Cross posted from Crystal's cyberboard at Erin's request.
I'm -not- complaining. But I have some comments about usability and appearance that I've been withholding for way too long.
Before I go there, I think that Erin's choice of platform is inspired. Drupal and its various forks are MAGNIFICENT content management systems, and are far more than blogging platforms.
Second, I have no problem with advertising content. If someone does have, they can use firefox, load adblock plus, and block the elements that they don't like. I think that Erin certainly has the right to pay for the bandwidth for BCTS any way possible, and advertising is a harmless technique.
Third, I understand the goal of interspersing side-bar content with advertising, and see the point of having to scroll down past at least one ad block in order see things like Daily Voting.
If that makes it clear that overall, I'm very pleased with the job done at BCTS, then I can go on to pick a few nits, but that's what they are: nits.
First, even though it would take up more screen acreage, I think that adding "Recent posts to" to the headline "blogs and forums" would be worth the space.
Second, I think that "who's online" should be demoted to the BOTTOM of the right-hand sidebar, since in general, folks coming to read stories don't actually CARE... and those who DO want to hook up with logged in users can scroll down for it.
third: the right-hand sidebar has a tag "Ads" and no ads under it. Move one of the left-hand ad blocks to the right-hand window. This will promote it to further up on the page. Then as I said in (2) slide the logged in users UNDER that ad-block.
Fourth (and the first hard one) I agree with the various other posters that long multi-part serials should be listed in an authors page as a single link.
You certainly have the linked-list for the elements of the story or you could not do the episode links in the right-hand-side-bar when VIEWING the story episodes. I realize that the query to lump them together on the author's page is non-trivial, but it would be worth it, particularly in the case of "ridiculously" long stories like Angharad's
Fifth, when bringing up the search page, a listing of AVAILABLE keywords would be nice rather than having to browse through a series of stories to find likely ones. (I'm bad at guessing.) Of course, since the search is searching the ENTIRE TEXT, that's not possible, but it would be good to point out to people that they're not searching the "meta data" of themes and elements, but rather are searching the TEXT of the stories...
At that point, lacking themes and elements search, a link to the tag-cloud page ON THE SEARCH PAGE would at least provide some theme and element functionality in search.
Sixth, when bringing up the advanced search, the page is unclear about if you are "and" and "or" and "not" searching the ENTIRE TEXT or the keywords, or the title. (It is, saddly the entire text, see 8)
Seven, the themes and elements tag clouds are way cool. But since you allow multi-word themes and elements (Sometimes with, and sometimes without /'s) it's sometimes hard to tell where one tag starts and another ends. I'm not SURE How to fix that, but there you are...
Eight, there's no way to search themes and elements with and/or/not logic. Search searches the entire text, if I want romantic or sweet stories set in school, I can't find them without "rather a lot of work." Don't mis-understand, I _love_ the tag cloud, but there's no way to REFINE your choices.
And that's enough for one night. Appearance comments another day.
BCTS is my favorite tg site, and not JUST because it's always up. (but the choice of resilient well tested open source software to base it on was a GOOD choice.)
Crystal comes in a close second, because of some of the exclusive authors there... But I thik that BCTS could use some tweaking.
Comments
If this is your favourite site
I'd hate to see your whinges about your least favourite. My serial is 'ridiculously long', I could make similar comparisons with your blog, I could also add that many people seem to enjoy my interminable tales, which have probably included more issues that transgendered people encounter than any other similar stories.
I appreciate that you are entitled to your opinions, so am I. If you understood how hard Erin and Bob work on maintaining this site, you might try a little humility in your approaches. You might also consider how many hours I and others give this site in writing for people to read for free. When you pay for things, maybe you can have a bit more say. Until then think before your open that hole under your nose!
Angharad
Angharad
Oh dear, not what I ment at all, -- sorry, misunderstood.
Amgharad,
I didn't mean your serial had TOO MANY EPISODES.. good God, I've read every one of them.
I ment that the INDEX of your writings would be well served by having a "master link" to each of your serials, so that people could search further back in the history of your stories without having to page through over forty pages of index.
I was commenting on the organization of the index, not the length of your stories, although I can see how you might have misunderstood, and I am sorry for the poor exposition of my position.
Please accept my apologies for my poor word use.
GR, Welcome aboard!
Now that you are a registered reader, click on "My Account". Then select the "Edit" tab (you may have to log out and log back in). Here you will find all manner of things you can do to set the home page more to your liking. Different Themes (I think they are called - page layouts), turn things on and off, set a sig line for your posts, all sorts of things. A lot of the things on your list can be altered from here.
Re. #5: I totally agree that a list much like what FM has, with click boxes for them, would be nice. BTW, you will find the number of 'roll-your-own' tags is growing, and I'm not really sure that those would be accommodated in this idea. Might be back to plain ol' searches for that.
