Colleen,

Navigating a forum can take a lot of time.  An alternative method of staying on top of these forum posts is to us use an RSS or XML aggregator such as Google reader.  You can add STOCKcentral.com content to the reader by using the links posted below.

Only titled headers are provided in each of these RSS feeds.  Each title provides a link to the original content (passwords are required for access).  I would be happy to put together a brief tutorial if enough folks wanted one.   

Regards,
Mike Rendon  

 

Central Square
http://www.stockcentral.com/desktopmodules/activeforumstopposts/rss.aspx?tabid=143&moduleid=626

Investing
http://www.stockcentral.com/desktopmodules/activeforumstopposts/rss.aspx?tabid=143&moduleid=609

A-D tickers
http://www.stockcentral.com/desktopmodules/activeforumstopposts/rss.aspx?tabid=143&moduleid=612

E-K tickers
http://www.stockcentral.com/desktopmodules/activeforumstopposts/rss.aspx?tabid=143&moduleid=613

L-Q tickers
http://www.stockcentral.com/desktopmodules/activeforumstopposts/rss.aspx?tabid=143&moduleid=614

R-Z ticker
http://www.stockcentral.com/desktopmodules/activeforumstopposts/rss.aspx?tabid=143&moduleid=615

I will try to put something together this weekend for the tutorial on setting up an aggregator for the STOCKcentral.com RSS feeds.  Is it possible to post pictures (screen captures) to the forum? 

Issues that I see with the current content syndication;

Clicking on the links that are provided at the bottom of each forum (Orange RSS buttons) do not work when using Mozilla Firefox 2.0.  The following error is generated  "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below" .

These links do come up when using Windows Explorer but the only time I use Explorer is when I need to open a second Gmail profile.

The RSS links to each of the STOCKcentral forums are all labled the same "STOCKcentral.com (beta) :: Community, Data, and Insight for Investors" - granted it is simple to rename them, but this could be very confusing to most users.  - I renamed each one so that I can tell which sub-forum the posts are coming from.  Also the name is too long. 

I have noticed delays in replies being picked up by the Google reader - but I do not know if this is an issue on the STOCKcentral side or an issue with the Google reader.

Regards,
Mike Rendon

The orange RSS links appears on each of the summary pages (community tab, then click on one of the Current Discussions tabs (Investing) (Central Square) (Tickers A-D) (Tickers E-K) (Tickers L-Q) (Tickers R-Z).  They do not work in Mozilla Firefox 2.0 as previously stated. 

Also, I have tried one other reader and had similar results - the same posts were not picked for an extended amount of time.  It seems that many posts are not picked up in a timely manner using the RSS feeds.  However, I did notice that Rajiv Roy's post today 01/21/2007 10:49 PM in The Classroom / Subject: Which books have shaped your views on investing? folder was picked up in less than 5 minutes using the Google reader tonight.  Is 11:03pm (Central) a standard RSS publishing time for the RSS feeds at STOCKcentral? If so, it may just be a coincidence that this post was well timed. You might want to check how frequently each of the feeds are being published and if they are being cached on your web-servers?

I suspect that the only way to stay updated on the latest content right now is to click through the pages, but I could be wrong.

Mike Rendon

Here are a couple of examples of recent delays on the RSS feeds.  This looks to be an improvement  but I will keep looking for more examples.

My post last night at 01/21/2007 11:34 PM was picked up by the readers at 01/22/2007 12:26AM (less than 1 hour).

Leonie Sauer's post at 01/22/2007 9:35 AM was picked up by the readers at 01/22/2006 09:26AM (less than 1 hour).

I am not sure what an acceptable delay is for a forum like this, but I
would think that most would like to have the delays kept to less than 15 minutes.

Mike Rendon

I've finally figured out how to navigate to put this message here, so I'm deleting it from Danny Matthew's thread.
.
Joe, I'm still finding it hard to navigate through this contest. For example, I come to the home page of stock central, click on the community red tab.
http://www.stockcentral....y/tabid/143/Default.aspx
.
I can't find the classroom forum from there. So I pick one thread (that I don't want to read) but is listed as a classroom forum thread, and THEN I get to a place where I can navigate around in the classroom. Hope this helps your web gurus improve navigation...

So then I thought I'd delete this message, and move it somewhere like infirmary or somewhere more for support, but when I clicked on ALL FORUMS, instead of getting the high level of the forums, I got stocks A-F or whatever. That was frustrating, and I'm leaving.

This happens to me a lot, i come, i get frustrated with the navigation, and I leave pretty quickly, though I'd like to stay around. I imagine navigation will be improving... I know web navigation is a challenge, so i'll be patient! This isn't meant as a criticism, just feedback. Didn't know where to move the message to.

Also, will you or Mark R. be posting each player's dashboard, as Danny did, so we can see their results? thanks, Etana

uggh. So my returns and double spacing paragraphs doesn't take. That makes an ugly message. I put spaces and a period to see if that would separate the paragraphs.
... But it didn't work; I'm on a Mac in Safari. I couldn't separate the paragraphs. sorry for the run on thoughts. I tried...
I have found that if I click on Active Topics, I get to an interesting page: perhaps a link for Active Topics could be promininent on the login and/or home page?

I agree with Colleen's 1/17 comments - I don't have the time to read all the postits and then try to relate the postits to a developing  theme message; There are too many extraneous thoughts introduced.