TTAC Housekeeping
As I mentioned in a previous post, Justin and I had a sit down with the boffins who serve the server and manipulate WordPress (WP) on our mutual behalf. While we discussed all sorts of pie-in-the-sky stuff, we eventually brought it down to a “here’s what we can afford to do” shortlist. There are only two large alterations afoot. First, we will have photo galleries, dammit. WP can create a thumbnail gallery, but it lacks convenience (browser back button? no way!). The cumbersomosity of the WP system would aggravate the B&B and kill rather than encourage page views (yum!). So the guys are building a system that’s similar to, say, Autoblog’s. The other, even more significant change: we’re going to run ALL items in the center column. In other words, there will be 15 (up from 10) posts in the center stack in chronological order, regardless of catagory (editorial, review, blog). Our hard core audience has been asking for this for years (the original TTAC format). And so it will come to pass. There are other bells and whistles in the offing: the return of product reviews, a “Best of TTAC” box, a “view all comments” button (all comments on all posts in chronological order), search by author, direct email to authors, etc. Unfortunately, I can’t open this post up for a “wish list,” ’cause our development budget’s tapped out. But now’s a good time to tell us what we’re doing wrong, and what we can do to make sure we don’t screw-up in the future. Meanwhile, thanks for reading.
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Oh, and add me to the list of people who are not thrilled at the over-use of avatars and emoticons. It's more challenging without them, but if I want to be unique and expressive, I can just do it with my words. :) Sorry, couldn't resist! ;) Oh, there I go again!
psharhjinian> I _hate_ slash dot layout. I don't want to customize it. I want to read the article, read the comments & get out. TTAC is much superior in organization to slashdot, not to mention it makes my laptop in power save mode crawl.
The message takes precedence over the medium.