List of Public Boards 2018

Howdy, everyone, and welcome to the Cafe! As our membership has grown significantly this day, there has been some concern expressed about having public boards. So, I just wanted to let you know where my thinking is on this before providing the list of what is and isn't private.

There's some general information that I would like to be made available to the public. Plus, I also need to be able to link to certain things I write (ie, the SEO article) from outside of the forums and non-members wouldn't be able to read it on a private board.

That said, I know there is a need for a private members-only area and most boards will be made private. so the only boards that will be made public are the ones that will benefit your business and that include publicly available information that other non-members may find useful.

Plus, by allowing some of the content to be fed to the search engines, the opportunity to be found by other online business owners is greater. The more members we have, the greater the active participation, and the more valuable info there will be to share and learn from. Of course, let's not forget the greater the exposure for members' businesses via the public Business Directory boards.

So, I've gone over the list of boards and decided which ones will be public and private. The following list only includes those that are public (since it's a shorter list than what is private). While I'm sure that you will feel comfortable with what I've come up with, I will certainly take into consideration any concerns you might have. So, feel free to Contact Me privately as this board doesn't allow responses.

• * The References board is meant to be a tool for quickly and easily finding valuable information, such as links to tools and sites with a specific purpose, instructions for doing or using something, noting book references, etc. Therefore, discussions are not allowed on this board and will be either moved to the appropriate board or deleted, depending on the nature of the discussion.
  
  Each thread started on this board will have a title that starts with "REFERENCE:" so you can easily determine that it's not for discussion-type posts. If you wish to discuss a topic or have a question about something posted on the References board, please use the appropriate board under the Selling Online and Social Media For Business categories, linking to the related reference post, if necessary.

Whether a board is public or private, only members and staff can post to them and only members and staff can create polls. There are a few that only staff can post to, which include:

• Bulletin Board > From Cafe Admin
• Bulletin Board > Classifieds > Business Directory*

• * Members can reply to threads on this board, but cannot start new threads.

Okay, I think that covers it.

P.S. -- If you're comfortable with the above, please like the post so I can get a better idea of how the majority feels about it. Thanks!