We have added a "tag cloud" on the Projects, Yarns, Looms and Drafts pages on the left side of the page. Click on any of the tags in the box and you will see all the items with that tag in the section you are in. For instance, if you are on the main Projects page and click on "Linen" you will see all the projects that have the tag "Linen". It's a fun, easy way to search for things.
Additional Help topics have been added including the Tour for New Users and, thanks to villageweaver, we have our own YouTube Weavolution Webcasts with several videos to help you navigate the website.
We are working with the developers, PingV, to determine why notifications on groups and forums posts is not working and hope to have that solved soon. Please be warned, once it is fixed, you may receive several emails notifying you that comments have been made.
A few open items include the Weaving calculator, Events calendar and List of Guilds. Additional donations will all go to the reinstatement of these items. To replace the Weaving calculator will require $400-500 in donations for development. An interactive Events calendar costs $1000 for development.
Please share your personal experiences meeting other members of Weavolution. We enjoyed the company of Bolivian warmi(Laverne) for a few days recently. A friend I never would have known without Weavolution. Ellen started a thread on this subject here. Tell us about other Weavolution members you have met
It seems that the "search" function looks through the personal messages (PM's) as well as the public postings. I searched "tablet" and there were many pages of hits -- what surprised me is that a number of personal messages that I wrote and that others wrote to me came up and could be read in their entirety. No problem for me but I thought others might like to know that their PM's are not actually hidden from general view.
Bonnie.
Bonnie,
It sounds like you were shown your own PMs. Did you see some where you had not participated? It sounds like that is what you found.
I'll try to reproduce the search for "tablet" and see what I get.
Thanks,
Claudia
PS- I searched on "tablets" without the quotation marks and got 4 pages which included only forum posts, group posts and projects. I did not get any PMs. If you do, please do a screen shot and send it to me in either Weavolution Help or Improving Weavolution or as a PM. Thanks.
Oh Claudia, I didn't think of that! Thanks for checking it.
Bonnie.
Claudia, the calculator, events calendar and list of guilds are all duplicates of items that exist in the world outside of Weavolution. We can link to those resources easily. If I got to vote on how $$ was spent for fundraising I would vote for the Groups to work like the Forums before any additional money is spent on items that already exist elsewhere. That group focus functionality raises the value of Weavolution. I think the folks that just use the Chat forum or the other forums don't realize what was dropped from the Group side of the system. I am just speaking for myself but the current group functionality is bad, the flow stopped and it is hard to follow thoughts or find them. I would prefer funds be focused on the group side of the system. Deb Mc
I have to agree with Deb. I know a lot of experts say you need to try and keep your users on your website, but people love the groups and being able to focus one or a few groups on a particular day. I think that's important to keeping people using Weavolution as one of (or the) primary way to interact with other weavers.
Ok, we'll continue to explore options for organizing groups to work more like forums.
Thanks for the input.
Claudia
Claudia, a simple fix seems to be to eliminate the category "Groups" and call everything "Forums" (migrating all content). It's never been clear to me what the difference was supposed to be other than membership in the groups. If one could add the membership (or a moderated subscription) option to forums there would be no need for two categories.
I like the font, layout, and chronological threading changes that occurred while I was away on vacation.
Laurie Autio
There are still some bugs in the search function. Before the change, I was able to search the content of profiles to find weavers in a specific location, with specific equipment, or particular interests. While the search function tells me it is searching profiles, it does not come up with anything. So, when I look for other weavers in Massachusetts, or Maine, advanced weavers, or those with an interest in lace, etc. nothing comes up.
I'd also like to be able to do a nested search - that is, search within results of a previous search (for example, to find the Penny from WA I met at Webs). Perhaps this can be done with adding terms, but since I am not having luck with even one term, I can't evaluate that.
Laurie Autio
Hi Laurie,
You have stated your desire for the change in groups nicely and, although I have asked the same question, I will send your wording to our developers and see what they say about this. The other functionality in Groups is the ability to have private, moderated and closed groups which we do not have in Forums. The forums are open and available to all and this would mean that everyone would see all the groups along with the forums.
We have tried something new on our test site. We are still considering that.
As for searching, we are waiting for the My Looms functionality to be added back in to the site and you may have more luck if you use the Advanced Search. The easiest way to get to Advanced search is to enter your initial search word, say expert and once you look through the options available you can click on Advance search under the original search box. It looks like this: 
You get tons of choices once you enter Advance search and you may find more there.
Hope you had a wonderful vacation. Welcome back.
Claudia
So how do I donate to weavolution these days? There doesn't seem to be anything like a "donate now" link. Maybe this should be in the orange box on top or a permanent button along the lefthand column. Perhaps developing this is something we will need to pay for?
Like everyone else, I have lots of ideas for additional functionality. I'm even willing to pay my fair share. We need to make this easier to do.
Okay - After I wrote this, I found the donation link at the bottom in the brown footer. So this is now less of a priority. But, I suggest 1) moving the link up to the top and 2) add "donate to weavolution" to the "how do I..."
I do not get any more results by using the advanced search when looking for something in profiles (such as "Maine"). It still gets no entries, when I know there are around 20 +/- that should turn up.
Laurie Autio
