I left my first post tonight on the new board. I did not locate a spot for a “Spell Checker”.

For us old guys this is diffiult, you will never know what we may wrie accidentely!

Ted

All good points. We’ll look for these functions as add-ons, and if not available, I suspect many will become available quite soon. They’re all good requests, and if they aren’t available now, it’s probably only because the forum software is quite young. But people are building additional features as plug-ins all the time.

I know that I can edit my posts after I submit, but that may be a feature just for people with admin status. Can others not edit their own posts after they’ve submitted? It’s not as nice as a preview function, but if you can edit your posts after the fact, that would do the job. If you can’t do this, it may be possible to change that setting for people.

-Dr. West

Please can we have all the recent post down the side again.I still can’t seem to get a sense of what is happening anymore and I miss feeling like a family
Regards
Christine

I have only just now been able to log on to the site after getting many different error messages and suggestions. What finally worked was resetting my password, but it took me several tries at doing that successfully.

I would like to request that the “Recent General Forum Topics” hot links in the far right pane be moved up as high on the page as possible, but certainly above the “connect with GRACE” links to Twitter and Facebook, etc. as well as the two boxes that function as hot links to “GRACEcasts) and “Subscriibe to GRACEnotes”

Blue skies,

Your points are well taken, and that I haven’t responded only meant that I’ve been thinking about your comments. We would very much like to reach more people via social media, so highlighting the easy ways that people can follow GRACE content and share it is going to be a priority for us. However, I also know that you and many others desperately want an easy way to glimpse at what new forum content has been added to the site. Literally the next high priority project that Webmaster Mark is undertaking is to find a plug-in or make a solution of creating a page where all of the forum content across all of the different forum areas can either be aggregated together, as in the prior forum, or be listed with all of the feeds for the different forums available on one page. We can make the link to that function be readily visible across the site.

Please be assured that this is a high priority for us.

Follansbee,

Can you give some examples of some of those subtopics that you would say are specific to lung cancer? I would actually say that things like shortness of breath, cough, pleural effusions, etc., are actually common features of many cancers, since the lungs are a common place for other cancers to spread. Also, the inclusion of cancer drugs that are readily used for lung cancer are not specific to lung cancer, so things like how to manage side effects and dosing issues around many of these is actually relevant across many cancers.

As for a spellchecker function, it’s on our wish list. I and the other folks working on GRACE are truly acutely aware of the bare-bones forum styling, which is actually relatively “tricked out” from the efforts of Webmaster Mark compared with what the standard version is. I am truly sorry that in several ways it’s a downgrade compared with having a forum that was just a forum. But having one that can be integrated way, way better with the post site of the site, without things breaking constantly, required some compromises. This was a difficult switch to go through in order to get to a point where the software is far more supported and stable and tweakable. Moreover, I absolutely expect that there will be more and more features for the forum becoming available in the next few months, from a combination of things Mark will work to build and other plug-ins that the open-source community will help to provide, because we aren’t the only people who want to see this forum software become maximally useful,

-Dr. West

Thank you Dr. West. I have to admit that I am working very hard to get the hang of the new site format, but it is very difficult. I got an email notification that you had replied but it has taken a long time for me to find your reply on the site so I can reply again. The navigation is not as intuitive as the previous site.

Links to social media: I understand the interest in leveraging the social media networks, but GRACE is using an enormous amount of real estate to display these hot links. Most web sites shrink these down and display them below or around their target content. I think better placement is possible here that will still give site users easier access to the content they want and the ability to find and access the social media links.

I also think that you might want to adopt a kind of “gateway” or portal approach in lieu of the drop down menues to serve the various cancer types that GRACE is seeking to serve. The top toolbar would show “tabs” listingthe various user groups (lung, breast, pancreatic, etc). Users would click on those and go to a page that might look more like the old GRACE site…focused on their cancer type. There could also be a tab for General cancer info that could be accessed from the main page or from any of the specialty pages. The forums for information on radiation, faculty essays (for want of a better word) and other generic info of interest accross the various cancer communities could also be linked to those “gateway” or portal pages. This could reduce the need to have to start with a drop down menu just to get started.

And if I could have one vote, I’d put the member directory and private message function at the very top of the list of priorities. I really benefit from the public posts and appreciate what people share there, but I have found that there are times when (as a former…and sometime still…lurker), I want to follow up with someone on a more personal level that feels too intimate for a public post.

As difficult as this transition is for me, I can only imagine what it is like behind the scenes for you and the webmasters. Thanks so very much for trying to make this site both user friendly and maintainable/reliable. It’s a heavy lift!

Am I late for the game or is this not the replies lists we all want?
http://cancergrace.org/wp-admin/edit.php?post_type=reply&all_posts=1
It’s on the wordpress page I accessed by clicking the “Profile” tab on the bar across the top of each page. On the left colmn there is a tab that’s labeled “replies”.

Well, that is strange. I played with my signature again and now it partially works (i.e. I’m close to re-gaining my old format…). I’ll make one last try ton see if I can definitively get my format back,

Myriam

I had done a rather long reply to several good suggestions here, only to have my internet connection crap out before I could submit it (I’m traveling).

I think that we can make it feel more cancer-subtype specific while still keeping the same structure. I’ll work with Webmaster Mark and Denise on this.

-Dr. West

Dr. West, Is there an email address where I could contact you with a suggestion regarding the website? You could email me at your convenience at amlarl@verizon.net.