Navigating Quilting Weekly

Our chat this month was based on "navigating our classroom website". Quilting Weekly is a place to learn to quilt, but it is much more than that. It is a community where quilters can come to share and support one another.

Our wonderful technical person Simon Frost, has built the website with a number of fun features which will help you build those friendships and enjoy you time spent on our website. While we want you to check out our classes we also want you utilize some of these other wonder free features.

Since the site re-opening in the spring of 2009,I have been monitoring the use of these features. I have found that they aren't being used much. And then it hit me. Realizing that just because Simon, Michelle and I know these features are there, and we know how to use them doesn't mean you do.

I took the opportunity in May, 2010 during our regularly scheduled chats, to share some tips on using these features. Those who attended were thrilled to find out about the features and felt much more confident about using them after our chat. I also received numerous emails asking me to do another session in June. Partly because we ran out of time to cover all the features, and partly because a number of you couldn't make the May chat.

This lead me to another thought. Maybe I need to write these instructions down, or create some tutorials on how to use the site, and get the most out your membership here. Just what I needed, more work. LOL Seriously I think that this is a project worth doing, for you and for the future members of our site. I know that by giving you instructions up front, my email box may get less activity, which I can live with. Because currently I get numerous emails asking some of the same questions over and over again. (Now I like to get your emails, don't get me wrong), but I think that I could make better use of my time, if I wasn't answering the same questions, and besides I think you would be a happier customer from the start if you knew what to do on your own.

So for now, I want to just let you know what we covered and what we still need to cover in our next chat. And then I need to get to work on those tutorials for you.


Monday night we covered:

• The chat room (logging in from the Quilting Weekly (http://www.quiltingweekly.com) website or from Chatroll website (http://www.chatroll.com) the differences and advantages of each method.
• Changing passwords details on how to change the preset passwords we send you after registration
• Uploading photos to the forum tips were shared on max size and how to add photos to posts.
• Finding and connecting with friends using the search feature and then connecting to friends was explained.

What we didn't have time to cover:

• Your blog pages what is a blog, and why do I need one?
• Your wall commenting on your friends wall is a great way to keep in touch
• Personal galleries show off your quilting projects, pets or anything else you like (G-rated of course)
• Other places for information there are many other areas of the site that are helpful, like the teachers pages, tips, and graphics pages
• Getting the most out of the forums there is a lot of great content in the forums, do you know how to find it?
• Ordering products find out how to order classes, and how the specialty (mysteries & block of the month) classes work.

We are making changes to the site, (yes once again we need to update the site) which I wanted to share as well but ran out of time. These changes will hopefully make using the site a bit easier, and cosmetically it will look prettier (or at least I think so). So watch for news on this to be announced either here on the blog, or by email.

In the meantime, I suggest you join in on one of the other chats this week.

Wednesday 8pm London UK time
Friday 8pm EDT - Eastern time

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