Rob,
When I joined the forum, and after Steve asked me to be a Moderator, life was easy. The month I joined, there were only 176 members. And only 3834 posts. So, moderating the forum was easy. Fast forward to the present time, there have been a total of almost a quarter million new posts. This dramatic growth in the forum caused me to become much more efficient as a Moderator, and how I perform my moderating duties, and also to be more selective in where I post. I did indeed see your post (the one I moved) and might have answered it but I knew that there were many other members who could answer your question far better than I could. Also, there are some very good search engines on the forum to find answers to the types of questions you raised. The search engine that I use most of the time (several times a day) is the one accessed under the Search button at the top of each page of the forum. Had I chosen to respond to your post, I would have told you that 1) I do not make enough pizzas to be able to go through a 50-lb bag of flour, 2) I do not have refrigerator or freezer storage capacity for 50-lb bags of flour, however, broken down into smaller amounts, 3) the 50-lb bag of flour would go rancid long before I could use it all, and 4) where I live in Texas I lose a lot of flour due to bug infestation, especially during the hot summer months. It is for these reasons that I only buy flour in small amounts.
Once you have spent more time on the forum, I think you will find that your navigating skills will improve and that you will learn how to find things much more quickly. For example, at the top of each page of the forum, you will see a link under where your forum name appears entitled "Show new replies to your posts". That will take you to all replies to your posts, no matter where they are at the time. At the bottom of each page of the forum, you will also see another link under Forum Stats entitled "View the most recent posts on the forum". That link will take you to the last 200 new posts on the forum. That number used to be 100 but, at my request, Steve increased the number to 200 because of the dramatic increase in new posts on the forum. That way, if for some reason or other new unread posts no longer show as such, you can look at the group of the last 200 posts and find the posts that you missed and want to read. That feature is particularly good for screening or scanning the newest posts in sequence and deciding which ones you want to read, either then or later. As was also previously mentioned, if you go to your profile and look under Summary, you will see another link entitled Show Posts. That link will give you a list of all of your posts. Finally, and was also previously mentioned, you can subscribe to the Notification feature that lets you know when other members have responded to your posts.
As for the forum software itself, about two weeks ago, Steve did a major software upgrade to the forum. So, what you are seeing is the best of what the forum has to offer. If that is insufficient for your needs, you might want to let Steve know. He is an IT guy by training and profession so I suspect he already knows what is out there, as well as any related costs, but it can't hurt to let him know what you might have in mind. Even with the current forum software there are mods that can be used to add new features.
Peter
