About the recent changes to the community
I've made a few improvements and changes in the past several days:As you can see there are now images next to each forum name. This should make the forums page a bit more exciting and comfortable. Let me know what you think!
The "BookTalk.org News" forum has been renamed "About BookTalk.org." The old News forum was always inactive as there really isn't a lot of news in a book discussion community. I found myself always struggling to find stuff to say. No more of that. I will be making the new "About BookTalk.org" forum into a place that provides a ton of good info for new people. There will be posts about how our book selection process works. Posts will be created explaining how to get the most out of BookTalk.org. More than anything I am hoping that all members will use the forum for any and all discussions that pertain to BookTalk.org. David just created a custom icon for the forum and I think it looks great. Thanks David!
All of the posts in the 6 "Fiction Genre Forums" were compiled and placed in the "Create Your Own Fiction Book Discussions" forum.Those forums were a good idea conceptually, but they just never took off. We don't need forums on the site that aren't getting activity. The "Mystery" forum didn't have a post in over 5 months.
You will now see a "Create Your Own Fiction Book Discussions" forum and a "Create Your Own Non-Fiction Book Discussions" forum. The goal is to get members to feel comfortable with taking the initiative to start and lead their very own book discussions. There is no reason for people to feel trapped into only discussing the "official" book selections. And if someone successfully gets a book discussion going I will advertise it right on the home page.
Thanks Suzanne for the forum name idea!
I think you're right. "Create Your Own..." is indeed a call to action. It is far better than the previous "Additional Fiction/Non-Fiction Book Discussions" forum names.
The book descriptions or excerpts have been removed from the forums pageSome members have had issues with there simply being too much text on the forums page. The long book descriptions were causing formatting errors on smaller screens. Instead of including reviews or excepts I'm just going to provide a link to Amazon.com where people can read about the book. But please don't forget that we now have a drop down box in the very top left side of the home page. You can toggle back and forth between the "BT Mobile" style and the "BT Regular" style. The "BT Mobile" style is perfect for enjoying BookTalk.org on your iPhone, netbook or other smaller screened device.
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