Upcoming improvements to the messaging system

Hello everyone. I'm writing to let you know about some long overdue improvements that we'll be making to this site's messaging system later this week. The messages section is the most frequently visited part of Inspire, and these changes will make it much easier to use. Here are the highlights:

- We'll be updating the interface for reading and replying to messages so that you can see an entire conversation that you're having in a single page. Currently you can only see one message at a time, and that makes it incredibly difficult to keep track of what was said previously in a conversation. The new interface will be more like e-mail, in that you'll have the entire conversation on screen, with a box to reply at the bottom. We're going to make the changes necessary to display all of your old messages in this way, too. None of your messages will go away - they'll just be much easier to make sense of.

- We'll be adding search for messages.

- You'll now have a trash box to go along with your inbox and sent mail box. This will make it possible to clean up your inbox and sent mail box without losing messages.

- You'll be able to mark messages as unread.

- Your inbox, sent mail box and trash box will be paginated, so that if you have a large number of messages, those pages will load much more quickly.

I'll write again in a few days to let you know the specifics regarding when these changes will be made. We'll need to take the site offline for a few hours to make these changes, but we'll let you know in advance and will schedule our work for an off hour.

Please drop us a line if you have any thoughts or questions.

Walter

By kareno
Posted June 2, 2008 at 12:47 pm

Walter,
Thanks so much for the changes. Can we somewhere insert the date and time the entry occurs? This would also give us a timeline instead of the words like "yesterday". If you don't get to the site for a day or so you are lost. I hope this makes sense. Thanks again. Kareno

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By Walter
Posted June 2, 2008 at 1:14 pm

Hi Kareno,

The times and dates you see on the site adjust automatically. So when you see "Yesterday" or "Today", that means yesterday or today, literally. If you are away for a few days, the dates you see for a post or a message will change to show the full date and time. If you're signed in, the dates and times are adjusted for your time zone, as well.

Hope that helps,

Walter

By Mystic
Posted June 3, 2008 at 3:44 am

Walter,

It is never easy trying to make changes, but at least someone is listening. Thank you and everyone at team Inspire for at least giving this new thing a shot.

Changes are never easy nor are they prefect, so having said that I want all of you to know that I'm one of those from the old site. Yet, I simply find my way around this new place like a new store that I have never shopped at.

I look around, look for what I know and directly go there. From the beginning I was not a fan and will say that outloud. However, I know that nothing in my own life stays the same forever.

H/D is the same. We never know what's going to happen and what can or will be done for us. We must learn to go with the flow, know when to bitch so that it makes a difference, and know when to just simple try to learn from the experience.

I swear, I hope that I certainly can do all of those things in the right order for myself. But in the meantime, I will continue to browse, look around, see what interest me and for those lovely sisters that we have lost to other adventures . Well all I can say is God bless you one and all.

Change is always enviable and no matter much we fuss about it, it will come. The most that any of us can hope for is that we can learn to change with the change.

Good luck to all and may God bless you one and all.
CJ

By aileen
Posted June 3, 2008 at 7:35 am

WALTER:
YEAH! THose are great changes. The National Cervical Cancer Coalition (NCCC) LOVES the ongoing updates Inspire is making to the system. Keep up the GREAT work!

Alan and NCCC membership
www.nccc-online.org

By sb
Posted June 3, 2008 at 1:37 pm

Hello Walter!

Thanks for all those changes and your hard work and attention to detail. Any chance we can get the name of the person who has posted the post on the page that tells us of new posts in our email? Sometimes I don't have time to read all the posts but I would like to follow people's posts that I have come to know. I am finding that I am probably missing a lot of posts because of this.

Thanks again!

Sharon

By Walter
Posted June 3, 2008 at 1:57 pm

Hi Sharon,

That's a good idea. I can see how it would be hard to keep up in groups that have a lot of activity, as LCA does. I'll put that on our to-do list.

Walter

By cillian
Posted June 3, 2008 at 4:51 pm

The upgrade sounds great! But may I ask why isn't there a specific group for T.R.A.P.S? It is a very rare disease and many would appreciate it. Thanks, Angela

By JanetGrant
Posted June 10, 2008 at 8:27 am

Dear Walter,

Bravo... Excellent, Exquisite and I can only imagine the work and dedication that goes on behind the scenes on your upgrades. It just keeps getting better and better.

I send you and the rest of the team my profound thanks. God Bless All of You... JanetG

By JanetGrant
Posted June 10, 2008 at 8:47 am

Dear Walter,

You mentioned in your letter to let you know if we had any thoughts or questions. I have only one, and I feel very selfish to even ask, but here goes.

Any chance of a draft site, where we could start a journal or discussion, save it in a draft like you can do with email and return to it at at later time to complete it? I've lost many journals by getting interrupted and returning later and it's gone, of course.

It would be nice to have available and thanks for listening. Sincerely... JanetG

By singernomore
Posted June 10, 2008 at 9:50 am

hi janet - totally agree! i have a lot of difficulty typing and am very slow - would love to be able to save drafts. in the meantime, i have a folder in my computer in "notepad" and try to type my msgs, etc there, then copy and paste into this site so i don't lose everything if interrupted.

By Walter
Posted June 10, 2008 at 4:06 pm

Hi Janet,

That's a great question - not selfish at all. We do get that question from time to time. Right now, the best advice I have is to compose your posts in an editor on your computer, as singernomore suggests. That's the safest approach. In the future, I hope we can offer a draft mode and/or some other features that help prevent posts from getting lost between composition and posting.

Walter

By dimana
Posted July 7, 2008 at 8:07 am

Hi Walter,
I am new to this site and was wondering the process to reply.
Do I reply to to "reply" under a specific message or
"Your reply" at bottom of page and put the persons name to whom I am replying at top of message?

Thanks,
Dimana

By mphotographer
Posted July 7, 2008 at 8:13 am

Hi Walter-
Thank you so much for informing us of new upgraded changes. As Mystic said, some people have a hard time with change and....only a wet baby really likes changes...
:-))). However, all the new updates you mentioned sound wonderful. Thanks for your time and effort in making our site more "user friendly". Advice for others-do NOT use AOL to access this site if you have a choice of another way to get on the Internet-I was getting kicked off regularly and have had no problem using Safari. mphotographer

By Walter
Posted July 7, 2008 at 10:19 am

Hello dimana,

If you want to reply to a particular member, you should click "Reply" under the post that you are replying to. If you do that, the system will generate a notification to the member you're replying to, letting her know that you replied. If you just have a general reply to a discussion, you can simply scroll down to the bottom of the page and enter your reply.

Hope that helps,

Walter

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