Alex

Initially I was not for leaving this link up to a facebook group, but if it can help shop owners I am ok with it. We obviously would like community interactions to stay on our platform here, but do recognize that shops may need multiple support group channels 😉

Elf on the Shelf comes to our daughters right around now!

Google has a great tool that allows you to check the mobile "friendliness" of your website. Just enter your website url at Google dedicated page: https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly You should get something like: If you don't, time to look into updating your website 😁

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

As a member of AutoShopOwner, you can manage the types of notifications that we provide you for when things happen here, either via email or when you login and view your notifications list (the bell icon). For instance, when you start a new topic in a forum or reply to an existing topic, you are automatically subscribed to receive a notification when new content is posted. That can happen by email or not, depends on how you want to receive it. To get to your notifications management section, first go to Account Settings Then go to Notification Settings There you will see some your current preference settings for overall delivery method, follow preference, browser notifications, etc. Scroll down and you'll see individual notification settings where you can pick and choose how you are notified. For email, an email is sent every time that action takes place based on your delivery method above. For Notification List, every time an action takes place, it will be listed in your notifications panel under the little bell icon. One more setting we have is for our weekly newsletter, which includes a list of topics and activity from the week. You can opt in and out from your account settings as well. If you haven't taken a look at your settings yet, we encourage you to check it out. 😃

We had a third party server issue with our chat that has been corrected now. We apologize for the inconvenience.

We've added a tab for HOME in our main menu when logged in, which takes you to our home page and same place you would get to by clicking our logo. To make things a bit easier to navigate, we've included 2 rows of Quick Links to help you find important sections and for new members that are learning our site. 😀

Yes both unread content and fluid forum view default to the most recent activity and will show you the topics that have the most recent posts at the top. You can sort it anyway you like because the unread content link is essentially an activity stream. You can create your own activity stream and sort it the way you want as mentioned above. Below is a screenshot of the fluid forum view and by default it loads forum topics with the most recent replies. I highlighted the time stamps to show. I would try this view out as it's very close to what you are looking for and you can filter out the forums you don't want to see topics from as well.

It's been a while since I made a blog entry so I've decided that I am going to start to add entries around using AutoShopOwner and things that may be of interest. For this entry, I'd like to showcase our Activity tab in the main menu and try to describe how you can use it and some of our other views to bring up the content that you want to see vs viewing everything. Today we have a few ways of seeings what's new from your last visit and content in general. UNREAD CONTENT You can click the Unread Content link towards the top right and that'll give you all your "unread" content since your last visit. It's also available under Activity Streams (next section). Some people love this feature on forums and it's handy for frequent visitors, but can be a very long list if you haven't been here in a while. At any given time you can "Mark site read" and it'll show everything as being read. You can even mark topics and full forums as read (stops topic titles from being bold because bold means unread) ACTIVITY STREAMS Click on the Activity section from the main menu and you'll see a link for All Activity, My Activity Streams, and Search. This is where you can really tailor your view of content that you want to see. Start with one of our default streams or give a shot at creating your own stream to show only what YOU want to see! FLUID FORUM VIEW If creating your own Activity Stream isn't for you and you like to just go to the main page of the forum and see what's going on, then Fluid View may be for you. You can toggle between Fluid and Traditional views easily by clicking on the layout button. You can also customize which forums will show topics by clicking on the "Showing topics from all forums" link. Hopefully this explains some of the ways we have available for our members to get to the content they want to see and stay updated. If all else fails, just use the search box at the top of the page!

@steve fox I took a quick peak at your website and I can tell you that your wordpress theme hasn't been updated in a while and I would suggest adding some SEO plugins and a little work on optimizing the content. For instance, your site was built using WordPress 3.4.2 which was released September 2012. The platform is currently at version 4.8.2. I see a lot of outdated wordpress themes that were built and never updated. Your page titles and content need to be optimized as well. Update your site and optimize it, and you should be able to crawl up the search rankings.. 😁

You can also check out this ongoing topic on SMS systems 👍

Topic moved to Marketing, Advertising, Promoting Forum.

I have added a 2nd weekly event for Wednesday night chats, open to any members. I'll get on to see if anyone joins and we'll see if it start something and then hopefully pass it off. I'll also send a note out to everyone this week for both Sunday and Wednesday group chat sessions. 😁

Assuming you guys mean video, because the chat we have is the same as most chats out there currently in terms of speed, functions, and usability....I'm not sure we can effectively do video without some third party integration. Something to think about down the road. As far as promoting, we can try and send a different message out regarding chat and put something up to advertise it better.

Thank you for posting this casting call. I changed your topic title to Garage Rehab Casting - Discovery Channel

@Capital our new chat has the ability to set up multiple rooms. Currently we have a general room and a Sunday night chat room. I can easily add a room for another day or if anyone would like to create a group for lets say a Tuesday chat, you can easily just create a group in the groups section and add your own chat room as well. Also, in our weekly topic email we include a blurb about Sunday night chats where we can easily add another day to see if it catches on. Just let me know if there is interest or PM me. 😁

Topic moved to Automotive Shop Tools & Equipment forum.

Today we added a new option to view the main page of the forum in a fluid view. This view will list out the latest topics (similar to the sidebar latest topics). If you click on the "Showing topics from all forums" link (highlighted in yellow below), you can filter which forums you would like to see topics from. You can easily switch back to the classic table forum view at any time. The 2 buttons are right next to the start new topic button. Filter your view by forums:

We've launched a new section here at AutoShopOwner called Groups. You'll see the section link in our main menu. We've had some requests in the past to have the ability to start specific forum sections and group sections within our forums and this not only addresses that, but also gives you the ability to start your own "mini" AutoShopOwner based on basically whatever you want. Our Premium, Platinum, and Sponsor members can all be group creators. All FREE members can join groups, but it's up to the Group creator on who is allowed in, who is invited, etc. Group creators can also assign moderators and control aspects of the group. Our Platinum and Sponsor members have the added ability of creating closed/private groups as well. This can be a great way to start your own network. At any time, you can upgrade your membership here. Once you create a group, you can add a topics section (just like our main forum), chat section (same as regular chat), blogs, downloads, gallery, etc. It's really up to the group creator on how to lay it out and it's simple to do. Once you create a group, it will be approved by us within 24 hours and you'll be ready to go. I'm going to leave it at that for now and encourage anyone that is interested in this, to go ahead and try to start a group. You'll see how easy it is. In the very near future I am going to be starting a blog around AutoShopOwner features, as we have a lot of them...😎

We've been having issues with the chat room, specifically Sunday night chat. The 3rd party chat software we have been using by Chatwee was causing login issues for some. If you click on the chat tab in the main menu moving forward, you'll notice a new interface that better integrates with AutoShopOwner. You can also get there directly via this url https://www.autoshopowner.com/chat/ Please post in this topic if you encounter issues. On mobile browsers, only Chrome (Android) and Safari (iOS) is supported. 😎

Has anyone been able to catch this 3 part series on the History Channel? It should be available On-demand if you have a subscription. It was recommended to me by a friend, so my wife and I watched it and enjoyed it very much. 😁 http://www.history.com/shows/the-cars-that-made-america

Topic moved to classifieds. Please follow our guidelines here: https://www.autoshopowner.com/announcement/5-advertising-promoting-your-company-on-autoshopowner-information/

We have added a new forum titled: Exit Strategy, Retirement, Selling Your Repair Shop I also moved some of the topics around this subject matter into this new forum. 🙂