How to Make BigCloset Easier to Use?

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I've seen some complaints that BC is hard to use and not user friendly. I'd like some comments and discussion on this. Are there obvious improvements you think could be made? - Thanks, Erin

Clutter

erin's picture

The only complaint I've seen with a specific is that BC is cluttered. If you think clutter is the problem, what do you think could be done to reduce the clutter? - Thanks, Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Clutter clean-up

I think it could be cleaned-up some fersure.

Actually, I'd prefer that the latest stories be moved to a separate page, but if you really want to keep them on the main page then:

1. The story titles on the main page could be reduced to a uniform height.

2. The story title should appear only once. The double heading should be eliminated.

3. The synopsis should be a required field.

4. The category keys should be put on a separate page.

5. The author keys should have their own page.

6. The forum keys should have their own page.

7. Leave the recent comments up on the main page (great feature), but make it easy to know which story each comment links to. (I look at the story number as a part of the url at the bottom of my browser while the mouse tracks over the comment link and match it to the story title, but that's a little clumsy.)

Personally, I like the idea of an attractive main page with little clutter and just links to where I want to go. I don't need to immediately see the list of the latest stories. Things that would be nice to see on a cleaned-up main page would be a stats list showing the number of stories, the number of comments, when the latest story was put up, and, of course, the money counter.

And it would help if the stories from BC were migrated to TS. The sooner the better. It doesn't make much sense to me to keep both BC's and TS active. Naturally, I could do my part, too. :)

I think many authors are reluctant to migrate their stories over because they don't want them read as if they were brand new. If the original creation date of an older story is entered when it's uploaded (or migrated) instead of the current date/time, then the story won't be displayed among the latest stories, which seem to follow creation chronological order - but it will appear under the author's link and the categories assigned to it. That's the way I'll migrate Jayti Singh and others - so as not to inflict them on the universe again until they're reeditted. :)

Aardvark

"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

Mahatma Gandhi

Suggestions

erin's picture

Now that's what I call concrete suggestions. :) Myself, I love having the directory (Categories) on the front page. It's one of the things I dislike about the layouts of most of the other sites that you have to go looking for that and frequently step through several page loads. What do others think?

The blog and forum topics are on page one to encourage people to use those features: it ain't working so maybe I should move them.

Uniform heights for the titles in the boxes is not up to me completely, authors can do that themselves. The titles outside the boxes are uniform. I'll think some on this.

Some of the requested features are not easily available but can be done by a little programming (not hacking, I don't want to hack the code because a new version of this software will be available soon and I don't want to have to hack the new version all over again.) The nice thung about Drupal is it's extensibility and flexibility.

Thanks, much,
- Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Clutter configuration

erin's picture

A lot of the items that seemed to contribute to the clutter are now configurable for registered users. Just go to My Account|Edit and mark which blocks you want to appear and unmark the ones you don't. :) Thanks. - Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

I'm going to leave it alone for awhile...

erin's picture

I've done a lot of changes, and I want to see if anyone has any complaints. :)

- Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

One more thing...

erin's picture
The new default input type DOES NOT convert simple returns to HTML paragraph or line break codes. If you are a registered user, you can choose between the new default and the old version of input formats. If you have an author account, you can also choose to use plain text or plain text with line breaks added. Remember also, that registered users, authors and editors can turn off the WYSIWYG editor in their account preferences. Finally, editor accounts have the option of using FULL HTML as an input type. Hope all that was clear. :) - Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.