From javier at msm.cl Wed Jan 3 07:26:08 2001 From: javier at msm.cl (javier velasco) Date: Wed Jan 3 07:26:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center References: Message-ID: <3A5327F3.E12D95F5@msm.cl> is this implemented yet? is it quieck to do? i'm starting to write an article breadcreumbs for IA so i need a place to put it the same guy who pointed out about the page titles noted that we have some quite good articles on IA/UE but they're scattered all ovre the centers... -- javier velasco web architect MSM Interactive http://www.msm.cl - work http://mantruc.com - me http://evolt.org - family - New 2.0 From r937 at interlog.com Wed Jan 3 07:47:08 2001 From: r937 at interlog.com (rudy) Date: Wed Jan 3 07:47:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center Message-ID: <01c0758b$9dd59ca0$f84a149a@rudyathome> >is this implemented yet? yes, i added two new centres, IA/Usability and Web Business, during codefest 2, but i think there was consensus not to confuse our visitors with centres that had nothing in them, so they were temporarily deactivated i'm not sure if there's an admin function to re-activate them -- i guess i could always go in with raw sql, eh more germane is, do we want to re-assign any existing articles to these new centres? would this break the new sexy swinging bookmarks, assuming there are some already? note that the category is part of the new url... rudy From marlene.bruce at cdgsolutions.com Wed Jan 3 08:00:08 2001 From: marlene.bruce at cdgsolutions.com (Marlene Bruce) Date: Wed Jan 3 08:00:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center Message-ID: <93A7B5EFAA22D4119C8400105A9CA616265D8A@EXCHANGE> > more germane is, do we want to re-assign any existing articles to these > new > centres? would this break the new sexy swinging bookmarks, assuming there > are some already? note that the category is part of the new url... > I thought we were going to eventually make it possible to assign articles to more than one category at a time. How would such a thing work? Can it work now? In the meantime, could we put up redirects for moved articles? It would be great to have several articles in such a section, and moving articles seems to be the most expedient way to accomplish this. Marlene From javier at msm.cl Wed Jan 3 08:41:08 2001 From: javier at msm.cl (javier velasco) Date: Wed Jan 3 08:41:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center References: <01c0758b$9dd59ca0$f84a149a@rudyathome> Message-ID: <3A533916.1141EB63@msm.cl> rudy wrote: > more germane is, do we want to re-assign any existing articles to these new > centres? would this break the new sexy swinging bookmarks, assuming there > are some already? note that the category is part of the new url... http://evolt.org/article/The_Tao_of_Testing/20/4142/evolt.org i'm not seeing the caregory in the url am i missign something, is it the "20"? i suppose it would be a real pain to change all the urls for those articles, right? -- javier velasco web architect MSM Interactive http://www.msm.cl - work http://mantruc.com - me http://evolt.org - family - New 2.0 From javier at msm.cl Wed Jan 3 08:47:08 2001 From: javier at msm.cl (javier velasco) Date: Wed Jan 3 08:47:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center References: <93A7B5EFAA22D4119C8400105A9CA616265D8A@EXCHANGE> Message-ID: <3A533A6D.2F4CAF26@msm.cl> Marlene Bruce wrote: > > more germane is, do we want to re-assign any existing articles to these > > new > > centres? would this break the new sexy swinging bookmarks, assuming there > > are some already? note that the category is part of the new url... > > > I thought we were going to eventually make it possible to assign articles to > more than one category at a time. How would such a thing work? Can it work > now? i was just considering doing that, putting an article in multiple centers, then i thought it could be counter-producing, or confusing (bad usability) on the other side, i agree with marlene, dunno more opinions? > In the meantime, could we put up redirects for moved articles? It would be > great to have several articles in such a section, and moving articles seems > to be the most expedient way to accomplish this. +1 -- -- javier velasco web architect MSM Interactive http://www.msm.cl - work http://mantruc.com - me http://evolt.org - family - New 2.0 From djc at starkmedia.com Wed Jan 3 08:55:08 2001 From: djc at starkmedia.com (Daniel J. Cody) Date: Wed Jan 3 08:55:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center References: <01c0758b$9dd59ca0$f84a149a@rudyathome> <3A533916.1141EB63@msm.cl> Message-ID: <3A533D2E.1060702@starkmedia.com> javier velasco wrote: > > rudy wrote: > > >> more germane is, do we want to re-assign any existing articles to these new >> centres? would this break the new sexy swinging bookmarks, assuming