[Imc] Tech Issues On The Website

[Mike Lehman]

The Tech group will be discussing the design of the website at an
upcoming meeting (Wed, July 18, 7pm, I think it was.) I've been putting
together a list of stuff I'd like to see improved, fully realizing that
some things that may seem very minor may actually be difficult to
acheive easily.

With that caveat about leaving it up to those who know about such arcane
arts to make final decisions about what changes will be realistically
possible, I submit this list. I will be in Colorado at the time of the
upcoming meeting, so putting this out on email is a good way to gather
info for the meeting, since there may be others who can't attend the
meeting either. If you'd like to reply on the list to my email, giving
your own concerns, that would be a good way to contribute to the
discussion in your absence.
Mike Lehman

The List

In no particular order, except for #1 & #2, in terms of the aggravation
that they cause.

Problem #1
Many times we have double-posts of materials because of the wording of
this page  whose wording is below. It is the page you get after entering
your story when publishing. 


"Prairie Greens To March In 4th of July Parade has been added to the
webcast. Thanks for contributing! 

go back to the front page (press reload after you get to the front page
to see your new story - please don't press reload before then, or we'll
get two copies of your story! Your story may take a minute or two to
appear while files are transferred behind the scenes) 

add another story" 


The wording would have you believe that you will see your story appear
on the Newswire. The problem is that people look at the Newswire that is
on the mainpage and don’t see there story there, even after hitting
Reload, and then repost it.

At the bottom of my Netscape browser (I assume MS IE Explorer is
similar) it indicates that the file is still uploading and, if I wait
until it says Done, my story always appears right away on the mainpage
Newswire, often even without hitting reload (although occasionally it
still requires Reload, but at least that works this way.)

If a warning about waiting for your story to fully load and the Done
indication to appear was used in retooling the language of the above
page, I think that there would not actually be any software changes
made. It would simply conform the information to the way the page really
works and probably lead to far fewer double posts.

Problem #2

Another publishing problem seems to be the summary entry. It often looks
like you haven’t exceeded the stated six line maximum, but many times
when the whole story is finally entered and the publish button pushed,
an error message comes up that tells you the summary is too long comes
up. It indicates to go back and try again by saying "Ooppps" but when
you do, your story has completely disappeared. If you copied into it
from another file, this is moderately annoying to reenter everything,
but if you wrote the story in the form itself, you’ve lost everything
(AFAIK) and you’re really pissed off.

Problem #3

There is a need for an very obvious place, where people can’t miss it,
for a pitch for donations and memberships. Maybe we could make it
blink????
No, that would be too annoying, but something more that dares to be bold
is needed.

Problem #4

The Newswire on the right side of the mainpage could be longer and
stories would get more frontpage exposure that way.

Problem #5

Events as a title is a little bit of  limited and dry for something that
takes you to a calendar of our community happenings. Maybe "Community
Calendar" would better describe its function and purpose and be a more
inviting to participation sort of way to title it. Any other suggestions
that addresses this issue is fine by me.

Problem #6
If a long URL is part of the body of a story, the URL will not be
wrapped as a long line, leading to excessive page width as it expands
the page width to fit the URL length. There have been a few stories that
were virtually unreadable, since you’d lose track of which line you were
on as you scrolled to follow the thing off the page to the right...

Problem #7

There is some sort of glitch that apparently forces the separate
uploading of an image and a main story. I’ve encountered this whenever I
try to do this, along with a message that says there seems to be some
sort of bug in the software. Yet other people seem to have no trouble
doing it, as the results are plainly visible, image and long story
together, and I doubt that Tech has been fixing them all before I see
them. Of course, this could just be something about computers I haven’t
figured out and no one else may have a problem.

Problem #8

I’ve run into problems updating stories via the Comment section. If
there is a Comment too long, it refuses to take the Comment, so you have
to post it as a separate story. Sometimes that’s OK, but other times it
would be more appropriate for things to remain as a comment.