I have at long last finished (99%) my revision to my WIST ("Wish I'd Said That!") quotations database/site -- at least to the point where I can invite visitors to my blog to an "open beta" to thrash out any issues. I need your help in this.
Basically I've gone from long text listings of the quotes included into simple blog entries, to having all the quotes in their own MT entries with authors as the categories (which simple concept turned out to be a lot more difficult to do than planned). That's added big complexities to the whole setup (though for good goals), and I need your assistance to confirm I've gotten everything as it should be.
There are still a few things I need to do, but they can be done in parallel with the beta. I welcome any feedback as to (in this priority):
The emphasis is on the actual site/structure issues (vs. content).
Feel free to note anything you run across here, or at appropriate comment opportunities over there, I'll be monitoring both locations.
When all seems ready, I'll do a conversion over to the official wist.info site, which should be fairly painless. There are also a couple of things I anticipate doing at "go live" (including some of the quotation site webring bits, adding some Feedburner stuff).
Appreciate the help
Filed under :: WIST
Sometimes take forever to go through the names. I know this maybe difficult to code, as I have delved into coding from time to time, but you may want to consider a system where after you click on a letter such as "B". A listing at the top of the page will have something like, "Ba", "Be", "Bi", "Bo", etc...
Right now it might be too early to do, but as your database grows it might be worthwhile. Or it might be easier to implement now than later, before it grows to a level where any other management would become too time consuming.
Also are you considering having a system where users can contribute quotes? I can understand the downside to doing this, with reliability being a factor, but you could implement a system where users log in and submit entries to a separate page. Then you or other users can check out the submitted quotes for reliability and approve them. And still there are other ways...
Just some thoughts, but I really like the idea of the site and the layout itself. Very easy to use and navigate. And I am sure it speeds up your maintenance of the quotes to have them in a database.
Read the first sentence above, "Sometimes it can take..."
I may create an "open post" for quote contributions (via comments). I'd need to think of how I'd manage it (do I delete things off after I've evaluated them?). I was assuming, though, that folks would ned up commenting at their favorite authors, or at other, similar quotes, mentioning other ones they've found interesting (I do get e-mail on the subject on a semi-regular basis). I'll consider it.
Can you give a more specific example of "“Sometimes it can take forever to go through the names"? The initial letter pages are actually (for an annoying reason) static, so they seem to load pretty fast for me.
Btw, I could do the "Ba-Bd, Be-Bh" thang. It would be annoying to do (reassigning primary categories for multiple subcategories), but I could break things out that way (selectively, perhaps, on longer letters). Not seeing the need for yet, though.
While I expect the collection to grow over time, the growth should be gradual. No plans for massive updates. :-)
And, my apologies -- I didn't offer up my hearty thanks for actually going out and looking at the beast. So ... thanks.
What I meant was, say for instance I couldn't remember the author of a quote. I knew he name was something "B", or at least that was my guess. I click on "B" to see all the B's and scroll forever down the long list of names.
I was just thinking it might be a convenience, to have at the top, some intervals people can click on to narrow down what they see. Or to take them to a section that bypasses names you know you don't need.
For instance, say I was looking for an author name of "Boris", but I didn't actually remember his name. I only knew "Bo". The problem is you have to click on "B" and then scroll down through everything. This activity is time consuming.
But could be sped up by giving the user options to click on like "Ba", "Be", "Bi", etc. When they click on one of them, 1 of 2 things could occur: 1)user is sent down to the page starting with the letters he clicked on (you click on "Bo" you get sent down to where the "Bo"s start) 2)user's results are filtered only showing results starting with "Bo" or alphabetically higher, so from "Bo" to the last "B" name.
No probs. I think rather than doing it by category you could do it by using a query. That way you wouldn't have to mess with your meta data.
Hrm. Writing MySQL queries and integrating the results into MT is beyond my present skill set. I see what you're driving at, and it would be pretty spiffy, but I don't have the technical props for it.
As I indicate in a couple of places in the right-hand side bar, searches of authors can be done on the All Authors page -- and there you can just use the browser's search (Ctrl-F) to zero in on it. That also gets you past looking up stuff other than the Last name. E.g., "Boris" -- search on that, keep tabbing through to find that Boris you're looking for (which then also handles, to the extent that I have them spelled out, pseudonyms).
It's not quite as elegant as a dynamic search box where the records auto-narrow as you type in more info ... but it works (in theory) and I can support it. :-)
For whatever reason I didn't even think about using the browser search function which would be a breeze (especially with Mozilla).
It’s not quite as elegant as a dynamic search box where the records auto-narrow as you type in more info … but it works (in theory) and I can support it.At the end of the day that is certainly what matters.
Then clearly I need to make that text bigger. :-)
So I am good for something... making the obvious more obvious :)
"The only problem with making something foolproof is that nature can always come up with bigger fools."
Hmmm ... that didn't quite come out right. :-)
No, that particular interface bit hasn't been pleasing to me, and that it isn't clear enough for the first person to spot it tells me I need to make it more prominent.