Well after seeing real content in the blogs, zaiga moving content over, the blogs dont look as bad as I first thought.
I need to clean it up a little, some color issues so it matches my custom themes, but again just like Articles, real content makes a difference when veiwing these areas!
That's what I thought too, after checking if split-up pages in the userpage took you to the same discussion-page and comments on the split-up pages all displayed in the same thread of comments.
The blogs allow for a blog for each game, and work just like the current journals do.
Two comments about the blogs.
Without a meaningful way to search the blogs or to list them in some hierarchical fashion, they will ultimately end up being as useless as the current journals are, because you have to scroll through pages and pages of entries before you find the journal you're looking for. The only way I can see around that is if each person posts a link to all of their blogs on their designer page; then at least you can search by designer.
Second comment. I recommend posting a protocol for new users (read: everybody). How do they create a user page? What format should they use? Should their individal game projects be separate wiki pages (like mine currently are)? Should they be follow-on pages to their design page (like Darkehorse's is)? Or should they be blogs? I think making the policy uniform up front will make this aspect of the site as a whole more useful. I suspect option 1 won't be favored because it would create a lot of pages. I don't think option 2 is great because there's no way to separate comments and discussion about individual games; but maybe a combination of 2 and 3 could work.
I still think it would be great to have some sort of simple, searchable database to be able to find out what everyone is working on by designer, title, genre, main mechanics...but that's probably something that would have to come down the road.
Looks great, though. Nice job!
-Jeff
Two comments about the blogs.
Without a meaningful way to search the blogs or to list them in some hierarchical fashion, they will ultimately end up being as useless as the current journals are, because you have to scroll through pages and pages of entries before you find the journal you're looking for. The only way I can see around that is if each person posts a link to all of their blogs on their designer page; then at least you can search by designer.
Jeff,
You can search ANYWHERE on the new site, which is one of the ways it really excels. Go to the search box, type in the search criteria and make sure you choose blog posts or blogs (or entire site for that matter) then click the Go button. The difference in blogs and blog posts are that blogs are a general description of what's being journaled about, and the blog posts are the actual entries into said journal. I was able to use this engine to do a successful search for Gheos, for Zaiga, etc. It's obviously best to use the blogs to search for specific designers, and possibly better to use the blog post search for specifics. Then again, you could just search the entire site and get results that way.
Second comment. I recommend posting a protocol for new users (read: everybody). How do they create a user page? What format should they use? Should their individal game projects be separate wiki pages (like mine currently are)? Should they be follow-on pages to their design page (like Darkehorse's is)? Or should they be blogs? I think making the policy uniform up front will make this aspect of the site as a whole more useful. I suspect option 1 won't be favored because it would create a lot of pages. I don't think option 2 is great because there's no way to separate comments and discussion about individual games; but maybe a combination of 2 and 3 could work.
Good points Jeff. Currently normal users can only create one page, which is their userpage. I think we should clarify. To me, the userpages are more static and less interactive, whereas the blogs are best for posting constant updates and getting feedback. Probably the best would be a mix of the two as you stated; possibly listing the games on the wiki page with links to the blogs for further information.
I still think it would be great to have some sort of simple, searchable database to be able to find out what everyone is working on by designer, title, genre, main mechanics...but that's probably something that would have to come down the road.
Looks great, though. Nice job!
I think this is a good idea, just rather difficult to implement. After having tried the search engine, has your level of need for such a DB changed?
-Jeff
-Darke
You can search ANYWHERE on the new site, which is one of the ways it really excels. Go to the search box, type in the search criteria and make sure you choose blog posts or blogs (or entire site for that matter) then click the Go button.
Good; that will be a big improvement over the current journals. I'd put the search box closer to the top of the column.
The difference in blogs and blog posts are that blogs are a general description of what's being journaled about, and the blog posts are the actual entries into said journal.
That may ultimately be a useful distinction, but it's initially very confusing. At a minimum, this distinction should be spelled out at the intro page, and it should probably be possible to search the blogs and blog posts in the same search. A blog search for Gheos yielded zero hits, which probably would have confused me if you hadn't told me what the difference was. (And incidentally, what about "blog discussions" -- ie, comments that users give about the blogs. Do those live in the forums, or are they part of the blog posts?
Good points Jeff. Currently normal users can only create one page, which is their userpage.
Oh; then at some point I'll have to move and delete the game pages I made and incorporate them into my design page. No biggie.
I think we should clarify. To me, the userpages are more static and less interactive, whereas the blogs are best for posting constant updates and getting feedback. Probably the best would be a mix of the two as you stated; possibly listing the games on the wiki page with links to the blogs for further information.
That sounds good. I'd just point this out specifically in the new user intro. And we should explicitly encourage people to link to their blogs.
I think this is a good idea, just rather difficult to implement. After having tried the search engine, has your level of need for such a DB changed?
Probably for the most part; I can find out "what games is Scurra working on?" or "whatever happened to Gheos?" I still don't think it's going to be quite easy enough to find out "who else is working on a dungeon crawl?" or "who is using an area-majority mechanic?", but the ability to do that level of filtering may not be worth the effort that I assume it would require.
Again, the site is great. Nice job.
-Jeff
When I 'played' with the sie a bit a couple of days ago, to find the best place to put my games up, I learned the folowing:
1] When you split your personal userpage into several pages, all pages take you to the same discussion-thread and all comments from different pages are put in a chronological order, no matter what page you used to comment.
=> This makes the userpage not very interesthing for putting your different games up.
2] You can create different blogs, and choose to allow comments or not.
=> This makes the blogs very interesthing for putting your different games up.
As a test, I then copied two games into a blog. If you put in a short two-sentence description of the game in the initial post, the search can probably do wonders...
I also put a link to the two blog-pages I made from my user-page, which starts with an index of my games.
Just now, I noticed that both blog-pages do not list my userpage as a page that links to them...
After checking, it appearantly only lists posts that reference the blog-pages.
After checking again, it probably only lists posts that are created by the site itself...
Cheese!
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