Wacco Digest is now Mobile Friendly, and ideas about how to make it friendlier

[Barry]

Since it seems as though these smartphone thingies are not going away anytime soon, we've made the Wacco digest Mobile Friendly!

To be more specific, it's "responsive" meaning that it will adapt itself based on the screen screen size you are viewing it on.

So now the text size and links are not teeny tiny on phones!

Unfortunately we are not able to make the links in the Table of Content hot, as Apple no longer supports that technology. Don't know about android (would somebody be kind enough to let me know if it android supports this? I presume it depends on which email client is used.)

We now sense if you are opening your digest on a phone or computer and use that to send you a slightly better formatted for the next day. Currently we only adjust that banners and the header above the business directory listings. But we could also remove the table of contents in your next digest if you opened your last digest on a phone. What do you think of that idea??

I know the digest is rather long. This causes two concerns for viewing on a phone: data consumption and LOTS of scrolling. To address these concerns I'm considering offering a new category level (and thread level) subscription. We'll give you a link to set all categories to this level, or you can select it for specific categories or threads.

This is what I'm thinking for a Digest-Summary format:

1) Full content for Barry's Picks posts and commercial posts from supporting members (typically events).

2) For classifieds (ie Housing, For Sale, etc; not discussion categories), present 1 small (expandable) image wrapped with a few lines of summary text - say 200 characters of plain text. Clicking on either would bring you the full post on the website. The summary text would default to the first part of a post, but it could be entered separately by the poster. A paid option to include the full content of the post would be made available.

3) Discussions would also have a summary image and text. The summary text would again default to the first part of the first post but could be entered separately by the thread starter, and the thread image could also be selected. For each digest that there are replies, the same image and summary text would be displayed and then a list of the members of have replied (and number of replies made by that member). The Moderator (and perhaps the thread starter) would have the ability change the thread summary.

While on one hand this might reduce the visibility of some posts for a particular reader, the hope is that the number of people who would receive (and actually read) the digest would grow. In fact I'm considering restarting the digest with a summary of all categories for users who turned it off but remained registered (and offering a link to turn it back off).

Again this would be an option for all categories, or just the categories you select.

Whaddya think? Any other ideas?