Recent Changes to Free Republic

[John Robinson]

What do you think? Suggestions, comments, complaints?

[Jim Robinson]

lol

[Jim Robinson]

Yup. As an experiment I just searched on by:nutmeg and clicked “put in sidebar.” Now I’ve got a sidebar section with your latest posts listed.

[dixiechick2000]

"He’s also planning on rebuilding the mail system. The one we have now was just a quick and dirty he threw together one night and never got around to refining. He didn’t know at the time that it would be so popular. He had to disable the by sender feature because it was killing system performance. He’s going to redesign the database and add lots more features to the mail system as he rebuilds it. For example, he wants each user to be able to download their mail boxes so they can manage them off line and purge the older stuff from FR. He also wants to allow “party line” multiple user freepmail so three or more people can carry on a private conversation and all parties invited are sharing the same “freepmail” thread."

Yipeeeeeee!

There's so much in that post that I had to repeat it.
No pressure, John, but I'm really looking forward to the new frmail features.

BTW, is there a way you could add a "delete all on the page" function?

I'm excited at the "new" look for FR.

Thank you both for all that you do.

[nutmeg]

He’s also planning on rebuilding the mail system. The one we have now was just a quick and dirty he threw together one night and never got around to refining. He didn’t know at the time that it would be so popular. He had to disable the by sender feature because it was killing system performance. He’s going to redesign the database and add lots more features to the mail system as he rebuilds it. For example, he wants each user to be able to download their mail boxes so they can manage them off line and purge the older stuff from FR. He also wants to allow “party line” multiple user freepmail so three or more people can carry on a private conversation and all parties invited are sharing the same “freepmail” thread.

Wow, we're in for some big changes with FReepmail. That "party line" thing sounds absolutely amazing! This and the downloading of mail boxes will come with instructions, right? Sounds a bit complicated. Actually, the "quick and dirty" FReepmail system that we have now is pretty amazing to me, and very handy.

KUDOS to John and to you for creating/ tweakng / updating all this amazing stuff for us (not to mention putting up with our complaints).

In the meantime, I guess I'd better (ahem) get going purging my many years' worth of FReepmails... ;-)

[nutmeg]

Now I’ve got a sidebar section with your latest posts listed.

Uh oh... lol

[Jim Robinson]

Yup. They will be cool features. Will build a tutorial or FAQ after it’s all done and the kinks and quirks worked out.

[txhurl]

Somebody was telling me Google seriously caches FR posts. You can search freerepublic plus user name plus keyword (ex: freerepublic txflake syria) to get any users’ posting history.

Haven’t tried it, little too big brother to me.

[nutmeg]

As an experiment I just searched on by:nutmeg and clicked “put in sidebar.” Now I’ve got a sidebar section with your latest posts listed.

I just did the same with a FRiend's name as an experiment... that is an AMAZING feature! Way cool!

OK, I think I've calmed down now... I'm beginning to LOVE some of these changes. Thanks so much, Jim.

[Jim Robinson]

Yup. But we have millions of posts in our database and they can’t cache them all. We’re having a bit of trouble keeping up with it ourselves.

[txhurl]

I used to use some excellent Cognos tools, data extractors, that has now morphed into Cognos 8 (SQL) Business Intelligence and drill-down tools. I want to buy a copy of it for testing. I have two DB conversion projects that might require it.

You guys have it? Seen it? Recommend it?

[Jim Robinson]

Sorry, don’t know anything about it.

[nutmeg]

I also noticed that if you leave it blank, it brings up a page with the regular search by title box.

You're right... there's the old search box with the drop downs that we were used to!

[dixiechick2000]

OMIGOSH!

I tried that, and it worked!

Thank you!

[txhurl]

I miss the old days when half of freepers were developers/programmers.

[Vicki]

Took a couple days, but getting used to it.

[ThomasThomas]

You all have done a great job with this update. So good that maybe you could add a timer that would remind the poster that it is past their bedtime.

Goodnight.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

I miss the old days when half of freepers were developers/programmers.

Since then a lot of us have gotten interested in politics!

Go figure!

[DollyCali]

Hi John,

I am pretty visually oriented & so my comments will be more that way rather than “functional”. I haven’t yet posted a new article at the Finest.. I suppose then I will see if there is anything to be done & Billie will work it out for us, as she always does.

BUT for function.. an edit for each post would be nice to have. Not need to bother the mods as often

Visually: I would like a good logo/banner at the top of page. With all the graphic art talent here at FR (Billie, mama bear and others) it would be good.

I dislike the font on the home page. I prefer arial or comic sans (or something flashier but I know often hard to read) over the Courier & Times New Roman types which I think is boring.

The overall visual is NOT catchy - not that it must be. Just my opinons..

I know the biggest job you had was to make it more “workable” and I am guessing it is!

Thanks for your efforts

[oldbill]

If we do go to the downloadable mail, will the past pasts be available to download for record before they are cleared off the FR servers?

[jackv]

How do you do a search and a post article?
I don’t like the bland colors. Took me forever to get back to this post because the colors are not as defined.
I’m not good with change I guess. I preferred the old way.