The entire site is now public, so say hello to the world. Some of you have probably noticed how our start page contains, among other things a tag-cloud and a list of the ten most recent updates. Both of these are meant to make things easier for you.

If we do tag our pages properly, anyone can just click on certain keywords to see relevant pages. While there isn't much yet for this system to be truly beneficial, this is a start.

The recent updates will tell you what pages have been newly-created or recently-edited. Be aware of a couple of things:

1. Sometimes, a page title will give you no indication what it's about. "Chapter 1," for example, does not in itself indicates that it is a page of relevance only to COM12 students. That said, you're all welcome to read whatever is on this site anyway.
2. The presence of this list means that there are no such things as "secret updates." Question is: do I allow people to edit pages they haven't authored?
3. New posts and/or threads in the forum don't appear on the Recent Updates list. This means that the best way to quickly check the site is to look at the Recent Updates list AND THEN click on the forums. Of course, you're not required to quickly go through the site but to spend a lot of time here.

Start using the forums, folks.

I initially thought I would get a barrage of email messages alerting me to your site applications. Instead, I apparently needed to manually check my Admin page in order to accept your membership requests. I'm pretty sure there's an option I can turn on that will make it easier for me to be alerted via email, but I've yet to find it.

In the meantime, let that be a "warning" of-sorts to you all: there might be times when you need to keep track of certain changes and/or site updates, but you may not get an email alert. So I guess we all have to check our profile pages here every once in a while. And your own course site, of course. Maybe we can set a rule that after every meeting, we should log on to check?

For now, how are you all doing with the site so far? There's not much on it yet, of course, but are you beginning to get an idea of how flexible and useful this resource can be? I certainly hope so.

For now, post in the forums, leave comments, practice making pages, etc. Let's see what you can do with the site, and let me know if there are any problems.

(Coolness points to whoever recognizes the pop-cultural allusion in the thread title.)