I am currently designing a new homepage site for our forum. It will be similar to the page Countryside has on line (with links to other sites and boards) to afford us a bit more flexibility in our site capabilities. I am asking for suggestions that I may consider utilizing in the layout. Give me some ideas and I will try to implement as many as I can into the available drive space and bandwidth.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), April 11, 2002

Answers

Jay how about an area for those of us who have products we sell. Say, your worms, and palnts, I know there are others with stuff for sale. Sherri and her wonderful things. I may start spinning and selling my angora yarn. Just a thought! Also a photo gallery would be fun I think.

Will we be able to have our forum there too?

Susan

-- Susan in MN (nanaboo@paulbunyan.net), April 11, 2002.

Jay,

I have three thoughts, that you might consider. (1) I think that a reference area can be both a nice addition and a potential money maker for the site. Say you have a link to a reference page, that has a listing of books and book reviews that can be purchased and a click through earns the site like 20% of the price. (2). There are several free news sources that can be tailored to whatever news you want on a scrolling style or a constantly updated box style. (3). Another possible item might be the highlighting of an article that changes every day or week, something by an authority or a review by a contributor, in a particular area.

-- BC (desertdweller44@yahoo.com), April 11, 2002.

I have the mainpage "roughed in" with a link back here and we have maybe 3 pages more that we utilize at the site. As I get more adept with their server, we'll decide how best to customize our available space there. The URL is http://the_singletree.tripod.com/

I may try redundent networking of different servers to better ensure against crashes provided I can find sites with similar protocol for simplicity.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), April 12, 2002.

It looks like we have a potential of about 4 links to add to the one to this board.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), April 12, 2002.

As long as the forum is on Lusenet, there will always be outages, however with a more service oriented server there should be little need for back up systems. If you want any help with coding or site construction let me know.

-- BC (desertdweller44@yahoo.com), April 12, 2002.

Lusenet will always be problematic, however , the ease of use is highly desireable. Should a server surface that can support the same type protocol we have here and be more dependable, a move will occur.Of course our archives will need to be addressed at that time also.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), April 12, 2002.

BC,

I'm looking at various avenues to add many of the things you suggested. I added a direct link to our for sale catagory here.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), April 12, 2002.

Looking good. I hope it won't degenerate into a "meat market" tho. There are more than enough of those on the web already. What can the rest of us do to make it more interesting?

-- kim in CO (kimk61252@hotmail.com), April 13, 2002.

Ok, I'm not very literate with computers, but I'd like to see some sort of user profile. I've seen them on other sites. You can have a listing of the users names and anyone can click on the name and get whatever information that person has chosen to post. The introductions we have now take some wading through to read about someone that has chosen to "talk" to you. Just an idea. Jill

-- Jill (lance1_86404@yahoo.com), April 14, 2002.

Jill,

I may be able to edit the graphic windows on the homepage to show a picture with a short profile that leads back to this site. Monitoring is easier here than at tripod.

-- Jay Blair in N. AL (jayblair678@yahoo.com), April 14, 2002.