The original version of this page can be found at : http://forum.sfreader.com/default.aspx?f=38&m=80343
| Posted By : Dave - 5/12/2008 10:56 AM | | To test drive the new SFReader site!
Built on the open source DotNetNuke portal platform, the new site offers a host of integrated features:
Articles with auto-archiving
Member blogs (once you register, you can get your own blog!)
Easy searching/paging of reviews
Available if the demand is there:
Classifieds
Chat
Forum (willl not integrate with existing!  ) Events Calendar
Links Directory
Surveys
Wiki
Newsfeeds
Photo Gallery
and much more....
Check out out, make your wish list, let me know what you think:
|
| Posted By : H.P. Lovesauce - 5/12/2008 12:01 PM | Looks good! I'd love to have the current forums archived somewhere, but you know. Chat would be nice, and the wiki component would get people cracking on the sword & sorcery wiki proposed earlier.
The only major change you might consider is raising the reviews to the top of the middle section so that important aspect of the site is foregrounded. |
| Posted By : Lyn - 5/12/2008 2:27 PM | Hey, FYI...Current front page
http://www.sfreader.com/
viewed by firefox has this gibberish...
ADODB.Recordset error '800a0cc1'
Item cannot be found in the collection corresponding to the requested name or ordinal.
/indexsfr.asp, line 105
Lyn from ResAliens
Reviewing Zines at The Fix
Reviewing Short Stories at My Blog
And Promoting Strange Worlds of Lunacy |
| Posted By : Lyn - 5/12/2008 2:33 PM | As for http://sfreader.com/default.aspx
I like the streamlined site, but agree with HP that the book reviews should be front and center, with forum threads on the side? Also, is Pete going to upload new reviews as they come in, like at The Fix, and simply push the older ones down the list? That might be a good approach, then again like The Fix, you can put text links of older reviews on the side or something...Just a suggestion.
Lyn from ResAliens
Reviewing Zines at The Fix
Reviewing Short Stories at My Blog
And Promoting Strange Worlds of Lunacy |
| Posted By : UnclePete - 5/12/2008 2:34 PM | H.P. Lovesauce said...
Looks good! I'd love to have the current forums archived somewhere, but you know. Chat would be nice, and the wiki component would get people cracking on the sword & sorcery wiki proposed earlier.
The only major change you might consider is raising the reviews to the top of the middle section so that important aspect of the site is foregrounded.
I'm with HP on this one -- I was just thinking that, actually. :)
Oh and Lyn, you need to follow the link directly from Dave's post to get to the new site -- I imagine there's still a bit of conflict with the old site, hence the error message you (and I) see.
____________
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." --Thomas Jefferson
www.creativeguypublishing.com |
| Posted By : Lyn - 5/12/2008 2:42 PM | Gotcha...and we have to register there to comment on reviews, right? That is, our sfreader forum registration doesn't transfer over.
Lyn from ResAliens
Reviewing Zines at The Fix
Reviewing Short Stories at My Blog
And Promoting Strange Worlds of Lunacy |
| Posted By : Dave - 5/12/2008 2:58 PM | The error is fixed; due to my tinkering with a DB view which I'd altered so it would work on the new site.
No, review comments work the same way on the new site as on the old; simply click the 'Add Comment' button at the bottom of the review (underneath the Amazon links). A window will pop up with the comment form.
If you want to comment on or rate the articles, FB reviews, or Suspended Animation, you do have to register, as though are added to the site through an integrated article manager.
Likewise, the free blog also requires registration. Additional features (classified, chat, wiki, etc) will also require registration in order to use (not view, but actually use as in add/edit stuff)
There is no sharing of users between the current forum and the new site. A registration on the current for DOES NOT carry over to a registration on the new site. The new portal comes with a forum feature which I could implement, but it would be a restart with nothing carrying over from the old one. I'm not inclined to do that now, though if the community wanted it, I would do it.
So yes, in order to use some of the advanced features of the new site, and the current forum, you would have to maintain two separate registrations.
Dave
SFReader Webmaster
Get Paid to Blog
Tizags Social Bookmarking Site
Memories and Music
NineWords |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 5/12/2008 5:46 PM | Under the browse reviews section, I'd like an option to choose whether the list will be a text list or a list with thumbnails. When there are a lot of things in a list, I prefer just links and text instead of having to scroll through pages and pages of thumbnails.
