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Welcome!

by Jayne-eHarlequin on January 4th, 2008, 5:48pm Login or Register to post comments
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If you’re new to this community…welcome! Likely the only thing NEW you see is this blog post. But, if you’ve been with us for a while, welcome to the “new look” of the eHarlequin.com Community, now with added social networking tools and other fun features like buddy lists and profile pages! For those curious and interested, I thought it might be worth explaining a little of what we’ve been working on and what’s changed in our online space and why we’re so excited about it. And of course, we hope you are excited too. So, here goes:

  • New Forums: Hopefully you won’t find the experience so different from posting on our old boards. We’ve tried to retain the character and structure of the old boards, but we’ve added additional fun stuff to help you get around from board to board and conversation to conversation, and a redesigned Forum hub page to check out the most recent, and most commented on threads so you can easily find all our highlighted discussions for the month.
  • New Blogs: Every registered community member has their own personal blog, AND the option to log their book reviews and add to our 100,000 book challenge in 2008.
  • Navigation bar: Added Book Challenge. We’ve generated quite a lot of excitement with our annual book challenges, so much so that the challenge accounts for almost half of our site traffic. It only made sense to make it a destination with it’s own tab in the nav bar. This year, we’re gunning for 100,000 books and pledging to match the total books read with a donation to a worthy cause…join us on the journey!
  • Search:…search that really works! Laughing
  • Profile Page: A community is only as interesting as the people in it and we wanted to find a way to introduce you to all your interesting fellow eHarlequin.com citizens. What better way than to showcase you with profile pages where you can introduce yourself and keep a record of your recent community activity.
  • Social Networking: We’ve added buttons at the end of every post to share via digg, facebook, Google, Yahoo,technorati and de.licio.us. As fans of word of mouth, we wanted to make it easy to share.
  • Find me at: Now you can give your community neighbors the opportunity to check out some of your other online haunts and share pictures, and other facets of your online experiences.
  • Recent posts and blog posts: Just for navigation alternatives - it’s particularly useful for me when I write that I can quickly find things I’ve been referencing lately.
  • Subscribe: we added A LOT of options, check out the RSS page!
  • Categories: I liked this view on other blogs I read so I’ve committed myself to improving in this area and I’m sure you’ll find that the more you tag on our boards and blogs that it will become a really valuable resource for filing content and finding it again when you want it.
  • Tag cloud: Quite possibly my new favorite thing. Hopefully this will become another great way to share what we’ve found most interesting in our community on our boards and in our blog posts, just click on a word in the tag cloud and see where you go....it's like MAGIC!

    • Finally, a big shout out to our friends, Erik, Francis, Mark and Hub at RainCity for all the help on this. If you were one of our beta testers you’re familiar with their posts and messaging and recognize how hard they all worked to develop and build our site and get it up, running and deployed in time for our big reveal. Also a big Thank You to Scott and David here at eHarlequin.com, who did all the heavy lifting on the back end to tie our registration process to our membership database and ensure that our servers were purchased, delivered, installed and hooked up in time. They also spent a couple of intense days learning how to speak Drupal (the programming language of our new community platform) so they can keep the place humming smoothly.

    Let's not forget our Project Manager, Florenta who kept us all on track and of course, none of this would have been able to launch without the efforts of our other wonderful hosties (Lorie, Jeanette, Dee, Rae, Wayne, Sapphire and Dream) who not only helped build the new Forums but actually had to do double duty for the month of January as we created content for both the old AND new platforms until we switched over. I'd also be remiss if I didn't thank our intrepid team of volunteer Tire Kickers, community members who went above and beyond the call of duty to test our beta site and share their thoughts and provide valuable input on our new home.

    But lastly I should thank all of you, our amazing Community members, for your patience and support through this process and now as we launch...finally! The real mission of our Community is to provide a place where information-sharing and interaction can occur between our readers, and between our readers, authors and editors. I am tremendously proud of how far we've come since we launched the eHarlequin.com forums just over 10 years ago. Thank you for making it such a wonderful journey!

    Jayne

    ps.  Why not drop me a line and tell me what you think?

    Community Manager
    "We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh"—Agnes Repplier

    Tags

    blogs, community, Drupal, Forums, RainCity, social networking, welcome

    yay!!! it's open!

    Posted on January 8th, 2008, 3:42pm by shewolf0316

    I'm so glad to see the new forum!!

    The D2K Paranormal Junkies

    Hi Kelley

    Posted on January 8th, 2008, 3:57pm by Jayne-eHarlequin

    So nice to see you in the new space!  Where are you going to go next?

    Jayne 

    Community Manager
    "We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh"—Agnes Repplier

    Yea we finally get to see

    Posted on January 8th, 2008, 4:00pm by ELLEN TOO

    Yea we finally get to see the results of our hours of testing and complaining and generally having a good time.

    ELLEN TOO

    A true teacher is a person who, at the end of the school day, still likes children!

    Community 2.0

    Posted on January 8th, 2008, 4:12pm by dx

    i'm lovin' it

    Techie ALERT!

    Posted on January 8th, 2008, 4:15pm by Jayne-eHarlequin

    Nice to see you David!  It seems that folks are generally liking the place!  Thanks for all your hard work...

    Jayne 

    Community Manager
    "We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh"—Agnes Repplier

    It's Here!

    Posted on January 8th, 2008, 4:41pm by Donna M

    Hi Jayne,

    Here we are, on line!  Thanks everyone for all the work that was done to make this happen.  This is my first stop!  Hope I can figure all this out.  You'll be hearing from me as questions arise!! Smile  Maybe my next stop should be my profile.  Just in case someone doesn't already know me!!

