Our group is growing!

Hi Everyone and Welcome to HOATalk.com!

As of July 19, 2005, our site has only been live for 6 days and we already have members in 10 states! Now it's time to get the group together and start sharing ideas.

Any of you may post any question, idea, or topic related to community associations, so let's get started!

What problems do you face?
What tips do you have for other members?
What advice do you need?
Let's Talk!

Tip: Click the Remember Login option, the next time you log on. Then you won't have to enter your password again.

I am impressed with the feedback from HOATALK.com. Knowing the progress of your web site & the member enrollment updates are really helpful.

We have been live one month and as of this week, we have members from WELL OVER 100 COMMUNITIES! The members are pouring in, with people from almost twenty new communities joining in the past three days alone!

I want to thank all you for joining and a special thank you to those of you posting questions and answers, making this group more interesting every week!

Thanks for the question. We'd be happy to provide an update.

As of today, OCT 25, we have just over 445 members. 26 new members have signed up in the last 2 days alone!

To your question about a spellchecker. Have a look at the very first message, "Tech Tip: Spell Check", at the top of the forums. Or, you can paste this address into your browser: http://www.hoatalk.com/Forum/tabid/55/forumid/1/postid/226/view/topic/Default.aspx

Now about breaking the forums into topics. This is a great discussion question and we've been considering it.

Here's some insight into why we have not used categories:
We could break the forum into several categories, however, that would mean you would have to click into each folder to look for new messages. We are afraid that if we did this, fewer people would see each message and members would get less replies (because most people will not want to click in lots of folders to look for new messages). In addition, many messages cross categories. For example, a tax question might fall under: Taxes, Financial, Legal, Arizona, etc.

So how do we make messages easier to find?
(1) Search: The search box at the top-right of the forum is a great tool. For example, try a search on tax or budget.
(2) The read/unread icons: Note the key at the top of the forum. The icon to the left of each message tells you whether or not you have read the topic. This makes it easy to glance at the icons and pick out messages you have not read.
(3) Sort Order: The most recent messages appear at the top.

We really appreciate your suggestion, but we are struggling with how to categorize the messages in a way that won't result in more clicks to find messages and less replies for members. Thank you very much. Keep the ideas coming.
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