We have made some changes to our website to make it easier to use and for new members to sign up.
- We no longer have a new member email validation mechanism. New members can now sign in with Live ID and fill out their profile and immediately use the website. We would still appreciate members providing a real email address as this is what we use to send out event and user group notifications through our opt-in lists. This change will make it easier for new members to sign up on the site and will eliminate the problem where new members did not receive their confirmation email because of spam blockers.
- We have changed the event calendar control on the site. The control is now on all page templates in the site and will automatically list all the events in the month selected. The previous behavior was to list events for the day that was selected. Seeing as we only have two events per month, the new behavior will make it easier to spot upcoming meetings at a glance.
- The current events list will include all events that have not yet completed or are scheduled in the future. The previous behavior of the site only tested the start time of the event, so when members came to the site to click on the Live ID meeting link right after the meeting started, the event was no longer in the upcoming meeting list, and they had to dig deeper in the site to find the event, making them even later for the event. We still prefer that members join the event before it starts, but the new site behavior will make it faster for the late-arivals.
- Many small but important visual style changes have been made to the templates on the site.