patrick.net

I think I tried to post something in the Denver area...and I think it got black holed or something. I too find it confrusing.

Thanks for telling me!

How did you try to post to the Denver area? If you just search for "Denver" at the top, you should get right to the main Denver page. From there, you can comment in general about the city.

To comment about a specific address, just do a search for that address.

How can I make this easier and clearer? I think I'm too close to it. I need fresh eyes and I'd be grateful for advice.

Ah, now I understand. You wrote a new post with a title of your own, but couldn't put it in the real estate forum.

That's because each post in the real estate forum is required to either be a city name or a specific address. I should make that clear somehow. My fault.

For now, I just moved your post about Denver to be a comment in the general Denver discussion, which is here:

http://patrick.net/?p=664740

Yeah, I sort of got a sense that the title was supposed to be an address...but I didn't know where to go otherwise...so I just went with it...but then it disappeared! I'm glad the post made it to where it belongs, but I still don't know how to do it on my own.

I tried to make a new "test" post to that forum, and it didn't work like I thought.

I wen to the real estate page:
http://patrick.net/real-estate/

Which seemed to automagically put me in the appropriate area (Denver and surrounding areas)

I then clicked on Denver Real Estate, which took me here:
http://patrick.net/?p=664740

I can see my original post, and it looks like I can add a comment, but I don't see a way to make a new post. The best thing I could come up with is to click the "write a post" button at the top right header area. I did this, and ended up with this post:

http://patrick.net/?p=688652

Which shows up in the "housing market" forum. So either the website is broken, or I'm broken.

swebb says

So either the website is broken, or I’m broken.

The website is broken, not you. I will make it possible to post any title to the Real Estate forum, not just the address of a property. I'll do that sometime today. It was a bad idea to restrict it that way.

ptiemann says

Now I frequently change my ‘home zip code’ just to see if I am missing out on something.

I would like to be able to reset my zip code to 00000 so that I see all recent posts, sorted by most recent comment date.

You can do it by going to http://patrick.net/set_location.php and clicking "Erase Location" at the bottom. I admit it's not obvious.

I could put that "Erase Location" link everywhere there is the "Change Location" link too. Should I call it something else?

Or maybe I should have the Real Estate Forum be split between everywhere, and your own location? Posts anywhere on top, posts in your location at the bottom? There are good reasons to do both...

Please give me more advice!

OK, the users have spoken and the changes have been made.

Basically, I reverted the real estate forum to how it used to be. The difference is that if you set a location, you can click on that location right below the "Real Estate Forum" header and see any property comments near there.

Otherwise, you just see all property comments together, as before.

Also, you can now write a post with any title about anything, and put it in the Real Estate Forum. It will prompt you for a city or zip, so it knows where to file it, but aside from that, it's the same as any other forum.

More suggestions?

The map is still more of an annoyance than useful. If you use your mouse roller to scroll down the page, you then inadvertently zoom the map. And it's not a very good map. As a mapping guy, I think it's better to leave it off unless it is really useful. Just being able to click the address as a link to Redfin or Google maps is a better solution than the map you provide.

The point of the map is to show what other comments are nearby.

It also makes it easy to see a new address and get to the page for that address on my site just by clicking on the map.

I couldn't do that with just a link to Redfin's maps. They don't have access to my database.

Since I don't have a mouse roller (using only Linux and Mac) I never ran into that zooming problem, but I'll find a Windows PC somewhere and check it out.