Re. #7: I found the tag clouds to be incredibly confusing the first time I tried to look at them. I was trying to get a list of keywords and themes to save in a file so I would have them for my personal reference, but quickly gave up. It was only by accident that I stumbled across the explanation for them that Erin posted, but I don't personally find them useful.
My only real "gripe", and I hesitate to use such a strong term, is the Quick Links box at the top. It has grown larger and larger, especially as we are getting more and more postings. Edeyn has had a lot on her plate lately and has found keeping it up to date difficult. It was a lovely idea, but I believe it has passed the point of usefulness. Perhaps if we could turn it off via the Accounts page? Then each one could decide for him or herself.
Many of the comments voiced over on the Cyberboard are from the people who are what somebody termed "drive-by readers", people who stop in but don't register or sign in. Much of the "problems" they are unhappy about can be controlled by registering, signing in, and changing the settings on the Accounts page.
And that is the way I like it. My idea of what I want to see is different from yours, or Erin's, or John in W.land's. Erin has given us the tools to control that, all she asks in return is that we log in. A small price to pay for having a site like this, IMHO. I admit I'm a bit cranky in my old age, but I don't insist that everybody look at the same stuff the same way I want to. I have the means to control my page's looks, and that's enough for me. More flexibility is great, less flexibility sucks.
That's my two cents,
Karen J. Taylor
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
I agree, Karen
The ability to to configure your setup through the My Account/Edit tab is very useful. Good suggestion about making Shortcuts box configurable too!
Pleione
Making Shortcuts configurable
That's on the list. :) I have to load and test a module to make a post into a block so it can have a switch in the account screen.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Auto-shortcuts
Is an auto-shortcuts module possible? left trimmed titles wouldn't be QUITE as nice, but it would work... and a single regex could pull a number off the right side....
Sure
Is it going to happen? Probably not, but with some cleverness, I may achieve the same effect. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
logged in controls
Oh sure, one of the wonders of Drupal is that you can offer multiple themes to users, unlike Wordpress where you're stuck with one.
But _most_ users here are "drive by" and it's to those users I was thinking, not of logged in and configured users.
Particularly, since the site is at least partially advertising supported, to maximize the exposure of the ads to the drive-by users.
I'm not afraid to turn the ads off. I've sent multiple contributions to Erin, and will continue to do so. But first-glance usability is a reasonable subject for discussion. Note the first three paragraphs of my post, I think they've done a MAGNIFICENT job here.
TANSTAAFL
Think of it kinda like a Spells'r'Us story. You get what you wish for, but not quite the way you wanted. And unlike the stories, you don't get to be a real girl at the same time. Wizard is never around when you need him. :-(
KJT
Surely you know what TANSTAAFL means? :-)
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
TANSTAAFL
For those who don't know, it stands for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch".
----------------------------
May the Stars light your path.
Joy
No free lunch
Just say it then! Obscure acronyms are useless.
Mr. Ram
Common enough
It's a common enough acronym that I've known it for about 25 years or so. Not denigrating here, just saying.
;-) Have a good night.
----------------------------
May the Stars light your path.
Joy
Obscure?
Maybe if you have lived in a hole for the last, oh, say, 30 years or so. I knew it long before I read Heinlein's book. It was in regular usage when I was in college. Useless? Certainly fills more of a need than shorter acronyms that are commonly used online.
But I found a long time ago you can not go wrong underestimating people. That's why all the major news services have regular columns devoted to topics such as Weird News, Oddly Enough News, Dumb Criminals, etc. Plenty of material to fill them each week with very little overlap of stories.
KJT
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
I have a plan, so keep your hat on
Bob and I are trying to deal with this fershlugginer intermittent runaway, but as we get that under control, there are going to be some more changes. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Hats & Shirts
Big Closet hats & shirts will be available from vendors in the lobby after the show.
KJT
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
Big Closet Hats!
Just wondering what the Big Closet hats would look like?
:)
Pleione
Hat Design
The hats are baseball caps with the BC logo on them. Another version also has a small cartoon of a woman looking into an enormous closet with feet showing under every piece of clothing on a hanger. :) That's what's on the T-shirt with the added slogan, "Nobody complains about having a BigCloset." On the back of the shirt is another cartoon of the same woman, peeking out of the closet door. :)
These will be available as soon as I get my bailout check from the gummint. :)
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Vendor's name
Erin, I contracted with some old fart from SRU, LLC for the products. Said he could have them (snap!) just like that.
KJT
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
Some replies
Thanks for moving this over. I felt we were taking up too much of storysites cyberboard with picking BC's nits. :)
I'll take your eight points in order, by nuber.
1. You say you think it would be worth it to spend two lines on the heading of B&F. I don't think so. No other sub column has a two line header; there would have to be a big justification.
