Redesign Changes
Ok, so we're a ways into the redesign, and some things are becoming apparent:
- the news is buried too far down in the page
- Forums aren't that active
- Blogs have potential for spamming if left open to everyone.
I'm thinking of moving the news up higher so it will be an additional column next to reviews. It might make it too crowded, but we'll see.
Forums aren't doing any harm at the moment, but I wonder if they could be promoted better.
Blogs will likely change to be only for select members. Maybe we will have a form to ask permission or something.
Also I need to bring twitter back to the home page somehow...
Any thoughts are welcome...
Josh
That's too bad. Honestly, I
That's too bad. Honestly, I think having the blogs open to anyone was/is one of the best parts of the redesign, and it's definitely getting a lot of use. Obviously, I'm not the one that has to filter it all out, but I had the impression there's a lot more comment spam than blog spam. I was actually thinking the other day that it would probably solve a lot of problems if new user accounts had to be verified by a mod. Obviously that would be (a) a huge workload, (b) spammers would still slip through and (c) this isn't 1999 does any website actually do that anymore, but it would weed out users like pretty_good_handbags or whatever.
Well, one of the issues with
Well, one of the issues with everyone having blogs is that it opens you up to a whole realm of liability. What if someone posts porn? What if content is stolen from other sites? I think a simple form requesting the ability to blog may deter those who may abuse the system. Or maybe some kind of post threshold before you can blog. It's something we're actively working on. So far, I think the blog posts have been great, I just need a way to have a bit more security surrounding them.
Stuff below.
- Perhaps a news ticker on top of the page underneath the tabs for specific sections?
- The problem I see with the forums is that it's not exactly clear that they exist. Maybe a dedicated tab to the forums up top? (Where there's listings for Reviews, News, Articles and the such)
- Honestly, the form/permissions thing would probably be the best bet.