Jim Martin
Some Plans and Improvements for this Message Board
Mon Sep 11 14:01:08 2000



First of all, I want to thank everyone for your participation in the Alabama In The Civil War Message Board.

You've probably noticed, that an advertisement has just recently appeared. My apologies! This message board is one of many on a site called "Server.com". It is a "free" message board for those accessing the site, but Server.com makes their money by runnings ads on the sites of their users.

I can have the ad removed for a $150.00 per year fee; however, I want to see what improvements are made in Server.com's message board capabilities and to explore the possibility of utilizing a different message board software on my internet service provider.

Some of the benefits I like of this message board are the ease of maintenance, the ability to quickly monitor and remove inappropriate messages, multiple choices of layouts and most of all, the automatic notification of responses to your postings when you include your email address in your message.

A major drawback I see is the inability to view the messages according to date or "most recent". Because we've had considerable activity on the message board, we are already at multiple pages. Many visitors, especially new ones don't look at the "Next Page" to see recent responses to older messages.

I've contacted the people from Server.com and apparently they have a new "DiscussionAp" software in "beta" which will be released soon. This new software will have improvements including, the ability to look at messages by "thread" or "by date / most recent".

Please continue to use the site, I am almost daily emailing new groups, adding the site to search engines and having links provided on other Alabama Civil War sites.

I believe that the more activity we have from different areas of interest related to Alabama In The Civil War, the better. There are genealogy message boards which are frequented by professional and amateur genealogists. There are history and unit-specific message boards. I believe the strength of this and other message boards like it, is the combination of contributors from different areas of interest and disciplines.

If you have comments, suggestions or questions regarding the message board, please feel free to contact me directly or as a response to this message.

I hope you're enjoying visiting the Alabama In The Civil War Message Board as much I'm enjoying maintaining it.

Jim Martin

• Thanks for site, Jim — Tony Powell, Wed Oct 4 07:31