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As per the news article on the front, I’m planning to totally restructure this website – effectively rebuilding it completely from scratch.
To assist in this, I’d be very interested to get feedback on what, in your opinion, works well about the current site and what you would like to see changed. (As an example, my own opinion is that the forums have been very successful as have the occasional features and the bibliography while the Instant Messaging has remained almost completely unused).
In addition, objective comment on the content would also be very welcome. Are there subjects that you would like to see included that currently aren’t – or are there items that you would like to see dropped?
Please reply to this topic with your views. All feedback very much appreciated and my skin is thick so no offence will be taken by any of it!
I’d quite like to see a separate section for articles, distinct from the announcements on the front page and distinct from forum posts. New additions can still be highlighted on the front page of course, but it would be nice to easily find certain content long after it was posted. For example, Simon’s article about Lazarus must have been posted on the front page about the time the site went live, but no-one is likely to see it now as it has dropped off the bottom. Similarly, if someone posts an article in the forums, then with the passage of time it will just get buried. Unless you already knew about them, you wouldn’t even know to search for them, whereas a separate ‘Articles’ section could be easily browsed by any newcomer or old-timer. Maybe reviews could go in there as well. Articles could also have a link to a forum thread where any discussions on that article could be gathered; at the moment you can post a comment on an article, but it’s not the best way to conduct a discussion and the forums are better for that anyway.
I’ll continue to give the topic some thought while I’m away at the Faery Ball in Penzance!
Michael
Update: due to the usual busyness getting in the way of proper work (i.e. the redesign of this site
), I’m about 3 months behind where I’d like to be.The good news, though, is that things are nearing completion and the “new look” and re-structure are imminent (we’re talking weeks now, not months!). All the key architectural and design decisions have been made, most are in place and I now just need to shift the old content into the new structure. Some of this is easy and relatively automated (e.g. the forums) and some will be incredibly manual and time consuming (e.g. the News items).
Just keep the faith for a little longer and you will see some real life and energy re-injected into the site.
All the best,
Simon
Well, that was interesting! After the redesign of the site, activity almost stopped completely. I put this down to three things:
(1) Lack of effort from me
(2) The new forum app which just wasn’t nearly as good as the old one
(3) The rise of the social networkIn an effort to combat these items I am currently doing some more development on the site. At present a new forum application has been installed and all the old information migrated. Also you can now log in with your Facebook credentials. Hopefully this will make everything more ergonomic.
Inevitably there will be some oddities and disruption as I make the changes. Please let me know if you hit any issues or annoyances.
Thanks,
SimonHappy New Year!
The forums do look much better. I’m trying them out right now!
The Questing Books section is also looking pretty good. The only problem with it is that the search function doesn’t seem to be working too well – I tried searching on ‘jack gale’, ‘gale’ and ‘Gale’ in the Questing category and it still didn’t find his book, which you can see in the straightforward catalog view. But that’s maybe not so important unless the volume of books starts ramping up. I might even put some info in the review sections – chapter headings and that sort of info.
Cheers,
Michael
Just trying something…I changed my name (not my username) to Michael I – is this what displays on my new posts now?
Edit – apparantly not! Feel free to delete this post if you like Simon.
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