Howdy! I wanted to check in and provide everyone with a quick update on some site changes we rolled out this afternoon, based on the feedback we’ve been receiving since the OMAAT Community Forum was released a couple of weeks ago.
Before I get into an overview of the changes, I just wanted to say thanks for all of the robust feedback. You all surfaced some legacy issues that had been unknown pain points for a while, in addition to some new feature flaws and nice-to-haves, and I think we’ve been able to make some meaningful changes to improve quality of life.
Here’s what changed today:
In this post:
Commenting
- Helpful and Yowza buttons: I’ll start with the thing everyone has been most vocal about: Helpful and Yowza buttons are back.
- Most recent comments: You’ll now see the most recent comments in blog posts rather than featured posts.
- Comment readability: Replies are no longer collapsed in the comment panel. You’ll only need to expand individual comments that are more than 3 (normal-ish) sentences long.
- Delete and edit comments: You can now edit or delete your own comments. You lose this ability 15 minutes after comment creation or when someone replies to your comment, whichever comes first.
- Duplicate comments: These should no longer be an issue.
User accounts and logging in
- New account creation: We’ve fixed the issues preventing some users from creating new member accounts. If you’ve had an issue creating an account in the past, the process should be smooth today.
- 14-day logged in window: You should no longer be logged out every time you close a browser session.
- Important: This only works if you check the “Remember Me” option when you log in.
Ads and experience
- Improved site speed: If you’ve grown used to getting an error that your browser couldn’t connect to the server, followed by a manual page refresh, those days should be behind you.
- Lighter ads on mobile: there was a set of unintended experiences happening on mobile, where in some cases, more ads would load than expected. This wasn’t something the team intended to introduce, but you should never load a page without OMAAT content. Thanks to the readers that shared screenshots here – they were extremely helpful for troubleshooting the issue.
- Homepage load more: Pretty minor, but the load more button on the homepage to see additional blog posts now extends beyond two pages.
What’s next?
Community engagement and feature improvements are here to stay. We’re actively taking feedback and incorporating it into what we work on next. There’s a new forum thread specifically for feature requests or bug reports, available here. If you lose track of the link, it’s on the forum homepage in a permanent position.
Here’s what to expect in the coming weeks:
- Ben is hard at work on his video series.
- We’ll be introducing polls into the community feature set shortly.
- Paid membership access to Gold/Platinum/Diamond tiers. It was important for us to provide a “free” way to unlock a more premium site experience through community engagement, but we understand that not everyone wants to engage with OMAAT in the same way. Based on that feedback, we’ll be releasing an option to subscribe to membership tiers in the next week or two.
That’s all for today. If you’ve been dealing with an issue on the site or just have something you’d like to see to improve the community experience, you know where to find me.
There was a time (way back) when comments made on one's post would be sent to email. This was a handy way of not losing track of something interesting enough to make an initial Comment.
I liked that!
Any chance the feature might return?
Jeremy, the website loads significantly faster - than you for your improvements.
Glad to see replies now automatically open!! Have been wanting this for a while :)
For some reason, I sense we shall see diarrhea of the keyboard from one reader.
‘Be the (diarrhea) you want to see in the world,’ Lee.
Sorting comments by oldest hasnt worked on firefox mobile or desktop since the first rollout a couple of weeks ago fyi
@sam any chance you're running an old version? I'm able to sort using 154, but I can look into version breakage if you're running a somewhat recent version.
@jeremy I've been having the same problem on Chrome desktop and Safari mobile since the first rollout as well. If helpful I'm on Chrome 151.0.7922.109.
Also any reason to not have oldest first as the default or let us choose what we want as the default?
(Well done, guys). Interestingly, New Member comments take longer to post/go live than mere Guests, since... "Comments from new and unregistered users require moderator review, though should be published shortly."
Well done, Jeremy (and Howie) and Ben!
(Fine, I 'registered.' And, to whoever took the official "1990" before me, touché, sir.)
Excellent work and all, but inquiring minds want to know - is a Yowza the singular of a Yowzers?
Honestly, I registered, just so I could 'Yowzers!' your comment.
LOL - welcome to the underscore. It's your playful, elongated variant!
(Peter_, just sayin', unless there's a limit to how many we can give... there's gonna be an Oprah-level amount of 'Yowzers!' and 'Helpful' dished out by me on here. 'You get a Yowzers! You get a Yowzers! Everybody gets a Yowzers!')
