Aussie Finch Forum

Seen a few posts on Facebook by members that have joined and have found site difficult to navigate? Tried helping a couple who are after merchandise but the odd one or two have giving up...maybe we need a way of helping people who have little computer knowledge a way of making it easier?

I'm for anything to help increase membership . . and anything to help members

But even though I class myself as almost computer illiterate . .

I have no difficulty in navigating this site

Yes the problem is we do not run our forum the same as FB. We are very formal to FB users and to be honest we don't want FB users to join just to buy our merchandise and then go back to FB until they need more but in saying that a new member is a new member calculated on the members list and some,some will have a look around and stick around finding our forum interesting and informative.
Behind the scene i am activating new members daily that are stuck in activation. I only get on morning and evenings but have noticed that moderators are checking during the day for first post approvals and approving them to be become active uses. Potential members need a first post approval and some crack the $hits and don't come back because it is not done instantly. It used to be a 5 post approval but the team decided one was enough to keep out spam. If it was not for this one post approval you would be bashed with advertising,porn and just general spam of which i delete at least 5 a day.
With some of the participants behaviour on FB with little or no moderation, i don't think we would want on here anyway. Craig

Fair enough Craig

Perhaps we could have a 'How To " section on the top in the General section of the page.By this i mean ,how to post photo's,how to respond to a PM etc,etc.This site is very well run and organised and does not need to go down the FaceBook road.As to promoting this site,why not make fliers up and have members either give them out or have them on their stall at bird sales,so that the general public is made aware of this site.Be assured that even if they don't join this site,but take the time to look through both current and past posts when browsing this site,they will have learned something.

Or we already have an AFF facebook site we could have some topics on there?

I don't know who the account name is in,maybe it is Dianne. But i'm afraid to use it in case it causes the death of AFF.
FB already advertises AFF if you use our website www.assiefinchforum.net address not just Aussie finch Forum or AFF. This directs users to our site to join. All information to join including how to and rules is in Registration but it's just too hard for some compared to FB.
I think we are going ok, members on here know we don't take bullying and the like and it's a great place for direct information and archival information that doesn't disappear. Craig

Obviously I am an old hand now at this site, and a techno fail. But I found that if you wanted to know something you tried a couple of times and if you couldnt figure it out. Just ask. Someone will always help out with directions on how to. FB can be set up to exclude some things just as this site is, so my IT offspring tells me. So that is an option maybe? I prefer forums. FB is too much information on more than necessary that has nothing to do with birds, though probably less so on a site that is about birds.
LML

I agree with finchbreeder. As a 'newbie' to the site, I don't think it's too difficult. Using computers & web sites people just have to try, it's the best way to learn. My new member notification went to my junk mail folder so I didn't know I'd been accepted for a couple of weeks but I stumbled across it & here I am.
Maybe promoting the site through aviary shops will help If getting new members is needed.

when ever I have people buy birds from me I recommend them to this forum, I had 1 come back earlier this week asking all sorts of questions which I tried to help him with and I strongly suggested going to this site. His reply was he tried this site but couldn't find what he was looking for, so after quizzing him it sounded like he got stuck on the home page and couldnt find his way to the aussie finch forum link and gave up. I dont know how common this is , but I would like to suggest the home page be changed to th aussie finch forum link and the current home page be a link ran from there. Not being totaly comp savy,(ie. I dont know if we can do it) it would be nice if pics we post in aussie finch forum could be be shared on facebook, this would possibly lead interested people back to this forum. I know other forums do it eg. reef2reef