    See you all later.

    Take care & happy reading,

    Donna M

    Take care, happy reading,
    Donna M, Dream Team member

    I have a ton of questions.

    Posted on January 8th, 2008, 4:52pm by msrb

    I have a ton of questions.  Will we be getting an email that explains how to make paragraphs and when to start blogging, and how the team blogs will work?

     

    Sandi 

    Sandi

    The Born Readers

    Outside of a dog a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. Groucho Marx

    check the FAQ's

    Posted on January 8th, 2008, 4:55pm by Jayne-eHarlequin

    Hi there, you'll find most of what you know answered on the FAQ's page located here...

    Jayne 

    Community Manager
    "We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh"—Agnes Repplier

    Cool new digs!!

    Posted on January 8th, 2008, 8:27pm by Holly Jacobs

    Love the new look!  I'm having fun playing with the new board!!

     Welcome home, everyone!

     Holly

    www.HollyJacobs.com, RT Reviewers' Choice Award for The House on Briar Hill Road
    SAME TIME NEXT SUMMER, Superromance, 8/08
    EVERYTHING BUT A BRIDE, 8/08
    ONCE UPON A THANKSGIVING, American Romance, 10/08
    ONCE UPON A CHRISTMAS, American Romance, 12/08

    So that's who DX is!

    Posted on January 9th, 2008, 12:28am by Dream-eHQNhost

    Glad to see you, David! Thanks for all your hard work in getting us here!

    Have you entered the Dropped Stitches Heart Sweepstakes?
    Check out the Steeple Hill online read Small-Town Romance

    Question

    Posted on January 9th, 2008, 6:47am by NicoleR

    Hi Jayne!

     

    I really am enjoying this new layout and choices!

     

    I have a question or suggestion that took me a while to figure out--I added a blog post to my favorites--it showed up on my profile page Laughingwhich was really cool. I like that. I then buzzed on around and came across a book review(though I thought it was just another blog posting at the time) that I loved--I added it to my favorites.

     

    The down side to this was, it does not show up in the listing in my profile page under blog favorites. Frown Because at first I didn't realize it was actually a Book Review rather then a Blog Post it took me a while to figure out what had happened(they look the same and I don't actually recall clicking on a button that said Book Reviews, think I got there by clicking on recent postings... ).

     

    I do realize that if you click on 'list the favorites'... it does show up there. But I thought I'd mention how nice it would be if things could be tweaked. Since both postings are like blog postings have both show up listed visually on the My Proflie page that everyone initially sees either under the tab Blog Postings or add another tab called Book Reviews.

     

    Escpecially since its a Book Review. I'd think that would be even more benefical to the authors in passing around great articles being made on their books.

     

    Its not a big issue or anything, just a feature tweak I think would make it nicer.

    THANKS!

    Cole

     

    Nicole Reising
    www.nicolereising.com
    www.nicolereising.com/blog

    Imagination... the magical whispers from within.

    We're Here

    Posted on January 9th, 2008, 10:16am by Aunt Cheryl

    SmileIt is a reality.  Thanks seems so inappropriate for all that went into our new "home",but it is really worth it .     CherylLaughing

     

    Cheryl http://cheriescalmcountrypond.blogspot.com/

    I have a hard time with change

    Posted on January 9th, 2008, 10:34am by RozDF

    Is this the new thread for everyone, or do we still have individual threads for the various lines?  Color me confused.

    www.korynna.com/RozFox
    Aug 08 Superromance
    More Than A Memory

    You need to go to the Forum pages

    Posted on January 9th, 2008, 12:37pm by Jayne-eHarlequin

    Hi Roz,

    All your favorite book discussions are still here, we've located them on the Forum pages.  You can click on the tab at the top of the page, or click here to go to where you want to get to.

    Jayne

    Community Manager
    "We cannot really love anybody with whom we never laugh"—Agnes Repplier

    Is There an Index or List of All Bloggers

    Posted on January 11th, 2008, 10:44am by VincePlato

    Hi Jayne:

                   Is there a list of all the bloggers somewhere? I can't find it and it is hard to find the old bloggers as some have changed their names.

     

                Thanks,

                                     Vince

    “Romances are the emotional vitamins of the soul.” Vince

    RE: Hi Kelley

    Posted on January 11th, 2008, 4:31pm by shewolf0316

    >Where are you going to go next? 

    I've been all over the place already Jayne. LOL Checked out a whole bunch of different forums and found some new ones I never even kew were there at the old site. Still trying to figure af ew things out and still torn as to whether or not I like having all the book challenge blogs on one thread or not.

    Spending WAAAAY too much time in here!

    The D2K Paranormal Junkies

    I'm doing the same

    Posted on January 12th, 2008, 6:44pm by KathleenDoney

    I'm doing the same thing..."Spending waaay to much time in here, but i'm relly enjoying the new site/blogs/challenge, and the more i learn and it becomes easier for me.., the more i'm loving this new site!

    Kathy

    Kathy D

    Vince, Lorie said that she'll add a list of bloggers

    Posted on January 13th, 2008, 5:53am by Penn

    soon but right now, no, there isn't one.

    Penn (aka ftworthmom -- see, I wanted people to find me! :) ) 

    Join the 2008 Book (Reading) Challenge!!! It’s for a good cause and it’s FUN!
    Come find my teammates and me at The DFWPlus Blog!

    re: list of bloggers

    Posted on January 13th, 2008, 7:08pm by Lady_Amalthea

    Oh yay, I'm glad to hear there's a list coming sometime--that will be helpful.  I feel like I'm missing people too. 

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