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 5/12/2008 5:53 PM | Dave said...Forum (willl not integrate with existing! VIEW IMAGE )
Can we see a demo of what the forum that comes with it would look like and play with it a bit? I'm currently voting for just linking to the current forum but maybe it would be nicer (we could put this one in archive mode maybe, so we could still read the old posts) |
| Posted By : Dave - 5/12/2008 9:41 PM | Howdy
The browse pages only show 10 at a time. No easy way to switch between thumbsnails and list right now, only go with one or the other. You can narrow by last name or other factors. Hopefully that will be enough for now. Will cast about for a way to customize listings.
Suggest authors for interviews seems premature, considering there are only a few done in the last two years. Maybe if I can get some people doing interviews. I wil change that I think to just INterviews, adn we can do authors, editors, artists and more.
Turned on verification for registration. Now users will have to reply to an email to activate teh account. That should stop most of hte spam.
Will add you to SF Wiki. No plans on my part. Like to see what the commnunity comes up with.
Will also add a demo forum so you can tinker.
Dave
SFReader Webmaster
Get Paid to Blog
Tizags Social Bookmarking Site
Memories and Music
NineWords |
| Posted By : UnclePete - 5/12/2008 9:50 PM | CW, the idea of the wiki was the sword and sorcery one we had previously discussed -- or at least that was one suggestion - we could make it whatever, I imagine.
____________
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." --Thomas Jefferson
www.creativeguypublishing.com |
| Posted By : UnclePete - 5/12/2008 10:25 PM | Posted first blog entry!
EDIT - and added first wiki entry. :)
____________
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." --Thomas Jefferson
www.creativeguypublishing.com |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 5/12/2008 11:08 PM | | Pete, is there a page with rules or anything for the Wiki? Or maybe the S&S discussion we all had distilled into a single page as guidelines? |
| Posted By : UnclePete - 5/12/2008 11:21 PM | crystalwizard said...
Pete, is there a page with rules or anything for the Wiki? Or maybe the S&S discussion we all had distilled into a single page as guidelines?
there's nothing yet. I'll have a look at the old thread and see if we can condense.
____________
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers." --Thomas Jefferson
www.creativeguypublishing.com |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 5/13/2008 9:14 AM | the new site isn't keeping me logged in. Can that be implemented? It's annoying to have to re-login to a site every time I restart my browser. it's also not 'remembering' my login even though I click the 'remember me' checkbox each time I login. It saved my account fine when I registered, but the login fields aren't automatically filled in like they should be.
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print |
| Posted By : Dave - 5/13/2008 9:25 AM | Dunno what the deal is with the remember me - it's not remembering me either in Firefox. It seems to work in IE though (at least IE 6). Actually, once I've logged in and clicked remember me, it won't let me log out!
However, neither one seems to recall my username and password automatically in the form.
Dave
SFReader Webmaster
Get Paid to Blog
Tizags Social Bookmarking Site
Memories and Music
NineWords |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 5/13/2008 10:08 AM | made some test posts to the forum. A couple minor irritations with the rich text editor interface. Nothing critical.
Question:
On here, you have the main forum divided into multiple forums with their own threads. Can you do the same on the new interface?
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print |
| Posted By : Lyn - 5/13/2008 10:32 AM | Okay, log in reminder works now, thanks...
Question regarding the wiki - we can edit the "home" entry, but will you make it possible to post new entries and name them? Like we talked about - different "expert topics" that people can edit/add to, etc? Just wondering.
Lyn from ResAliens
Reviewing Zines at The Fix
Reviewing Short Stories at My Blog
And Promoting Strange Worlds of Lunacy |
| Posted By : Dave - 5/13/2008 10:59 AM | CW
Yes, forum can have unlimited topics, just like this one. I only did the one to test. I'll give you admin on it so you can tinker more
Lyn
When you are on the Wiki page, click the Edit link, then click the plus sign next to Wiki Text Directions. New pages are added by using spcial code in the content of your post. I'll admit I', not fully up to speed on it....
Dave
SFReader Webmaster
Get Paid to Blog
Tizags Social Bookmarking Site
Memories and Music
NineWords |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 5/13/2008 11:07 AM | Lots of pretty icons, but no tool tips so I have no idea what most of the icons are for. Dave, can you impliment text under those icons so that it's easy to see what they do? For example, on the main forum page there's a line of icons under the 3d light blue bar. What are they? At the moment, the only way to tell is to click on each of them. I'm using Firefox. Perhaps that's different in IE but a lot of our users and visitors use Firefox and aren't going to want to switch to IE.