there >> are some already? note that the category is part of the new url... > > > http://evolt.org/article/The_Tao_of_Testing/20/4142/evolt.org > > i'm not seeing the caregory in the url > > am i missign something, is it the "20"? yup.. > i suppose it would be a real pain to change all the > urls for those articles, right? not really, you'd just have to update the categoryid(the number up there) for each article that you'd like to change.. i'm all for the new center, i think someone should write up an intro to it first to bring some attention to it.. trying to find the time.. .djc. From r937 at interlog.com Wed Jan 3 09:39:08 2001 From: r937 at interlog.com (rudy) Date: Wed Jan 3 09:39:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center Message-ID: <01c0759b$100c5c00$0c41149a@rudyathome> > I thought we were going to eventually make it possible to > assign articles to more than one category at a time. > How would such a thing work? Can it work now? hey marlene, what's cookin? how were the holidays? okay, as to the multiple categories... this capability has been part of the database for quite some time at present, there are really only two places that a category comes into play on the evolt site one is the dropdown list, and the other is in association with the article -- both on the home page and on the article display page -- the article's category is listed at left under the date when you "go" to one of the categories using the dropdown list, you get an index page very similar to the home page, listing all the articles in that category, and again, albeit somewhat redundantly, the category is listed at the left under the date okay right now all the queries work on a one-to-many relationship from category to article, which means that each article contains a foreign key to the category that it "belongs" to this is also called the "main" category, assuming we want articles to belong to more than one category (as an aside, putting the article's category as part of the url is totally redundant -- the category is ostensibly used so that the dropdown list is positioned on the category of the shown article, but since the foreign key is part of the article, it can be gotten from the article and not the url.... at least, assuming i understand why the heck the category id is part of the url) the many-to-many category-article relationship is in fact built into the database, except we just haven't utilized it yet the key questions to answer are ~ do we really need it? ~ how do we show an article's multiple categories on, say, the home page? stack them up under the date? what good would that do for the site visitor? what if there's too many of them? ~ when you "go" to a category, should articles be included in the index page if they have that category not as the "main" category but as one of the secondary ones? ~ what does it really mean that an article is in more than one category? would a site visitor be confused by seeing the same article listed in the Code and the Backend categories? as far as your other question is concerned, > In the meantime, could we put up redirects for moved articles? this won't really work, because the articles aren't actually moving anywhere, they would just have a different url -- so maybe you were suggesting we somehow keep track of the old urls, well that would require a new table and a lot more maintenance... thanks for the questions, marlene keep them coming rudy From javier at msm.cl Wed Jan 3 09:45:08 2001 From: javier at msm.cl (javier velasco) Date: Wed Jan 3 09:45:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center References: <01c0758b$9dd59ca0$f84a149a@rudyathome> <3A533916.1141EB63@msm.cl> <3A533D2E.1060702@starkmedia.com> Message-ID: <3A53488C.B88BF598@msm.cl> "Daniel J. Cody" wrote: > > http://evolt.org/article/The_Tao_of_Testing/20/4142/evolt.org > > > > i'm not seeing the caregory in the url > > > > am i missign something, is it the "20"? > > yup.. oh, im' learning ;-) > > > > i suppose it would be a real pain to change all the > > urls for those articles, right? > > not really, you'd just have to update the categoryid(the number up > there) for each article that you'd like to change.. k, i'll try to steal more time today to write down a list of realted articles > i'm all for the new center, i think someone should write up an intro to > it first to bring some attention to it.. done, i just submitted "breadcrumbs for usability" is that alright? or are you considering an official opening article, inviting the IA/usability community to join our ranks? -- javier velasco web architect MSM Interactive http://www.msm.cl - work http://mantruc.com - me http://evolt.org - family - New 2.0 From djc at starkmedia.com Wed Jan 3 09:55:08 2001 From: djc at starkmedia.com (Daniel J. Cody) Date: Wed Jan 3 09:55:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center