Forums > General > Living, Working, Retiring

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DavidMcL

Mar 23, 2013, 11:36 AM

Post #1 of 76 (13628 views)

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Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Just curious - as always - and what advice do you folks have for Mexconnect to bring it to a more professional level?
Serious question as we are going through a major database conversion.

David
David McL
WebJefe

(This post was edited by tonyburton on Mar 23, 2013, 3:31 PM)

sparks

Mar 23, 2013, 2:58 PM

Post #2 of 76 (13557 views)

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Re: [DavidMcL] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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>>>> more professional level

Oh oh .... sounds like trouble. The whole site or just the message board. I like going to the first unread message automatically, don't change that

Sparks Mexico Blog - Sparks Costalegre

chicois8

Mar 23, 2013, 3:11 PM

Post #3 of 76 (13552 views)

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Re: [DavidMcL] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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I do not fix things unless they are broken........
Ocanahua, Jalisco
San Mateo, California

jackak10

Mar 23, 2013, 3:23 PM

Post #4 of 76 (13543 views)

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Re: [sparks] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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I can't add color to the text when I use Chrome, and the reply box is funny when I use Firefox. I haven't tried IE, that's the disaster option for me.

Also, maybe don't have the "send e-mail notification on reply" box already checked. I forget to uncheck it and have to wade through emails.

tonyburton / Moderator

Mar 23, 2013, 3:24 PM

Post #5 of 76 (13542 views)

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Re: [sparks] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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There will be some changes to both the site and the forums.

The changes are being made in order to improve functionality behind the scenes, but they offer an opportunity to consider incorporating some of the things people have asked for (such as "reply" function on forums working correctly, and the ability to add comments and/or "like" buttons to articles).

One of our major concerns is that most people reading MexConnect never realize just how large the site is and that the site has thousands of articles about all aspects of Mexico. As the site has grown, some of these articles have become harder to find easily. {All suggestions considered!}

tonyburton / Moderator

Mar 23, 2013, 3:28 PM

Post #6 of 76 (13538 views)

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Re: [jackak10] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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"maybe don't have the "send e-mail notification on reply" box already checked. I forget to uncheck it and have to wade through emails."
You can change this setting (forum wide) by going to :
Forums > Edit Profile > User Profile

We know the reply function does not work correctly and hope to fix that in the next upgrade.

I'll have to check into your comment about Chrome since that's the first time it's been reported.

Your input is sincerely appreciated'; keep it coming!

sparks

Mar 23, 2013, 3:49 PM

Post #7 of 76 (13529 views)

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Re: [tonyburton] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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A little easier to post a link in either editor

If it's page views that are down ... maybe it's a change in peoples Internet habits (moving too fast). You sure have a lot of info on each section of the bar menu so it's all there if people take the time.

Current events may draw more attention than busing around Mexico but I don't care for that approach.

My site traffic is down over the last year. Maybe less Mexico interest?

Sparks Mexico Blog - Sparks Costalegre

tonyburton / Moderator

Mar 23, 2013, 4:16 PM

Post #8 of 76 (13514 views)

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Re: [sparks] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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No problem with page traffic; (fortunately) that continues to grow.
Rather, it's a desire to ensure that all our authors' hard work (and our senior editor's hard work) gets viewed by as many people as possible and that we reach the widest possible audience!

Making links easier is one of our priorities for the forums; thanks for the reminder!

(This post was edited by tonyburton on Mar 23, 2013, 4:17 PM)

nomore

Mar 23, 2013, 4:23 PM

Post #9 of 76 (13505 views)

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Re: [DavidMcL] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Break out the "Living, Working, Retiring" folder into 3 sub-folders; old-timers , new-timers, yet to arrive. The interests of the person not yet here are very different from the person who has been here for many years. If there were a place where people who JUST did something reported their experiences it would be of great value to the person about to experience the same thing - without wading though years of postings and out of date info.

My 2 cents.

tonyburton / Moderator

Mar 23, 2013, 4:32 PM

Post #10 of 76 (13501 views)

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Re: [chuck4430] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Thanks; great suggestion about splitting Living section.
Aren't the forums the best place for the "I just did this" information (or am I missing something)?

sparks

Mar 23, 2013, 4:47 PM

Post #11 of 76 (13486 views)

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Re: [tonyburton] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Maybe tie the board and site together with a forum that links interesting or new articles with a small blurb from each. A small preview of each post would be nice rather than opening each one. Could be a closed forum or open to discussion

Sparks Mexico Blog - Sparks Costalegre

morgaine7

Mar 23, 2013, 5:01 PM

Post #12 of 76 (13477 views)

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Re: [DavidMcL] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Please make it so that we can reply to a thread-in-general rather than to a specific "someone" who has posted previously! Having to reply to "someone", even if one's post is general to the topic, is one reason why we get so many unwanted notification emails.

Kate

Anonimo

Mar 24, 2013, 7:49 AM

Post #13 of 76 (13409 views)

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Re: [DavidMcL] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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How about a Report Abuse button, so there's an easy way to report spam and other violations of TOS?

Saludos,
Anonimo

tonyburton / Moderator

Mar 24, 2013, 8:15 AM

Post #14 of 76 (13403 views)

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Re: [Anonimo] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Good idea, though some days it might get very tired of being pressed....

tonyburton / Moderator

Mar 24, 2013, 8:21 AM

Post #15 of 76 (13397 views)

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Re: [morgaine7] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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I'll add that to our wish list, but because of the way threads are compiled and indexed, if you want to reply to the general idea, I'm pretty sure the only option in these circumstances will remain writing a response to the very first post in the thread.

