I’m very glad to hear that Jerry, the offer stands to help you in any way I can and I’m open to hearing any feedback you have to improve the layout/functionality of the site.
Here’s some advice that might help.
Whenever I’m talking about the ‘Home’ page I’m referring to the community home page, the actual home page is more like a landing page for those new to the site and trying to sell them on the benefits of being a member.
When you’re on the home page you are presented with all the categories, as Lon said, it’s the ‘portal’, or ‘command central’ where you can get to anything quickly.
If you’re interested in seeing all the latest activity on NPN from all categories, just click on Latest. This is sorted by the latest reply. If you want to see all the new posts since your last visit, click ‘New’, or if you want to catch up on new replies to topics you’re following click ‘Unread’, and ‘My Posts’ will show you all the topics you have replied to or created.
If you are only interested in the image critiques category, just click on the heading for image critiques first, then you will still have the buttons for Latest/New/Unread/etc. but they will only apply to this category, so if you just want to see all the new images posted in critiques you first go to that category, then click ‘New’. The same applies if you are only interested in Avian, just go to the avian category and click new, you will only see new images posted to the avian category.
If you’re visiting/posting regularly I think the best ‘workflow’ is to first visit Unread to catch up on any topics you have created or replied to, then visit New to see what new topics have been created and reply to any you find interesting. You can skip past any photos you don’t want to comment or look at by clicking Dismiss New when you’re in the New view, or click Dismiss when you’re in the Unread view.
If you’re not visiting regularly, then it’s probably best to go to the category you’re interested in which will give you a thumbnail view that is sorted by the date the original topic was created.
Hopefully this helps, please reach out if you have questions.