2. I'll consider this. The main reason it's where it is, is that I can quickly see with one click if Bob is online. :)
3. Google suspended their ads for a while because the site was crashed when they tried to crawl it. Nonsensical, I know. I have to leave the ads up, even though empty. I put them where they are for a reason that is more complex than I really want to explain. :)
4. This is a heck of a lot harder than it looks and every way I've figured out to do it would mean hacking the Drupal code or writing my own module. I resist doing both for reasons of maintainability of the site. Never fear, though, I'll work out a way to do it eventually. :)
5. There is a list of available keywords in the advanced search. The other mods would require hacking the theme which I may do. An alternative may involve some new search modules I want to test.
6. See five.
7. There is no fix. Someday, I may find a module that makes a better tag cloud but this one is so simple and quick, it's hard to see anyone going to the trouble to try to improve it.
8. See five.
Thanks for the list!
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
thanks
That's why I called them nits.
With the exception of 4 they're all TINY nits...
Four, I knew was non-trivial, but I hoped for an answer. As you said, far better to have code that WORKS than code which _tried_ to work. :-)
Re google, don't you hate that? I've encountered it before. How frustrating.
Re Bob being on-line, you might add an "is Bob On Line" module to your custom layout. :-) 'cause I presume you're ALWAYS logged in. :-)
Well, nearly always :)
By 2:30 am Pacific, the nightly auto-maintenance is done and I go to bed. That's 5:30 am for Bob and he's seldom up before 7:00, so there's usually a few hours when neither of us is on. Oddly, Sephrena and Edeyn are extreme night owls and one or more of my UK editors will also keep an eye on things and I sometimes get a call at 5 in the morning. :)
Lately, I've been sick and my hours are less predictable.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Erin, you're totally on track
While I agree with a couple of things Guest Reader said, the most important thing to remember is 'If it ain't broke, don't (try) to fix it (with unvalidated software).
BCTS has been subject to more than enough various attacks as it is.
If that bloated software company based in Redmond, WA can get in trouble with their Operating System and Browser, and even the patches that were supposed to fix some of those problems despite the money and people they have to throw at testing it, I fully understand your reluctance to hack the Drupal code.
Programmers, even the best ones, can easily overlook something and let the hackers in, or crash a program if an unanticipated situation arises. I learned BASIC programming in the pre-IBM PC days by debugging programs I paid good money for, in most cases, because it was too easy to crash them if I entered any keystrokes the original writer didn't want used, but had not trapped for. There were no menus, and it was up to the user to figure out what was and was not, allowed by trial and error, and error usually meant restarting the program while trying to remember, “What did I do that might have caused this?â€
Please do not try to fix things without it having been thoroughly tested, I can live with most of the 'deficiencies' Guest reader pointed at. I'd rather see the uptime GR mentioned stay high, than find someone somehow managed to not only shut the site down, but do massive damage to it. You and Bob do such a GREAT job of running the site that I would not wish on you the work required to try and rebuild it.
Besides, you aren’t getting paid to do that, so you shouldn’t have to spend a lot of your time trying to create special code to fix minor ‘problems.
Yes, I wish you did have a search similar to Fictionmania. But I’m glad I don’t have to wade through some of the garbage on that site. I’d rather you spent your time keeping this a relatively clean, friendly site. With the blogs and visible comments, we have a community here that is missing there.
( I would like to see a More___ button on comments such as the blogs have ? )
One of the most difficult things to give away is kindness.
It usually comes back to you.
Holly
One of the most difficult things to give away is kindness.
It usually comes back to you.
Holly
BCTS is GREAT!!!!
Hi Erin and all,
Personally I would much rather see Erin and her associates have a little (And little is all it usually is) R & R than to go to great lengths to try to accommodate each user's requests for improvements to this site. (See the header for this post.)
I'm personally to computer illiterate to be of any assistance and too financially challenged to be of any help that way. Big Closet has been THE PREMIER TG website for a number of years now. Thank you ever so much to Erin, Bob and several others. (as I understand it.) I must second Holly's comment about "If it ain't broke don't F with it."
Thanks again for everything Erin and company.
with love,
Hope
with love,
Hope
Once in a while I bare my soul, more often my soles bear me.
Who's online
One of the nice things about the Who's Online box is the user counts. I find it interesting to see the growth in visitors to BC and see who the site handles higher and higher levels without bogging down. BC is now routinely handling a level of users that used to bring it to it's knees a year or so ago. Each upgrade Erin and Bob make seems to be matched bu an increase in traffic. Yet the downtime due to that is much less than what it was before.
Take a bow, y'all!
KJT
“When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.” - Turkish Proverb
nits & snits
l'd just like to say that this site absolutely works for me - and I'm usually browsing with an HTC smartphone/PDA!
Thanks, Erin & Co. - I really appreciate all the hardwork.
Stillian
('cos I'm too scared to change)