John, by no means have I taken your comments as an attack on me or TexasCHLforum. Many of the changes to the forum that have been made over the last 23 months have been at the request or suggestion of the members and I appreciate their input.
I believe I better understand your objection to the number of sub-forums now. If I’m right, you feel it would be easier to review all new posts if a reader simply had to click on one or a few sub-forum headers and view the new posts in that section. If this is what you mean, then I have to agree with you. To use an absurd example (I know you’re not suggesting this), if we had only one sub-forum “General,� then all a reader would have to do is click on it and look at the “Subject� lines and dates of all the posts to see which ones they wanted to read. This would be faster than going back to the main page and entering another sub-forum.
I was looking at a member’s use of the forum from a different perspective, but I see what you mean. As bulletin boards go, TexasCHLforum is small, though much larger than I ever anticipated. When it was created, I wanted TexasCHLforum to be not only a friendly venue for discussions, but also a good resource for people interested in getting a CHL or new to the CHL community and the architecture reflects that theme. If a person wants to find out what states recognize a Texas CHL, then they can look in the “Reciprocity� sub-forum rather than have to look through a much larger sub-forum or be good at crafting word searches. Similarly, if they are interested in reloading or shooting ranges, they can limit the scope of their reading to those subjects.
It’s clear that some of the sub-forums simply don’t have much activity and can be combined with others. For example, the use of the Market section is such that I can combine all of the “for sale� sub-forums into one, leaving the FFL’s in a separate sub-forum. As you pointed out, the Carry Issues section was one of the original sections but has only 53 posts since Dec. 22, 2004 so it can be combined with the General CHL Discussion sub-forum. I’m undecided about combining the Links sections. I want a separate section for governmental, thus authoritative, links, but I guess I could accomplish that with a single Links section with a separate sticky.
As are all users of phpbb bulletin board software, I’ve been waiting for release of Ver. 3.0 a/k/a Olympus. It will have some great new features, including one that will make it much harder for bogus bot registrations. I was planning to do any site reorganization during the testing of this new version. (It’s not merely an upgrade, but an entirely new package that I will test before launching.) However, since you guys have made me focus on it now, I may as well make the changes before I have a “Sometimers� moment and forget what I want to do!
The “
View posts since last visit� feature makes it possible for people to view only the new posts in a single list, as John and other find more useful, while other readers can still focus on the subject matter that most interests them by going to individual sub-forums. By combining the sub-forums previously mentioned, the latter group of people will have to look through fewer sub-forums without losing the benefit of the topic-specific subsections.
I don’t want anyone to hesitate to suggest changes to the forum. Many of the changes made over the last 23 months are the result of people caring enough about the community you folks have created to recommend improvements. I’m not offended at receiving suggestions, nor do I want anyone to be offended if they are not implemented. Just to show Piney and HighVelocity that I’m not picking on them, I’m going to add a “Competition� sub-forum just for them!
Chas.