References: <01c0758b$9dd59ca0$f84a149a@rudyathome> <3A533916.1141EB63@msm.cl> <3A533D2E.1060702@starkmedia.com> <3A53488C.B88BF598@msm.cl> Message-ID: <3A534B5F.6060405@starkmedia.com> ya, i think an official article would be a nice idea.. that way it doesn't just pop up in the navigation, and people notice it a lot more.. i was hoping that one of you useability experts could pound it out.. .djc. javier velasco wrote: > done, i just submitted "breadcrumbs for usability" > is that alright? or are you considering an official > opening article, inviting the IA/usability community to > join our ranks? From r937 at interlog.com Wed Jan 3 10:02:08 2001 From: r937 at interlog.com (rudy) Date: Wed Jan 3 10:02:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] CNET? Message-ID: <01c0759e$925991c0$0c41149a@rudyathome> i think this was already mentioned and i missed the answer, but can anyone (jeff?) explain why i am getting CNET 404 pages on just about every page other than the home page on the evolt site? From marlene.bruce at cdgsolutions.com Wed Jan 3 10:13:08 2001 From: marlene.bruce at cdgsolutions.com (Marlene Bruce) Date: Wed Jan 3 10:13:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center Message-ID: <93A7B5EFAA22D4119C8400105A9CA616265D91@EXCHANGE> Questions questions questions... > hey marlene, what's cookin? how were the holidays? > Fine in the end. The one true bright spot was that I got to visit with an old flame who was in town for the holidays, and there is still a spark there. > this capability has been part of the database for quite some time > Yay! > (as an aside, putting the article's category as part of the url is totally > redundant -- the category is ostensibly used so that the dropdown list is > positioned on the category of the shown article, but since the foreign key > is part of the article, it can be gotten from the article and not the > url.... at least, assuming i understand why the heck the category id is > part of the url) > I guess we're stuck with having the category in the URL at this point ... given that other sites have already been adjusting their links to us. > ~ do we really need it? [multiple categories] > *I* think so. > ~ how do we show an article's multiple categories on, say, the home page? > stack them up under the date? what good would that do for the site > visitor? what if there's too many of them? > Perhaps we can list a primary category. The author, when submitting, would pick a primary and a secondary if needed (limit two?). > ~ when you "go" to a category, should articles be included in the index > page if they have that category not as the "main" category but as one of > the secondary ones? > Yes. > ~ what does it really mean that an article is in more than one category? > would a site visitor be confused by seeing the same article listed in the > Code and the Backend categories? > An article in more than one category means it has significant relevance to both topics. A site visitor *might* become confused, but I think the improved categorization and exposure of the article outweighs such a possibility. Dissenting opinions? Perhaps we could include a line at the end of the synopsis which states, "This article also appears in [other category]." > > In the meantime, could we put up redirects for moved articles? > > this won't really work, because the articles aren't actually moving > anywhere, they would just have a different url -- so maybe you were > suggesting we somehow keep track of the old urls, well that would require > a > new table and a lot more maintenance... > Okay, skip that idea. Marlene From javier at msm.cl Wed Jan 3 10:20:08 2001 From: javier at msm.cl (javier velasco) Date: Wed Jan 3 10:20:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center References: <01c0758b$9dd59ca0$f84a149a@rudyathome> <3A533916.1141EB63@msm.cl> <3A533D2E.1060702@starkmedia.com> <3A53488C.B88BF598@msm.cl> <3A534B5F.6060405@starkmedia.com> Message-ID: <3A5350D3.499BEB05@msm.cl> "Daniel J. Cody" wrote: > ya, i think an official article would be a nice idea.. that way it > doesn't just pop up in the navigation, and people notice it a lot more.. > > i was hoping that one of you useability experts could pound it out.. > though i'm just a humble aprentice, i'll give it a try -- -- javier velasco web architect MSM Interactive http://www.msm.cl - work http://mantruc.com - me http://evolt.org - family - New 2.0 From roselli at earthlink.net Wed Jan 3 10:33:08 2001 From: roselli at earthlink.net (aardvark) Date: Wed Jan 3 10:33:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center In-Reply-To: <01c0759b$100c5c00$0c41149a@rudyathome> Message-ID: <200101031632.f03GWmr05237@farmer.oracular.com> > From: "rudy" [...] > at present, there are really only two places that a category comes into > play on the evolt