Hi Folks,

I wanted to announce a new OrchidTalk feature that all active members may start using today. I call it: The OrchidTalk Orchid Wish-List. I don't know how many times have I been going through thread after thread and seeing orchids that I really would love to grow. I always plan to 'write that name down', but somehow I never do, or if I do, I go off and leave my list at home. Hopefully, this new OrchidTalk feature will help solve that problem.

The wish list is something I have been working on for several weeks now on my test forum and I feel it is ready to share with you. Here is how it works:

When you see a post in the forum of a plant or other orchid item that you just cannot live without, all you need to do is reply to the thread and then look at your post. In your post you will see an animated heart. Take a look at the image below for a visual.

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Simply right click and copy the name of the plant or object that you want with your mouse and then place your mouse pointer over the heart. A little text phrase will appear that reads "Edit your Orchid Wish-List". Here, simply click the heart and you will be transported to your list with all of the fields open and ready to edit. Simply right click and past the orchid name, etc into the field. Scroll to the bottom of your list and click save. That is it. Now, you can access your list from anywhere you have an internet connection - even from your mobile phone.

So, you have looked at your post, but the red heart is not showing up. What do you do?? To start your list, you will need to go to your User-CP and click on the "Edit Orchid Wish- List" in the left menu near the top of the column. See this image for visual:

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After that page loads, simply answer the second question on the page to start your heart icon showing in all of your posts. Only you will see your heart icon. You must be logged into the forum to see this feature.

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To view another member's wish list, you can click on her or his OrchidTalk member name and go to their profile page, or if you are reading a post and you would like to see what Member "X" has on her wish list, simply click on her name in the post and then click on "View Profile" in the drop down menu. This works in all threads.

Members must be active to view other member's profile page and wish lists. New members become active after participating in the community. All of the forum Terms and Conditions apply to this feature as well.

Here is what the tab looks like in the profile page.

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A final feature of this wish list is a link to your grow list thread in the OrchidTalk Member's Grow-list forum.

If you have created a thread in that forum, you can link directly to it at the bottom of your wish list. This lets other members of our community see what you are already growing.

I encourage all members to post their grow lists. It is a safe and secure way to keep your list. You do not have to worry about your computer crashing and loosing your list because it will always be on the OrchidTalk server. During our recent upgrade (the downtime a few days ago) we changed servers and added a duo core hard drive for instant back up. So OrchidTalk is not only backed up once each day and posted to another, secure hard drive, it is actually being copied as you are reading to an extra one to keep our data safe and secure. That means double redundancy protection for our community and its data.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Enjoy!

Cheers,
BD