Great additions! I hope that everyone utilizes the "announcements". Always great to see what's going on in our area and terrific to see who has tied the knot, started a family, celebrations. Great idea!

This website is really taking off.
My hats off to all staff and everyone involved with the batavian.
Its great to have something like this for all of Genesee County to share.

WHY AREN'T THE HOUSE/STREET NUMBERS LISTED IN THE REAL ESTATE TRANSACTIONS??

I think its a legal thing. You might have to go to city hall to get addresses. might be a fee too.

How about a chat room for the Batavian? I run one on my site... If not know maybe the future and yes the two new sections are good and adds more spice to the site


Good work Howard


Tom

I think the chat site would be great.
I would only like it if it was people from genesee county and stuff to do about thebatavian. I have been to other chat sites and its so crazy.

I don't think it's a legal issue, Dave. the Buffalo news gives names of the buyer and seller as well as the street address. I think the additions to the site are great, but the info isn't very useful.

On the spreadsheet we got there were no street numbers. We'll check into that. We did have buyers and sellers names, but I left those out for space reasons. We are limited to row length by the width of the page design on this site. We'll eventually present the information in a different format, but for now this is what we're limited to.

Off topic but I was wondering when you can expand user profiles so we can post our web sites there

Tom, it's in the works now. A programmer is coding as we speak. I don't have ETA, but we'll have expanded profiles and some social networking tools (friends, messages to friends, etc.). It's the next major upgrade to the site.

A chat room would be a great idea.
There are times when posting just isn't enough to get a real conversation going.
Looking forward to the new updates.

Thanks Howared and if you ever need some help let me know (email) I have my own server and forum as you know and maybe I might help, I have messed with these php, perl and sql forums for awhile I'm no programmer but I have learned from my mistakes with this stuff and I used to have alot of them.

;)

Tom

Define what you mean by chat room. Some people call a "forum" a chat room; I've even seen these kinds of messages on posts "chats."

So just be clear on what the request is:

-- A chat room is a place where people can log in and send messages back and forth in real time ... just like a conversation, but typing instead of talking. A whole group of people can be in the room at the same time. Everybody can see the conversation; everybody can add to the conversation. All at once.

-- A forum is a place where people can post on a topic and then other people come along later and respond to it.

Either of these are doable. But two points: I'll need to check with my developers on chat room options and find the best to work with Drupal and our server configuration; and on forums, the way this site is set up, is kind of like a forum already: Anybody can start a new topic to discuss just by creating a new blog post. This aspect of the site will be even more effective once we get the new profiles/social networking in place.

Your definitions for chat and forum are right and yes The Batavian is already like a forum but real time chatting for the Batavian site would be an added + for this site only thing I can see wrong is server load unless you have a beefy server already and people that spam or post offensive things but that could happen here anyways.

There is tons of free chat software out there and I do have one on my site but it is coupled with the member database and this is something you would need here.

Here is my chat room used for my site if you don't mind me posting this Howard
http://tomsinternetyardsale.com/chat/ as you can see mine is integrated into my site this is what you should use here or can use my opinion. My chat room you can use any user name with out a password but you can't chat unless your a member this is some thing you could use here allowing none members to see the chat room but not chat unless they join

I looked up Drupal software on Yahoo and they do have a chat room add on for there software http://drupal.org/project/chatroom uses Ajax so server load is not as bad also server configuration would or should not be a problem because if you already run Drupal it will run the chat room too...


Thanks Howard your a good admin with these fast replies and taking into consideration on what members would like to see on the site.


Tom

Tom, I've been involved with a lot of chat over the years. Well The Batavian is growing fast, in relation to the whole Web it will always be a small site; that means, a chat room is more likely to sit empty than not, and when people find an empty chat room all the time, they're not likely to try it again.

For chat to work on a site like this, you need somebody who will schedule chats and then participate in the chats they schedule -- sort of like a chat master.

If you were willing to volunteer for such a position, I would be much comfortable with putting chat on the site.

That said, this isn't the only site my developers are responsible for, so I can't say yet when we can get chat installed.

Ya that sounds good just give me the word and when to start!

Man you guys are Awesome.