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print |
| Posted By : Lyn - 5/13/2008 11:18 AM | It's one of those icons... I jsut started punching them randomly 
UPDATE: A text message comes up now...the button to set your avatar and update profile is "My Settings"
Lyn from ResAliens
Reviewing Zines at The Fix
Reviewing Short Stories at My Blog
And Promoting Strange Worlds of Lunacy |
| Posted By : Dave - 5/13/2008 12:17 PM | Firefox obey W3C ad doesn't not display alt tags when the image is available. The correct markup for an image tip display is to use the 'title=' tag.
IE incorrectly expands the alt text when an image is mouseovered. This forum has that same problem; non of the image show tips for Firefox, only for IE because the developers used the alt=, not the title=
There is a download you can get that will expand the alts for images....
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=1115673
Dave
SFReader Webmaster
Get Paid to Blog
Tizags Social Bookmarking Site
Memories and Music
NineWords |
| Posted By : Dave - 5/13/2008 1:13 PM | Wel,l this was a stupid way to do it, but you hit the plus sign to expand comments. You see the 'add comment' link. The page refreshes, and the comments block is closed again. Click the plus sigh AGAIN and now you will see the comment form.
http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Community/Forums/tabid/795/forumid/70/threadid/206029/scope/posts/Default.aspx
They are working on this for the next release
Dave
SFReader Webmaster
Get Paid to Blog
Tizags Social Bookmarking Site
Memories and Music
NineWords |
| Posted By : Lyn - 5/13/2008 2:32 PM | Thanks. I guess I just stopped punching buttons too early this time! lol Everything else looks pretty nifty so far.
Lyn from ResAliens
Reviewing Zines at The Fix
Reviewing Short Stories at My Blog
And Promoting Strange Worlds of Lunacy |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 5/13/2008 4:54 PM | Dave said...
Firefox obey W3C ad doesn't not display alt tags when the image is available. The correct markup for an image tip display is to use the 'title=' tag.
IE incorrectly expands the alt text when an image is mouseovered. This forum has that same problem; non of the image show tips for Firefox, only for IE because the developers used the alt=, not the title=
There is a download you can get that will expand the alts for images....
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p=1115673
How about just adding text under the icons?
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 5/14/2008 11:30 PM | Dave said...
I hadn't decided on author pages or not - I was thinking the blog and Wiki would be good enough.
What's the community think? I could add individual author pages fairly easily
I like the author pages too, though. The blog is nice, but it'll scroll and as new things are added, old information will get buried. The Wiki's nice, but not focused on one specific author. Author pages are like mini-websites each customizable by individual authors and I think are a very unique, important feature of the site. Just wish they had a good editor that didn't insist on taking all the carriage returns out of the code. |
| Posted By : Lyn - 5/15/2008 10:10 AM | Still not sure how to add a Wiki page - I see you have a few to start with, but how does one go about starting a topic. My attempt/experiment at transferring the info about terraforming Mars from the ask the expert thread here was deleted. My intent was to throw a bunch of info up and let people start editing like at wikipedia...So am I not understanding the concept?
Lyn from ResAliens
Reviewing Zines at The Fix
Reviewing Short Stories at My Blog
And Promoting Strange Worlds of Lunacy |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 5/15/2008 10:16 AM | I'm not sure how to add a Wiki page either, and I'd like to know who's going to be in charge of approving or deleting the pages. Someone's going to have to do that or we're going to get a random bunch of stuff, most of which might pertain to this site but some of which is guaranteed to be either off topic or pure spam.
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print |
| Posted By : Lyn - 5/15/2008 10:57 AM | Well, if we have an active community, the wiki becomes self-patrolled. But it will be a bit rocky at first, I'm sure.
Lyn from ResAliens
Reviewing Zines at The Fix
Reviewing Short Stories at My Blog
And Promoting Strange Worlds of Lunacy |
| Posted By : Dave - 5/15/2008 12:55 PM | The Wiki will only work f the community takes ownership and self polices. Only registered members can add to the Wiki. If the Wiki starts getting out of control because no one int he community is helping, I'll have to delete it. Right now, I can police myself, but if it grows, I might not be able to.
The Wiki works like any wiki - new pages are automatically created by formatting within a current page:
* To add a page simply enter its name in text with double brackets surrounding it while writing out your content; your only limitation is it may not be longer than 50 characters. This is also how you make a link to an existing page.
