Newsletter Archives

• AskWoody Lounge beta test continues

  Posted on January 6, 2017 at 14:40 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Calling all testers. I know it ain’t perfect, but I’ve made a few tweaks and would appreciate it if you could log in and respond to the first post…

  Unless I have to throw out bbPress altogether, we’re close to converting the site over – to growing the appendage.

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• AskWoody Lounge beta testers

  Posted on December 22, 2016 at 13:32 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  When you have a chance, please drop by the beta Lounge site.

  Several important new developments – and I think the number of bugs has dropped way down.

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• Looking for AskWoody Lounge Insiders

  Posted on December 1, 2016 at 07:24 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  Hey, if Microsoft can have millions of unpaid beta testers, I can look for “Insiders,” too, eh?

  The AskWoody Lounge web site team is a couple of weeks away from having a prototype up and working. When the prototype is ready, I’d like to enlist a few of you as beta testers, to make sure the whole house of cards doesn’t collapse on the first day.

  The Lounge appendage is pretty simple, really. When I post a new blog, the web site automatically generates a “Topic” in the Lounge, then creates links back and forth between the blog post and the Topic. That Topic joins other Topics in the Lounge, and folks can post in a forum-style setting.

  Commenters in the Lounge can either be registered – and their comments are posted immediately – or they can post as “Anonymous,” in which case I moderate the post before it appears.

  My first effort will be getting that back-and-forth mechanism working. After that base is working, we can start populating the Lounge with new Forums, adding new Topics to each.

  Would you be interested in giving it a try? If so, drop me a line, woody@askwoody.com . Let me know if you’d like to sign up for a registered account, or if you’d like to post anonymously.

  When we’re ready to take ‘er out for a test drive, I’ll let you know. Sorry, no Ninja Cats….

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• Your advice for the AskWoody Lounge, please

  Posted on November 19, 2016 at 16:48 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  My web folks are limping along with a bbPress appendage to the AskWoody site. I have a million questions and would like to enlist your help, if you have time.

  General layout looks like this:

  AskWoody blog posts continue just the way they are.

  Instead of having each blog post link to a comments section for that blogs post (we’re up to almost 500 comments on some blog posts!), I want to link directly into the Lounge.

  The Lounge consists of Fora (OK, Forums for many of you). Each Forum can have many Topics. Each Topic gets lots of posts or comments (the terms seem to be used interchangeably).

  You’ll be able to sign up for the Lounge, set a password, then type your username and password when you compose a comment. The way I envision things now, comments from registered users will be posted immediately. Anonymous comments are most welcome, but they’re subject to vetting, probably by me.

  Registered users (including me) have roles. Right now, it looks like we’ll have Admins, Moderators (who can approve and delete comments, and block ne’erdowells), and Participants (who can create Topics and submit comments unmoderated).

  Did you know that we’ve had 1.5 million spam posts on AskWoody so far? Fortunately, software handles almost all of them, but I still seem to deal with far too much.

  Lounge rules will be as you have come to expect: Behave with dignity, no profanity, no personal attacks, and you’ll be fine.

  So far so good?

  Now, the next HUUUUUUGE job is to come up with a list of initial Fora (and sub-Fora and sub-sub-you get the idea). Anybody have an idea of a starting point?

  Let me know what you think. This is going to be a long and painful process, but in the end I think it’ll work pretty well.

  Other AskWoody Lounge
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