Biopowered - vegetable oil and biodiesel forum
General => Wiki and forum discussion => Topic started by: Rotary-Motion on December 11, 2010, 09:45:38 AM
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Cause for concern re: site growth and ease of use for newbies and editors
too many links spread out all over the place
need to simplify back to basics me thinks... before it gets to intense over time to sort it all out.
http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/1082/89573256.jpg (http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/1082/89573256.jpg)
(http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/1082/89573256.jpg)
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Paul, I tend to agree, but I've looked at it so much I've got a handle on how it's laid out, but for newcomers, yes I think it probably is confusing.
It's not a "normal" website as such and I think we may have to pay a price for having a format anybody can access. However we may be able to simplify it by having the automatically generated contents in the body of the main page and doing away with sub-categories. I think we need an instant "This site is about ..." graphic at the top of the main page, but still can't come up with any thing suitable. Tony seems to have a good idea how the categories work, maybe he can advise if this is possible.
I think in a way it's good that the site is evolving slowly and carefully. If we were blitzed with contributions it would be difficult to keep up and I think quality would suffer. What we are doing seems to be working it just needs polishing around the edges and posts like this help immensely, the one great thing about the wiki format is that it's a collection of peoples knowledge, thoughts and opinions.
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I think we need an instant "This site is about ..." graphic at the top of the main page, but still can't come up with any thing suitable. Tony seems to have a good idea how the categories work, maybe he can advise if this is possible.
i hear ya there,
and yes a sort of home page as soon as you drop in...?
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It's great to see this coming together, keep the ideas and suggestions coming, the effort you good folks are putting in to get this right is awesome. I've got a bit on at the mo so cannot be here as much as I would like but everytime I'm checking in it's getting better.
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Maybe having sub-categories is too deep/confusing and we need to flatten it a bit.
There's no reason why we can't have the Biodiesel Processors category as one on it's own rather than a sub-category of biodiesel, or, simpler still, not have a processors category and just bundle it all under "Biodiesel". This would remove some of the complexity.
I don't know about auto-generated front page listing, but I find it hard to believe it's impossible. May just require some reading up. The template system is immensely powerful and there are all manner of extensions available so I'm pretty sure we can come up with something given some time and effort.
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Agree to a flatter structure, anything to make life simple in the long run!
Can we leave that to you Tony?
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Yep no probs
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nice one
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Do you think it's a little more understandable the way it is now, or do you think there is room for improvement?
I've not had much luck finding some way to automate displaying category contents on a page as of yet though.
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Just thinking around "processors" for example, where we will have several designs. Would it be better to call the pages "Processor - GL" and "Processor - two drum" That way they group alphabetically.