Tuesday Talking - 8/27/13

That's cute that Hannah borrowed books about dogs from the library! Glad she had a good first day of school.

I woke up with a stuffed up nose and slightly sore throat. Ugh.

I was also rudely awakened during the night by some sort of insect biting me. It felt like a needle jab and it hurt. I turned on my light but didn't see anything except a red spot on the top of my foot.

Bosses are pow-wowing today, so I'm running around looking up costs for repairs. I'd best get to it.

Tina

I shouldn't be online right now, but wanted to check in.  Trying to get these messages through to TPTB - they are listening and probably furiously working to address some of our concerns.  Keep posting or email the Mods if you have anything you don't want to put out publicly.

Hello. We're here and we're listening. We're in the process of absorbing all the feedback - good and not so good. This is still very much a beta and we know we have work to do before we take off the beta label. Some of the team are in the UK and we just had a bank holiday hence we've been a bit quiet. But again we are interested in all your feedback and will do what we can to address the major items coming up. Other things may take time or we may have a slightly different take on some things. But one thing you can be sure of, is that we're working hard to improve what's not working and build on what is better about this site! Watch this space for more updates soon!

I am working on Chrome.

I want to test how the returns look to create a new paragraph.

Don't worry, jbrayshaw, us Americans have kids who returned to school, and a holiday of our own on Monday, too.  So many of us will be enjoying the last bits of summer before we hunker down and get ready for fall and winter. :D

HEY, PS, could we get some current/fun emoticons while we're at it?   <-- SO OLD SCHOOL! lol

paragraph returns look good with Google Chrome! :D

PS, if you're wondering, that is Dolly, the pug.  Not my dog, but I live with her.  The new site ditched my old avatar.  Dolly is the only pic I have on this computer. :D

Paige, I liked your old avatar photo, but I gotta say that Dolly is super cute!  What a face!

Tina, I would've been stripping the bed, looking for what I imagined to be the world's largest spider if I were you!  I hope it's just a basic bite and nothing that gets too itchy or swollen.

Hearing about Hannah's first day of school and reading the phrase, "books she got from the library" gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling.  I truly love libraries, and hanging out in the school library is still something I recall fondly.  I can even remember the smell of them.  There's something so reassuring to me to think of young kids browsing the shelves and selecting something to read based on an intriguing title or fun bookcover illustration, etc.  And dog books make it even better.  I collect children's books, and I've got several dog-themed ones (big surprise).

I slept horribly last night.  Couldn't fall asleep until midnight, then awake from 2:30 until 4:30.  Those hours are when my mind tortures me:  thinking of all kinds of things I need to do, from simple chores to huge life changing projects.  I should keep a pen and paper by my bed so I can make a list and see if that helps clear my mind.  

I forgot to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Jen!  I hope your day involves some kind of celebrating beyond your allergy shots and work-related stuff.  Maybe a favorite food for dinner or a splurge dessert?  Enjoy!

Thank you for checking in J.  I know you all are probably buried in feedback, but it (at least for me personally) does help "hearing" from you all, even when it is just saying "we're working on it".  And I understand you guys probably are going to have a different take on some things than we do, on those items, would you mind a quick post kind of explaining your side?  Might make something we disagree with a little easier to accept.

Thanks for posting J... and thanks to everyone giving the feedback on the forum!!

That photo of Dolly is adorable, Paige, but it took me a second to realize who you were :)  Tracy, hope you sleep better tonight, it's always the longest day ever after a bad nights sleep!! Tina, hope you feel better!

There, I just changed it to Gracie - a picture I took this weekend.  :D  I will have to hunt and find the old one of her in Denver w/the geraniums.

tooo weird......

Not so much buried as enthralled. You guys have awesome ideas. No I don't mind a quick post, but do you mind a little more detail? :-)

BTW - if you love emoticons and all sorts of other formatting goodness, click on use rich formatting. They are all there.

OK, so here goes. We've felt for a long time that the site needed to be improved and while there's a core of people that live inside this community, we were not seeing the traffic we used to. So about a year ago, we decided that we were going to do something about it. To put dog.com community back at the top where it was once and where we feel it belongs.

Rather than just do a simple upgrade of the existing site, we were determined to make it better and to give those people that want it, the chance to link the forum to their social network memberships. We've done this for a couple of reasons, we want to welcome new members (because that make it more fun, to meet new owners and new dogs) and we want to make it easier for our existing members to share and invite people to their conversations.

Now, I want to stress, our goal is not to create a social media site. This is a community and we understand the difference, but we felt that for those people that wanted to link the two, it was worth doing.

We also wanted to encourage people and reward people for posting pictures and videos. We love seeing pictures of your beloved pets and it just makes the site feel more vibrant and alive.

I know that the user experience is far from optimal, but hopefully, you can agree that it is better looking than most forums.

So now, we want to address the areas that will make the site easier for you and better for us. That means tying all the bits together in a way that is logical and fun for you.

My hope is that once we make it easier and more fun (bearing in mind it's only been live 9 days and is not yet officially launched) that you guys will tell the world and we can get it back to its former glory as the busiest and buzziest place for dogs and pet parents.

So we've work to do and we would like to hear anything you think would make it better for you, and for future users.

Does that help explain things? If not, please feel free to ask any questions you have. We're committed to being open and honest about our plans.

Jonathan