>>May I suggest starting a new thread on all the forums with your comment about the "todays posts" feature? I myself visit this site several times a day and somehow overlooked that option. I am also on dial up and my computer is not very fast in general so I for one am going to give your suggestion a shot. Sometimes people miss things that are right in front of them due to being set in a routine, please give my suggestion a try. It may make some people want to stick around. Thanks Tom Stevens
Ok,
per Nokturnel Tom's suggestion. 
Using the "Today's Posts" feature to search the forums for new posts. I hope this makes sense as I kind of tend to ramble.
Occasionally I like to do this, but in general I am like why go to each forum page and scan the posts manually (time consuming) trying to see which threads have new posts when it can be done in one easy step.
When I want to be fast - it's pretty easy to search a large number of forums all at one time - by using the "Today's Posts" link. This link is found on all forums as well as the main KS forum page.
You can search for all new posts made since the last time (or 2nd to last time) you logged into the forum system --or you can opt to search for all new posts made since the "start" of the current day according to a 24 hour clock --or lastly you can opt to go back to a time of your own choosing.
You can search an entire 'catagory' at one time (like all the snake or all the turtle forums), by using the upper search box that shows only the 'catagories' that all forums are organized under.
You can also opt to search up to 5 individual forums/subforums by using the lower search box and picking out those specific forums you want to search for from the drop down list.
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So to not confuse people, a 'parent forum' is a term that implies any main forum that happens to have subforums. In the drop down list of the lower search box you can tell what is what by the following:
'catagories' are shown like: ** catagory name ** (don't select these in the lower box - if you want to search an entire catagory use the upper search box)
Main forums / Parent forums have a single dash in front of them
Subforums are listed below their parent forums and have a longer/extended dash line (compared to the parent forum)
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So let us assume you are into snakes and didn't want to search all of the snake forums but did want to search just the general kingsnake forum and its subforums. You would only need to scroll down through the list and select the 'kingsnakes' forum in the search box. The results page will pop up showing you the kingsnake parent forum and its subforums and based on the time frame you selected a list of new threads made to each of those forums (or any already existing threads that had new replies made) made since that time.
Now, if you didn't want to search all of the general kingsnake forums, but rather only wanted to search for a couple of specific subforums within that parent forum, then you would select those subforums individually from the list (up to 5 of them) rather than the parent forum itself and the results for those you picked should show up.
From your results page, you only need to click on a thread you want to read, it opens up a 2nd window showing you that first post in the thread. If your user preferences are already set to 'show all replies' when you are logged into the system, then you just scroll down to the bottom to see the thread structure of that entire thread and hop around the thread as you like looking at the new posts you want to read.
Now, when you are done reading that thread, you can close that 2nd window with the post in it down and go back to the search result page and pick out your next thread that you want to read....or you can do like me: I usually leave that post window up as when I go back to the search result page and click the next thread it will load into that already open 2nd window... that way I don't have to keep getting a new 2nd window popping open.
Once you get used to how it works, you can basically fly through the forums pretty quick reading wise. Posting responses to any new posts you read is totally dependent on individual users and how long they tend to spend doing that.
Of course there are times when just the internet traffic itself or bad phone connections can slow the process down, but it still works decently if a little sluggish. It is not too often even on dial up that I get bogged down with very slow loading pages and when it does it typically means there is an internet hub in my area/region that's either down or just jammed up with traffic somewhere (it's not necessiarily my computer or the kingsnake site itself, but something happening between the two along the route). Occasionally when a new virus or worm is spreading itself around enmass it can slow general internet traffic down considerably regardless if you are on dial up, cable, etc.
Sidenote:
Something I have noticed is there seems to be a small glitch occuring when searching by individual forums and you select up to your 5 choices. I noticed that sometimes the system gets a brain freeze and may not always recognize that you selected some of your individual forum choices and could forget to show you certain forums or subforums. This glitch may be because the system for some odd reason is occasionally counting some subforums as part of the overall 5 choices even if all you selected were say 3 parent forums and nothing else. If searching a parent forum that you know has a lot of subforums in it, it may be better to run that search separate from say doing a search that was 5 forums that don't have any subforums. Example: If you searched the general kingsnake forum and the gray banded kingsnake forum (which theoretically should show you results for all 15 forums between the two parents), you may not always get the grayband forum and its subs show up in the results page below the kingsnake and its subs... searching each parent forum separately tends to work around it. Hopefully the techs can find what's causing that glitch and fix it.
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PHWyvern