Example: [[My Link]]
Example: [[Another Link In Wiki]]
* Once you have added a page you can edit your new page by navigating to it and clicking "Edit".
* There is no limit to the number of new pages you can add while creating new content.
* New pages will not show up in the Index view nor will they be searchable until they have content created for them.
* You can add a title to your link by adding a Pipe after the name. When you do this the title will show as a hyperlink instead of the page name.
Example: [[My Link|A Title]]
Example: [[Another Link In Wiki|I can say what ever I want]]
* To link to Wiki Page on another Tab you can add a Second Pipe after the Page title with the Number to the other Tab
Example using just the page name: [[My Page||35]]
Example with page title: [[My Page|My Title here|35]]
* To link back to the home page make your backet link to WikiHomePage
Example: [[WikiHomePage]]
Example: [[WikiHomePage|Home]]
* Because we use the HTML WYSIWYG editor, email links and URLs can be added by typing them in and letting the editor handle them; or as normal <a href> tags in the HTML view of the editor
So as an example, someone could edit the Home Page Wiki entry and make 'speculative fiction' in the first sentence a new page by editing it to [[speculative fiction]]. Then save with that edit and the speculative fiction page will be created. Click on the now active link in the original post, and now you're on teh speculative fiction page and you could write a blurb on what it is. In that blurb, you might, for example, list a couple of the top speculative fiction magazines or book publishers, making those pages too.
Dave
Dave
SFReader Webmaster
Get Paid to Blog
Tizags Social Bookmarking Site
Memories and Music
NineWords |
| Posted By : cussedness - 5/18/2008 9:33 AM | i kept forgetting to set up my author page here at sfreader, but i have no difficulties with a blog.
Janrae Frank
I have no skeletons in my closet, they are all hanging from the yardarm.
Once there were three brothers, Brandrahoon the vampire, Isranon called the Dawnhand, speaker to spirits, and Waejonan the Accursed, first of sa’necari. Isranon defied his brothers and was destroyed, his descendants forced into the darkness.
The Shadowed Princes
www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/eBook64690.htm?cache
website
www.janraefrank.com
Darkzone
darkzone.yuku.com/ |
| Posted By : cussedness - 5/18/2008 10:15 AM | i got me a blog. And it's mighty purty.
Janrae Frank
I have no skeletons in my closet, they are all hanging from the yardarm.
Once there were three brothers, Brandrahoon the vampire, Isranon called the Dawnhand, speaker to spirits, and Waejonan the Accursed, first of sa’necari. Isranon defied his brothers and was destroyed, his descendants forced into the darkness.
The Shadowed Princes
www.fictionwise.com/eBooks/eBook64690.htm?cache
website
www.janraefrank.com
Darkzone
darkzone.yuku.com/ |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 5/18/2008 1:58 PM | Dave said...
The Wiki works like any wiki - new pages are automatically created by formatting within a current page:
Dave, I've never known how to do that and there are probably a lot of other people that don't know how. You posted an excellent, easy to understand set of instructions. Would you mind very much putting them into a file and linking it to the site some how so people can find them again easily? |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 5/18/2008 2:53 PM | Dave, I've got a question about the new SFReader chat. Is there a way to see who's in the chat room? I love the large window but most chat programs have a 'room list' or a 'who's in the room' list beside the chat interface and I can't find anything like that on the new one.
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print |
| Posted By : Dave - 5/19/2008 1:12 PM | "Dave, I've never known how to do that and there are probably a lot of other people that don't know how. You posted an excellent, easy to understand set of instructions. Would you mind very much putting them into a file and linking it to the site some how so people can find them again easily?"
It's already on the site. When you are on the Wiki and go to edit a page, you will see a Wiki text Directions next to a plus sign. Click the plus sign to expand out the instructions.
I haven't used the chat, or at least been there when anyone else was. Do you mean see who's in the chat when you go to the chat, or just somewhere on teh site at all times?
Dave
SFReader Webmaster
Get Paid to Blog
Tizags Social Bookmarking Site
Memories and Music
NineWords |
| Posted By : crystalwizard - 5/19/2008 3:35 PM | see who's in chat with you when you're there. Both when you enter and while you're in it. Normally there's a menu list on the side next to the chat window that lists everyone in the chat. Otherwise, you have no idea who is or if anyone other than you is until someone else says something.
Never meddle in the affairs of a wizard unless you are soggy and hard to light!
Managing Editor of Flashing Swords
Visit my art gallery on art wanted
All my books in print |
|