Roadskater.net RSN2.com Update

roadskater's picture
Submitted by roadskater on Thu Oct 26 2006 8:07am
0

OK if I remember I will use this page for news about changes and experiments with the site. I've been quiet again lately because I've been putting in a lot of time in the background, updating the software for security and looking for ways to address some things I didn't like. Here are some things to try or note:

  • News 
    • I've moved the sidebar content so that news from feeds will be nearer to the articles we create.
    • I spent hours (proving my limitations) trying to find solutions to:
      • reduce the number of duplicate entries (some of this is impossible but it's much better)
      • finally eliminate the & codes for quotation marks and other characters.
    • Please remember that you can blog on a news item by clicking on the blue b graphic beside news items.
    • There's a neat news summary at view/news articles or view/news articles/sources.
    • If you like the news blended together, try view/news articles/categories, or go one more menu level to separate by general category.
  • Popular and Quality (Five-Wheel) content
    • Check view/recent popular content for a new tab called "quality content" showing articles sorted by average of votes given by roadskater.net users via the five-wheel tool; a vote five wheels equates to a 100% vote, while four stars equates to 80%, and so on. The quality content screen shows the average vote and the number of replies. I hope I can improve this, but due to limitations of the views code it may be awhile before I can make it how I want it to be. I want to add a "rate some articles" page that will show you content on which you have not voted. Now that I'm using the votes, I hope you guys will go do some voting if you like. It is entirely legal to vote for your own content!
    • The popular and recent items may move in the menus when I work on menus again to streamline them.
  • Color
    • It is obvious I'm sure that I've been playing with color and style, especially in the tag cloud. I wanted to spark it a bit, and make it so that a hover would light it up and a visit would change a link's color. I set some tag power levels to italic in hopes of separating some of the items that run together. I will be working on other ways of separating using color or shading, but these are more complicated and I am still learning.
  • Polls
    • I've changed the way polls display in the sidebar so that you see a random poll instead of the latest one.
    • I'd like ideas for polls, including answer sets, via email or site/feedback.
    • I killed some old polls and may close others soon.
  • Events
    • Please add some events, especially rides you plan to skate and roller derby you plan to attend or skate or ref.
    • For now I've moved events up a bit, included tags by category and recent cities on the lower left.
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Comments

roadskater's picture

Map Pins Broken

Submitted by roadskater on Fri Jun 20 2008 2:54am.
Arrgh. Those who will, please do enter Lat Lon info by typing it in or clicking the map in the Location section. I made some updates that made the pins not appear properly. I think the problem may be the link to grab the data from maps.google.com. Other projects that pay money unfortunately come first, plus entering t2t training ride events to try to help the tour some. The Map of Content was starting to look good! Oh well; it will again. Skateylove, roadskater.
roadskater's picture

Events Work OK Now, Scheduling Off for Now

Submitted by roadskater on Thu Feb 28 2008 12:45pm.
[As I write this the site is a purplish/blue depending on your monitor, 3-column with slightly darker blues on the sidebars like the 2005 Roadskater.net jersey. If the page doesn't still look like this, skip this note, as we're on to a newer version.] If you have recently tried to enter an Event and it failed, I apologize for your wasted time. It seems the Events feature was conflicting with the Scheduling feature (something to do with time zone issues), so things got wacky. Please note that event articles are pretty popular and are good ways to draw in some cyclists who might enjoy our sport along with the beautiful, intelligent, sincere, funloving, skateyloving ones who already know the secrets of the wheel. :o) Anyway, soon I believe I will be doing some major upgrading so the site will likely look and feel different as we go along. I also may make a simple version of the site for signed-in members (the site is busy i know but for reasons of wanting to draw in like-minded people by way of searches, and i hesitate to change the sidebar content too much for fear of dropping in search lists). I plan to drop some features that are not used much and hope the whole place will be spiffier and easier to use. We'll see. Anyway, that's an update, and... Please enter some events! (Oh yes. When entering a time zone, you might type "u" to get to the US/Eastern and other similar time zones. Many of the dropdowns let you type the first letter (but not more) to go through the list. Also, when entering the State in the Location section, you may want to type the "End" key then "Page Up" a few times to get to the top of the states, then type a letter to get to where you like in the list. Much of this will be much better as I upgrade the core and features and start getting some jQuery action going. He said.)
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