One consideration is that the user needs to go re-check that search result page often enough to participate in the discussions - perhaps every few weeks or so. They’d need to do that for each search they care about (or come up with an advanced search query that covers all their interests).
Those of us participating in this thread might be willing to do that. However, most casual new fruit growers (the people who we’d like to become active growers…) are less likely to. Less-technical folks may not even be able to.
The process that you’re describing is basically the process that is automated by the plugin I linked to. One could think of it as “What you described, just automatic and available to everyone.”
That doesn’t automatically notify me, it requires me to periodically run the searches manually. I like the idea of just setting a bunch of my favorite keywords as searches that automatically alert me when new posts are made.
For special interests there are 100 Facebook groups plus many other narrowly focused websites.
I’ve loved this forum because of it’s general interest approach with wide range of interests and varying levels of expertise.
This forum has grown just the way it is. I can’t keep up with all the posts, now.that it is so popular.
That sounds more like you’d want a tag system, rather than more categories.
Tags might not be a bad idea–adding an automatic tag feature would be far less intrusive than changing the already existing categories and all the UI and user expectations, especially since the site already has all the tokens you’d want for your tags indexed.
Yes, I was only supporting the plug-in suggestion, not the other suggestion to add lots of categories. The ability to save searches and get alerts would not change the way the forum looks to other members.
Here’s how the plug-in page describes it, and this is an official plugin from the developers of the software used by this forum, not a third-party plug-in:
Once a day, your searches will be performed. If there are new results that you haven’t already seen, you’ll get a private message with a list of links to the posts. If you want to get an email notification, be sure you’ve enabled “Send me an email when someone messages me” in your email settings.
If it’s an official plugin I will try to add it at the next update. There was one other plug-in someone else wanted which I can’t remember now but will try to get both in.
We could also add subcategories for different kinds of fruit, it would mean adding a subcategory when posting to general fruit growing such as apple pear etc. only one subcategory can be used so if you posted about both apples and pears it would have to be in the main general fruit category.
@scottfsmith If you’re going to start making more sub-categories, perhaps you could also split the “Trading Post” into different regions. I’m in Canada, and we could use a separate category from most of the US traders as we aren’t supposed to be illegally importing scions from the States. Europe could certainly use their own section as well, (and perhaps others). This might help emphasize to new members that trading should only be done with other members where importation laws allow it.
Just a thought, if you’re already planning on increasing the number of sub-categories.