The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Visiting this site -- where do YOU start?

merrybaker's picture
merrybaker

Visiting this site -- where do YOU start?

First let me say that I love this website!  People on the forums are friendly and helpful, and Floyd has done a great job of stuffing useful info into every nook and cranny.  But that's my problem.  There's so much to see that I have trouble finding it all.  I know I'm not the brightest girl in the room (people who know me are nodding in agreement), but I think maybe I'm doing something wrong.  I find myself missing answers to threads I'm interested in, and reading old ones over and over.  I get confused because the titles change with every response.  Basically, I just scan the two major columns (Active Forum Topics and Recent Comments).  I have it set to mark the new posts, but since a new post can be at the end of a thread, I still have to scroll down to see if any are marked "new."  So I was wondering what procedure others use to navigate this site in order to take full advantage of it.  Thanks!   -Mary      

Darkstar's picture
Darkstar

I keep up with the changing info on this site with RSS feeds.  I use Firefox with the Sage extension to keep track of which new posts I've already read.

 

When I run out of new postings and have extra time to kill I do check out the home page for the "Active Forum Topics" and "Recent Comments" section to fill in the holes I may have missed.

Floydm's picture
Floydm

I usually spot new threads via the RSS feed in LJ, which is on my friends list. Comments I tend to watch in the recent comments box on the front page.

Yeah, two of the lesser know ways of following activity are the activity tracker and the new node list. You can also go into your account and get notifications sent via email on global site updates or just subscribe to particular threads or feeds.

Agreed that there is getting to be so much activity here that it hard to follow it all. I'm not sure I've found (or ever seen) a way of presenting this much information that both draws eyes to the most active topics and makes it easy to get to some of the more stable, canonical content like the lessons. Sites like Slashdot or Digg make it real easy to find the latest and greatest but once things fall off the front page they are hard to find. Other sites lean the other way, making it real easy to find the structured content but throw everything else into a big messy forum bucket. I've been trying to walk a middle path, so that on a single dashboard page (the homepage) you can see what is new, read the aggregated content from other sites, go straight into a lesson, or view one or two highlighted articles (the blocks at the top). The regulars here find the conversations in the forums most compelling, I believe, but new bakers appreciate quickly being able to find the more stable, orderly content like the lessons and featured recipes. I least that is my hunch.

Anyway, I'm always open to suggestions. If anyone knows of a site that they really like the way the info is presented, please let me know about it so I can take a peek.

merrybaker's picture
merrybaker

Well, thanks to the three of you, I realize there are a lot more options that I had thought.  I'll have to check these out.  Nathan, I never noticed "recent posts" before (see earlier mention of "not brightest girl").  That's exactly what I hoped to find. Thanks to you all.   -Mary  

titus's picture
titus

I like the format used by baking911

http://www.baking911.com/asksarahbb/

It's clean and well organized.