Max,

From my perspective, there aren't many changes needed. I think you and your team do an outsdanding job here. Perhaps a couple of things I'd like to see:

I like to use the trace feature and I have enough of these built up on my personal page that I don't notice when I have a personal message waiting. It would be nice to have a PM notification banner at the top of the personal page. (This is because I don't use the main forum page very much.)

The other thing I'd like to see is a change in the action that takes place immediately following submital of a post. Currently we are taken to the main forum page. This takes a long time and (for me anyway) isn't where I want to be. If you'd leave me at the bottom of the thread from which I posted, I could at least back-arrow to my working page.

Please keep the "messages since last visit" feature. That goes a long way toward helping me focus on the discussions that appeal to me. I've saved a direct link to that on my Win2K desktop to avoid passing through the main forum page on the way in.

Max, the work you and your team do to create and maintain the Mudcat Café is a service to people all over the world with an interest in folk music and blues. It acts as a global forum and resource for scholars, professional performers, amatures, fans and even those who just need someone to talk to. It's astonishing in its simplicity and in it's depth. You may feel like you're out there by yourself a lot of the time but I'll bet there's a whole world full of people who would do whatever it takes to support Mudcat were the chips to be down.

      - Mark