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WolfenMachine,
I’m wondering if maybe you had another account at some point (or a different forum name) and maybe your PMs got attached to that. Did you ever use a different name?
Several people have asked about zooming in on their mobile devices. Normally, responsive websites (sites that adjust the layout to display well on mobile devices) do not have pinch-to-zoom functionality. However, since some Windstone users seem to use that feature a lot, I have enabled it for now. It doesn’t work very well when viewing lightbox images (images that open in a separate window), but for photos that are part of a page/post it seems to be fine.
Natasha,
Those ads were in fact in our “ads awaiting approval” queue. They were showing as expired. I renewed them. I’ve been inquiring of the bbPress support people about this issue, but haven’t gotten an answer yet. There must be a way to let users renew ads without having to get them approved every time. I’ll keep you posted.
Fatal beauty,
Thanks for pointing that out. I had turned on “reply threading (nesting)” not realizing that that option also disables pagination, so all replies are loaded on a single page. It’s a nice feature, but with some of the larger topics (hundreds of replies) it’s prohibitively slow. So I turned it back off. The makers of the forum plugin (called bbPress) are working on a way of having nested replies and pagination at the same time.
Mike, I’m afraid that going back to the old format is not an option, though we are trying to make the new system as similar to it as we can. The entire site was migrated from our old platform (Drupal) to the new one (WordPress), and WordPress has its own modules (called plugins) for every site feature (forum, classifieds, galleries, PMs, etc.). In order to make the transition as easy as possible for everyone, we are trying to replicate the look and workflow of the old system as much as we can, but it won’t be exactly the same. In the long run it will be better, and will have some nice features that the old site did not have (though that may be hard to believe at the moment). During this transition, the person who had been in charge of the classifieds for years (and would have been setting up this new system) left Windstone, so that’s an extra challenge. Hang in there, it will all get sorted out soon.
Ad description limit is now 3000 words. This may be adjusted later–I don’t know what the limit was in the old system. BTW, I never really used the old system. Pam, who used to be in charge of the classifieds, was going to configure the settings for this new system. But now it’s up to me, and I don’t know the details of how things used to be, so if there are things about the old system that were different, and that you’d like to see replicated, let me know.
Brief classifieds update: description limit is now 1000 words, HTML is now allowed, and captcha (which was causing some errors) has been switched to a math problem type for now. The system is not set to require admin approval for new ads, so if you create an ad and it doesn’t appear in the listings right away, please let us know and I will take a look. I am currently researching how to give users control over expiration dates. More soon…
Sorry for all the glitches everyone. I had hoped that I’d be able to work on a lot of this stuff while the data migration guys were doing their thing, but turned out if I had made any changes before they were totally finished my work would have gotten over-written, so I have to make my fixes now. I think the classifieds will be the trickiest part. All the ads are there, but expiration dates and statuses (stati?) may take some sorting out. Someone mentioned the 750-word limit and the inability to include HTML. Both of those things are just the default settings in this system, and can be easily changed. I did get a list of recent forum posts and new members added to the forum homepage. Most of the formatting issues (text too dark, background too light, font too small, etc.) are very easy to fix, so look for improvements to those sorts of issues very soon. But as John said, getting everything working right is the first priority. Thanks for your patience and feedback. More soon…
One more thing. There have been a number of inquiries about the ability to see the number of a product in stock. Here’s how it currently works: when the number in stock gets down to 5, it will be displayed on the product page. This is adjustable, but the store also uses this number to notify Susie that stock is low. So we have to strike a balance. Hopefully 5 will be a number that works for both shoppers and store administration. If not, we will find a solution. Thanks.
A FEW NOTES ABOUT THE NEW STORE
As Susie and Jennifer have mentioned, the new store was launched in a hurry just to get Windstone back online and in business as quickly as possible. Therefore, there are a lot of wrinkles that we didn’t have time to iron out beforehand. We appreciate your patience as we fix various issues and add more features. The new store is in WordPress; the old store (and the rest of the windstone site) are in Drupal. It has been the plan for a while now to move things into WordPress, which we feel strongly will provide a better experience for everyone in the long run. Just hang in there, and it’s all going to be good. Really.
Passwords
Because the store is in a different system than the rest of the site, it is necessary to log in to it separately. Existing customer accounts from the old store were migrated over (with your addresses and orders, etc.), but you will need to reset your password. This has been working fine for most people, but a few have gotten errors when trying to reset their passwords. If that happens to you, please email us. We will generate a new password for you. You can then log in and change it to something you will remember.
The Old Store
We have tried to remove all links to the old store (which is not functional), but there may well be some stray links still out there. We haven’t yet shut that store down because we still need access to some of it during this transition. PLEASE DO NOT USE YOUR OLD WINDSTONE STORE BOOKMARKS! Also, we recommend waiting a bit to add new store bookmarks to your browser as the URLs in the new store are still in flux.
Your Suggestions
We’ve been getting a lot of suggestions/complaints about various aspects of the new store. Please keep the suggestions and bug reports coming. There’s lots to do, so we have to prioritize. Functionality issues (bugs) will be addressed first—we have to first get the store working properly. But there are also a lot of nice features that we can add to the new store as we have time. Because the new store operates on a different platform, some things WILL BE DIFFERENT. But for the most part the features of the old store will be included in the new one (again, as time permits). We do appreciate your patience and support. I am one guy working on the Windstone site on a very part-time basis. Again, please give us your feedback, and in the end this new store will be really nice.
By the way, several people have requested more products per page on the category pages. I’ve installed a plugin that allows me to set the number (which I’ve currently set to 24) and allows you, the customer, to change it to your liking via a dropdown menu at the top of the product grid. Right now the options are 12, 24, or 36 products per page. But this is adjustable.
Cheers.
This is a minor bug in a new address module that was designed to import the address from your profile/account page to use when you create a new order in the store (if you don’t already have an address in there from a previous order). Lane is working on getting rid of that message that appears on login (sometimes), but in the meantime don’t be alarmed–there is no problem with your account.
You can now block unwanted PMs from specific users. When viewing a PM, you will see a “block author” button.
You can also “ignore” posts by specified users.
On your account page (click “my account” at the upper right of any page) you will see “Ignored Users” at the bottom of the page. Click the “View your ignored users” link and enter the username that you want to ignore.
You can now “ignore” posts by authors of your choosing.
On your account page (click “my account” at the upper right of any page) you will see “Ignored Users” at the bottom of the page. Click the “View your ignored users” link and enter the username that you want to ignore.
Let me know if you have any questions.
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