There are also some other nifty things you can do to improve your time on the site. When you have some free time, click on the person icon at the top right-hand corner of the page and choose "Settings." The new page will show your preferences. Some of the main ones are:
"Automatically jump to the first unread post in threads?" Answering "yes" will eliminate the need to scroll through all of the posts you've already seen in a thread.
"Disable ads on the site?" This is an option open only to people who have made a certain number of contributions to the database. I think it's 200, but the ads on this site actually aren't as irritating as most. They should all be related to gardening, and if you ever see an ad that jumps around, makes noise, or exhibits other annoying traits, you can ask Dave to remove it from the site.
"Show forum smilies and emoticons?" Emojis actually make some people seasick, and others might be annoyed by them for other reasons. You can turn them off on this site. You can also turn off avatars and signatures if they bother you.
"Add a watermark to uploaded photos?" If you're worried about people stealing your online photographs, you can choose from a variety of watermarks.
"Allow your forum photos to be associated with plants in the database?" Admins and other members periodically go through the threads and look for photos that should be added to the database. If you don't want your photos to be imported to the database, you can choose not to have this done.
"Show how many items per page?" This one allows you to choose any number between 20 and 500. It's particularly useful for ctrl+f searches because setting it at 500 minimizes the number of pages that have to be searched.
There are others that may or may not be important to you. If you're not sure of the meaning of any of the preferences, please don't hesitate to ask questions.
