I think I figured out the address. "You've got mail"

I guess I didn't get it right. I got it reported as delayed.

Mine is Richard at the link below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Me

Richard, your message made it, albeit in the Spam bucket. You should have a reply by now. Let me know if you don't.

3 folks have responded who have skills in both categories. Thanks, everyone.

Whitecat8

Will this be a sticky? Or otherwise highly visible. Hoping that nobody will respond seems unlikely to work.

As I understand it, the GW technology doesn't do stickies. My thought was that, if anyone responds, we can copy and repost it w/ a slightly different title.

Or, does anyone on the forum have permission to delete messages? If so, perhaps that person could delete the welcome message w/ responses so we could use the same title.

WC8

You need only to ask the admin. of GW if they would be so kind as to incorporate the Welcome to Orchids message as a separate Related Topic next to the Orchid Gallery and Conversations or perhaps as a hyper link near the general forum introductions near the FAQ.

C3D

Hmmmmm. Another thought for consideration.... If the Welcome to Orchids. message is short, polite, succinct and incorporates the hyper link to the FAQ and Related Forums perhaps the GW admin. would use your new message in place of their opening page to the forum now in use? Sort of a revamp of the title page?

Just a thought.

C3D, good ideas. I thought of putting the Welcome in place of the text at the top of the messages, if that's what you're talking about, too. We'll see how "succinct" it gets. Thanks, Whitecat8

At the top of the forum page is the title in large type followed by four lines that say exactly (if a bit stilted manner or at least officiously sounding) what we are trying to come up with.

They are practically invisible because the eye goes from the title straight down to the first entry. These lines need larger font, maybe even **shudder** colors to get people to read them. The content of the first line leads me to believe that this is unique to this forum so must be stored someplace separate.

Do we have contacts "on high" to get these lines changed? Is there a length limit? Can we include HTML in the text to change the font size?

Inquiring minds want to know!

I was thinking perhaps the new welcoming text would be to replace the old boring:
*~*~*~*~*~*

Orchid Forum

This forum is for the discussion of orchids, how to grow them, special care, sources of plants, etc.

Instructions on using the forum are provided below.

Before posting a question, please check the FAQ and do a search to make sure it hasn't already been answered.

Related forums: Orchid Gallery : Terrariums *~*~*~*~*~*

Another option would be to make it the first post and ask the GW admin. to *LOCK* the thread so there can be no replies and it will stay at the top of the threads.

Of course the choice is up to the forum regulars how best to present the new Welcome to the Orchid forum message.

Yes Richard, a nicely phrased note to GW can move mountains.

Yep, the requests are at the top, and yes, people skip right over them. That was one reason for the option of the first message, maybe in all caps - I was thinking newcomers were more likely to read titles of the first few threads.

If we could get larger fonts and yes, colors in that intro section, that'd be great.

Way down at the bottom of the page, 3rd bullet in the Instructions: "Since the subject line of your message is indexed for searching, try to include important keywords in the subject. Do not post messages with subject lines in all capitals or consisting of simple subjects like 'Help!'"

2nd bullet: "You may want to search the site to see if your question has already been answered by another user."

A quick sampling of other GW forums suggests all text at the top and bottom of the page is similar - the Japanese Garden Forum, for example. The Garden Junk Forum has an icon for image upload, and instructions for uploading are added at the bottom, before the standard instructions.

In the welcome, if we said instructions for uploading pix are in the FAQs...

The Giant Vegetable Forum (scary), on the other hand, mentions no FAQs and has no request at the top to search the archives. They've got the standard instructions at the bottom. Maybe because it has less activity.

So, perhaps we could ask for changes before and after the messages themselves.

Good ideas, folks. Whitecat8

richard
can a colour be coded in a thread title?

Clara

I guess not. It converts to parens. I tried [ and that did nothing.

People seem to have varying levels of understanding about how this forum--or any forum--works. Those who have been here for a while may assume that how it works is intuitively evident. It's not necessarily so.

After watching topics on a couple of other forums, I'm wondering if newcomers understand the movement of posts down the page. It may just be that they post a question, get an answer, and run, and the post moves down the page. Something else may be happening.

Some posts get initial responses, but no real answers to the OP question. In these cases, the topics still move down the page. Perhaps some newcomers leave, discouraged, because they see their original post move down and assume their question has "gone by" and won't get an answer.

Perhaps the Welcome message could include a brief explanation of topic movement to help newcomers track their topics.

Sc