By Steve Mallory

Well, March has been an interesting month. My favorite part is that it is over. It is mostly about the message board but here is where we started the month.

We began by opening our store and selling stroke awareness bracelets. We sold out of stock in the first two days. That was great except we still had over 70 orders to fill. We had to order another 2500 bracelets and then, Steph and family, had to work their butts off to get the remaining orders shipped. I want to thank everybody for being patient while we got things worked out.  

The store was given a new address in order to be more identifiable with our website. The new address is http://www.strokenetstore.net/.

We are still taking orders. Have you ordered your stroke awareness bracelets, yet!

Several members have asked if we can sell sweatshirts and T-shirts. I am looking into stocking the store with these items. Send me an email if you are interested.

Another new feature to our website is that you can login to the message board from our homepage, http://www.strokenetwork.org/. That really is the logical address to begin. The homepage will take you to any address on the whole website so you might want to bookmark it. Use it to login or explore other Stroke Network web pages.

If you are an avid message board user you may be happy to know of all the upcoming changes and those already made. First, our new skin for the board is almost ready. I have seen the concept design for the board and it is absolutely beautiful. It is much nicer and more professional looking than the previous message board version.

I have a new modification to the message board, too. The board will have a section  dedicated, on the first page, for leaving messages for anybody who reads it. It is not another forum but more like an instant messenger built into the board. I guarantee you will all find lots of uses for it.

The message board has several new features already implemented. The most important are the FAQ and Help Desk links added at the top of the message board.  

The FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions section has been written to help you find answers to commonly asked questions. The Help Desk is there for you to get help in areas where you are experiencing a problem. Member issues, chat room questions, questions about the blog section or the gallery. You do not need to login, just go directly to the Help Desk if you forgot your username, couldn’t figure something out with the message board or are having a problem entering the chat rooms.

Also, check out the statistics section of the message board. We can now see who registers each day and also see who has been to the message board for that day.

Fascinating stuff!