topic would then be a listing of URL's to threads that have discussed that topic. I'll try to get onto that project sometime this month.
Anyway, it's fun to be looking for new ways to improve the site. I welcome your comments and suggestions.
There are quite a few new sub-forums. Some are experiments and some are permanent. We'll see what happens.
The most recent new forum is the Outdoor News forum. That one has a lot of promise. It is getting easier (relative term
)for a site administrator to pull up tons of good news about guns, hunting, gun laws, new products, stupid hunter tricks, etc. on the internet. In some cases I have subscribed to automatic email lists at the various state Fish & Game departments. Other content comes to me in the form of an RSS feed. (Another new technical challenge for me.) Without this new sub-forum many of you would never been aware of the new blackpowder-only frog hunting season just announced in Ohio. ) Wouldn't want to miss that one.Regarding another Outdoor News thread about tag draw deadlines coming up, Buffalobob replied that he knows a guy who missed out on a hunt last year because he missed a deadline.
I will be starting a monthly or bi-monthly Newsletter in a couple of weeks. It will introduce any new stories and articles. It'll also mention any new forum features for those who haven't been on the site in a while.
In fact, one of the main reasons for instituting a newsletter is to entice a return to the site of members who may not have been around for a while. The more the merrier! More traffic results in more new threads, more posts on existing threads and more diverse personalities and opinions as well as a greater breadth of knowledge.
We have a wonderful bunch of like-minded guys on this site. Having said that, many of the recent site add-ons have been done for the express purpose of increasing the sense of community on Long Range Hunting. My next major site improvement is also to be done with that in mind.
I am about to add regional sub-forums. Probably about 6 or so covering various areas of the US and Canada. For those sub-forums I may go to Moderators whose most important purpose would be to instill cohesiveness in the individual regional forums.
I am looking at adding some navigational features to enhance the utility of the Outdoor News...perhaps a way to sort the news by region, for example. Within each regional forum there may be a link to the news items that directly affect activities in that region. The navigational idea is still a work in progress.
A while back ss7mm made a great suggestion about a "Search Results FAQ" section that would be a compiled list of threads that come up with typical searches. For example, if you search for: "Parallax adjustment questions". In the FAQ, just after that topic would then be a listing of URL's to threads that have discussed that topic. I'll try to get onto that project sometime this month.
Anyway, it's fun to be looking for new ways to improve the site. I welcome your comments and suggestions.
