Welcome to the all new Friends of Jade

The new digital Friends of Jade is now two years old. I am pleased to report that membership is climbing, that we had a useful and enjoyable meeting in Tucson at the beginning of February. Also, plans are well underway for an expanded website with many more features, and we already have a gallery venue and FOJ dinner plans for next year's Tucson.

I was very pleased with the Tucson turnout (50 members and potential members). I am also delighted with the distribution. About a third of our current membership live in the USA and Canada, nearly a quarter live in England and other European countries, almost a third are in China, and the rest are scattered across Africa, South America, Australia, and, of course, in New Zealand.

We are making it easier for new and current members to log on and everyone will now be able to update user details on their own in our system. If you ever misplace your password, you can now have it automatically emailed to you.

My mission is still to get all the old Friends of Jade Bulletins online. We are close to doing that. The issue is that the scans of a 100+ page Bulletin are HUGE and tax not only our system but would not work at all on a dialup account. So, that continues to be a work in progress.

Now I will list the new features of our expanded website starting today. Those of you who wanted to be able to communicate directly with 1 or more FOJ members online now have that ability. You can have groups or message just one person. Explore the new features and let me know what you like, what's useful, and what more we might do. The FOJ site is already the most current and useful jade site in the world. We are dedicated to make it even better.  Check all the new features below.

Welcome aboard!

Fred Ward
[email removed]

WHAT'S NEW ON THE FRIENDS OF JADE SITE:

Here is a list of new features:

User Management
Members now have full control over their own login information. They can change their passwords, update their email addresses, contact information, etc.

User comments
Members can comment on articles.

Printable Articles, Email Article Links
Articles are automatically published with links to Printer Friendly entry versions, as well as utilities so members can easily email your entries to friends.

XML Syndication
Friends of Jade now automatically publishes content as XML, which allows readers to create subscriptions with today's popular news aggregators. Friends of Jade automatically publishes articles in ATOM, RDF, and RSS formats for maximum compatibility.

Subscribe to Changes
Any site member can subscribe to any portion of the site, allowing them to receive full-text updates when content is changed via email automatically. This means that members can be notified of updates instantly without having to check back on the site.

These are the site sections:

Articles
This is where the 5 most recent articles will be displayed.

Archives
This is the archives or articles. Users can browse articles titles or browse categories of articles (Chinese Jade, California Jade, etc...)

Group Discussion
Allows users to interact in a discussion centered around a single topic. This discussion supports multiple threads. Users can start their own discussions.

Upcoming Events
Users can look at upcoming Jade events around the globe.

Jade Resources
A page full of links.

Upload
This is a form that will allow users to upload items to the Friends of Jade web master.

Join Form
New users can sign up.

Questions Form
Members can email questions, links they would like included on the site, comments, etc...