Great question, and I was concerned I was making up words there for a second. I'm just using the classic version, according to Merriam Webster. (I.E. I am older than Ben, and his Yowzers).
"They mean essentially the same thing, with "yowzers" functioning as a slightly more playful, elongated variant of the classic yowza."
I mean, I feel like if we're going to go back to Ben Bernie you'd go with Yowsa/Yowza? (Not saying you are that old...) Or there's the 1977 song Dance, Dance, Dance by Chic which is subtitled Yowzah, Yowzah, Yowzah.
I suppose the phrase has come a long way from the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Sydney Pollack starring Jane Fonda, where Gig Young took home the Oscar for Best Supporting...
I mean, I feel like if we're going to go back to Ben Bernie you'd go with Yowsa/Yowza? (Not saying you are that old...) Or there's the 1977 song Dance, Dance, Dance by Chic which is subtitled Yowzah, Yowzah, Yowzah.
I suppose the phrase has come a long way from the 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? by Sydney Pollack starring Jane Fonda, where Gig Young took home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and used the Yowzah, Yowzah, Yowzah catchphrase in the film.
Anyway, thank goodness in these modern times we've gone with the playful, elongated variant! Then again, I got taken to task earlier today on these pages for using the word 'thrice', so...
Interestingly, I just learned that you can 'Yowzers!'-yourself, but you cannot 'Helpful'-yourself. I don't bring this up for the sake of autoeroticism *wink*, but rather that you might wanna disable that for the sake of 'gaming' your gift card sweepstakes...
Well, you found my hidden points hack for this month....Guess I have to close that loophole now that you've told the internet.
Gosh, you're a member for all of ten seconds @1990_ and you're already shutting down points earning loopholes. Bah!
"Did I do that??" LOL.
Jeremy, what is our official allotment/rations of Helpful/Yowzers! and the relevant reset time?
Yes. One Yowza; multiple Yowzers.
Best news and updates in YEARS. The only real feature I didn't see anything about is the search function (ordering the results chronologically at the very least), but these are terrific improvements for now!
Ben and I were just chatting about search last week. It's on my to-do list!
@jeremyonemileatatime-com can't wait.Â
By the way, another problem: I can't "thumb up" the comments on this board.
@ak_22 You sure about that? (Just fixed; you should be able to thumb up/down in the forum now.) Thanks!
@jeremyonemileatatime-com just tried doing it for your comment, and it didn't work 😢
@ak_22 You may just need to clear your cache since the change just went out. Our site cache is pretty aggressive.
not able to either, have cleared cache
Are you *the* JonNYC?
(Like, the aviation watchdog, previously with 'Eat Up Martha' profile pic on X?)
This is great news, thank you, Jeremy!
And an early congratulations to you, Willy, on your $100 gift card (for most Helpfuls); meanwhile, Tim is likely getting his own (for all those hot-takes/Yowzers!)
Sounds like great and much needed improvements. It's been frustrating for me for awhile now to leave comment or to "like" a post.
I look forward to the new and improved !
Sorting of comments (for example by "Most Helpful") isn't working.
@ak_22 "Most helpful" sorting will only work in posts where comments have likes, so it won't do anything in this thread since it has 0 comments with hearts (at the time of my posting), but it works throughout the site. Toggling between oldest/most recent also reorders the comments. If you're seeing different behavior, feel free to drop me a note.
@jeremyonemileatatime-com - from the Community tab, if you click "Reader Stories," it takes you to the form. Wouldn't it make more sense to link to the stories instead of a submission form? Perhaps embed the submission form in a link on the actual Reader Stories page?
Great shout. That's a better flow, and I've made the adjustment.
"Remember me" should be checked by default, like most sites these days. Nobody access sites on public computers in 2026. I'd also say the logged in duration should be longer than 14 days, it's not exactly a banking website :)
That's generally bad practice. You shouldn't have to opt-out to anything that otherwise would automatically log you in (semi-)permanently
I agree with you from a personal preference standpoint, but from a best-practice standpoint, @betterbub is spot on. The 14-day threshold is the WordPress default. Seems like increasing it could be a nice feature to add for those with higher levels of status. Perhaps?
One More Ad Atta Time
Popover ads that take over the screen and have to be manually dismissed when you scroll down a page are absolutely insane, and I'm probably going to stop reading if they continue
Very nice!
I haven't been able to sort comments by oldest via Firefox for a few weeks fyi