The next major change on the site is a brand new range of post categories… I know folks, please do try to contain the excitement!

The reason behind this change (again this is in last month’s minutes) is to try and solve three problems;

1 – The old categories were too general and ambiguous which lead to most posts fitting into multiple categories.
2 – The categories didn’t give any indication to members what could/should be posted about.
3 – There was limited ability to control what emails are received from the site.

The new, expanded range of categories should offer the following benefits:

1 – A clear list covering most topics members will wish to post about – we hope that having a category which matches post topics closely will encourage members to feel comfortable about posting.
2 – Greater confidence that when posting you are targeting the correct subset of our membership.
3 - Far greater control over received emails from the system; Members can remain subscribed to specific topics of interest while unsubscribing from others.

It should no longer be necessary for posts to be posted with multiple categories selected. Of course should a post genuinely fit in multiple categories then it’s fine to select more than one.

As before, the Club Announcement category is compulsory for all members, all others are optional. In order to roll out this change I have had to reset everyone’s selection to a default and that default is for everyone to be subscribed to all categories.

Now, before everyone makes for the site in a blind panic to unsubscribe from absolutely everything, could I suggest, request even, that people hold off and only consider unsubscribing if the volume of emails is too high and then only from the categories causing the problem. If everyone just unsubscribe as a knee jerk reaction from everything then there’s very little point having a forum and I can’t believe that the current volumes of posts are anywhere near the levels which warrant people having to use the controls!

Below is a list of the old categories and the new ones with examples of what they are intended for. These descriptions are not exhaustive lists of what can be posted in them, just suggestions.

Old Categories:

General
Club Announcements
Meeting Minutes
Meeting Reminders
GLUG Events
Non-GLUG Events
Weird & Wonderful
Training Events

New Categories:

Planned changes still to come which are related this this change;

1 – Addition of category filters on the forum
2 – Addition of category info to the automatic emails so members know which of their category subscriptions has resulted in a given email being received.

Cheers

Mark
(Webmaster)