This may be a good time to remind everyone that it helps if you at least change the topic title when replying (if you are in fact changing the direction of the thread). Changing the topic title gives moderators more clues when they look to see if they can split lengthy threads.

robt65

Mar 24, 2013, 8:46 AM

Post #16 of 76 (13384 views)

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Re: [tonyburton] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Good Day Tony,

chuck 4430 brings out a good point. Is it not also appropriate to divide the "three" into a section for "Living" another for "Working" and the last for "Retiring". They are all really good sections, but I’ll bet they are really loaded as well. Since I am far from a computer whiz,
I do not know how these things work, but I can only imagine how much information each of these three categories must get over a short period of time. Would “Home, Garden and Construction in Mexico”, not also fall under this same kind of thing? Possibly three separate headings here?
Regards,
Robt65

tonyburton / Moderator

Mar 24, 2013, 9:20 AM

Post #17 of 76 (13374 views)

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Re: [robt65] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Seems like I misunderstood the original suggestion ~ which I thought was referring to the site, rather than just the forums!

As you know, we do periodically review the forum divisions/titles, but any changes in that regard are highly unlikely to be included in our anticipated upgrade. (Changes to forums tend to involve shifting posts around and are very labour intensive).

Once we have the upgrade in place, that's something we will take another look at.

joaquinx

Mar 24, 2013, 10:53 AM

Post #18 of 76 (13350 views)

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Re: [tonyburton] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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New users would have to give an email address that would be verified before posting.
_______
My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.

robt65

Mar 24, 2013, 10:55 AM

Post #19 of 76 (13346 views)

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Re: [tonyburton] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Thanks for the explanations Tony . . . . as I said mostly this is all Greek to me. I am sure that while many have other MexConnect interests as a first, I use the Forums mostly. I must say though, the articles I have read on MexConnect are of very high quality and certainly informative.

Thanks Again,

Regards,
Robt65

tonyburton / Moderator

Mar 24, 2013, 11:11 AM

Post #20 of 76 (13343 views)

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Re: [joaquinx] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Actually, all posters have had to have a verified email address since day 1.
[Our upgrade will have added behind-the-scenes flexibility to combat those, including spammers, who abuse the system!]

Itztlacoliuhqui

Mar 24, 2013, 3:00 PM

Post #21 of 76 (13316 views)

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Re: [DavidMcL] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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A few suggestions, in no particular order:

I don't know what platform you use for the forums, but in my day job as a blogger, our company's platform has a script written into it that allows you to cut-and-paste from Microsoft Word into the composition window, thereby preserving the formatting made (hyperlinks, changes to text, special characters like bullets, etc.). Something like that would help folks who use word processing software regularly to post more easily and with greater reliability.

If you can afford even a basic analytics package, you could help folks who use the forums heavily to find content already published in one of Mexconnect's many fine feature articles by setting up a box on the page (perhaps a 2-column content display) that would pick up key words made in the person's post and thereby suggest feature articles that correlate to the key words. For example, if the poster wrote a comment asking other forum readers if they knew what kind of cuisine could be found in Xalapa, they might get back a link and a short 2-sentence preview to this culinary tour of Xalapa article by Karen Hursh Graber.

As I'm not on Mexconnect much these days, this might be fixed already, in which case, never mind. But if you haven't, fixing the quote function on the Forum posting window would be a big improvement.

Definitely provide a way for users to rank up or down both feature articles and forum posts. You could even go to more of a community moderation model, like some of the bigger blogs do. This would work by giving posters with more history and more up rankings on their comments some kind of "trusted user" status. Then set a rule whereby if a really obnoxious or spammy post gets 5 or 10 thumbs down, the comment is hidden from general view.

You might also provide a more customized user experience on the main site (outside of the forums) by allowing viewers to set a profile based on their interests (which part of Mexico they live in or visit most often, whether they care more about cuisine or history or culture) and then redisplay the content so that their interests are more prominently displayed and content of lesser interest requires more search or navigation.

I realize a lot of these may be harder or more expensive to execute. Whatever you can do, I'm sure Mexconnect readers will appreciate the enhancements. Thanks for all the hard work. This remains a richly informative site.

Sculptari

Mar 24, 2013, 3:10 PM

Post #22 of 76 (13312 views)

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Re: [Itztlacoliuhqui] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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I would like a sticky or a function on how to post youtube links on this site. I heard that every time he corrects one of my clumsy links, he grows another white hair!
no longer active on Mexconnect

tonyburton / Moderator

Mar 24, 2013, 3:43 PM

Post #23 of 76 (13301 views)

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Re: [Itztlacoliuhqui] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Sincere thanks for taking the time to describe these informative suggestions which provide lots of food for thought. We do hope to improve the integration between forums and main site since currently they can not easily "talk" to one another. I like the idea of some content getting a few thumbs down and never being seen again...!

Keep the ideas coming!

Rolly

Mar 24, 2013, 3:44 PM

Post #24 of 76 (13297 views)

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Re: [Sculptari] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Getting links to activate upon typing or coping the link is a problem with the default editor.
It is a known bug with Firefox. Maybe Chrome too?
IE seems to work most of the time.

Rolly Pirate

tonyburton / Moderator

Mar 24, 2013, 3:59 PM

Post #25 of 76 (13289 views)

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Re: [Sculptari] Mexconnect upgrade - opinions sought!

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Try: http://www.mexconnect.com/...orum_view_collapsed;
and let me know what happens

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