site > > one is the dropdown list, and the other is in association with the > article -- both on the home page and on the article display page -- the > article's category is listed at left under the date > > when you "go" to one of the categories using the dropdown list, you get an > index page very similar to the home page, listing all the articles in that > category, and again, albeit somewhat redundantly, the category is listed at > the left under the date ok... > okay right now all the queries work on a one-to-many relationship from > category to article, which means that each article contains a foreign key > to the category that it "belongs" to > > this is also called the "main" category, assuming we want articles to > belong to more than one category which i thought was the plan... since some articles really should be in more than one category... > (as an aside, putting the article's category as part of the url is totally > redundant -- the category is ostensibly used so that the dropdown list is > positioned on the category of the shown article, but since the foreign key > is part of the article, it can be gotten from the article and not the > url.... at least, assuming i understand why the heck the category id is > part of the url) well, i was gonna ask this later, but i'll ask now... why is the category part of the URL, especially given that we had planned on allowing multiple categories per article? as far as i'm concerned, it should only ever be the article ID in the URL, since that will not change... > the many-to-many category-article relationship is in fact built into the > database, except we just haven't utilized it yet > > the key questions to answer are > > ~ do we really need it? i think so, unless it's gonna be a bitch to maintain... > ~ how do we show an article's multiple categories on, say, the home page? > stack them up under the date? what good would that do for the site > visitor? what if there's too many of them? i think the design can account for them, as a comma-separated list or something... at least if i recall correctly, that's how i planned it... > ~ when you "go" to a category, should articles be included in the index > page if they have that category not as the "main" category but as one of > the secondary ones? yes... because we aren't assigning weight to the categories a user chooses... for instance, i think an article is both visual design and code, so it gets listed in both because i have no way of saying primary, nor should i... i don't see a reason, at least, to have primary vs. secondary as opposed to multiple... > ~ what does it really mean that an article is in more than one category? > would a site visitor be confused by seeing the same article listed in the > Code and the Backend categories? i very highly doubt that... if anything, it gives more exposure to articles, and visitors who see an article listed in code with a listing of backend under the category section as well (that's why we show category on the category page, for more than one category) know it can apply to more... > this won't really work, because the articles aren't actually moving > anywhere, they would just have a different url -- so maybe you were > suggesting we somehow keep track of the old urls, well that would require a > new table and a lot more maintenance... i don't think the catid should be part of the URL... that alone should alleviate that... From r937 at interlog.com Wed Jan 3 11:59:08 2001 From: r937 at interlog.com (rudy) Date: Wed Jan 3 11:59:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center Message-ID: <01c075ae$cbd58020$0c41149a@rudyathome> > i don't see a reason, at least, to have > primary vs. secondary as opposed to multiple... it's more a question of practicality in dealing with the 1-m legacy if we were to stop using the foreign key in the article record (the "main" category), this would immediately break all our pages (i.e. the queries), unless we simultaneously switched them over to utilize the m-m relationship, which would mean we would also have to populate those records first... it could be done, but very painfully on the other hand, keeping a "main" category and allowing secondary categories simply means tweaking the queries to also look for the m-m records... if that makes sense... also there's no need to do any re- or de-population of records... From martin at members.evolt.org Wed Jan 3 12:15:08 2001 From: martin at members.evolt.org (martin burns) Date: Wed Jan 3 12:15:08 2001 Subject: [thesite] Usability / Architecture Center In-Reply-To: <93A7B5EFAA22D4119C8400105A9CA616265D91@EXCHANGE> Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010103181026.02b8b740@members.evolt.org> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 At 16:00 03/01/01, Marlene Bruce wrote: > > ~ what does it really mean that an article is in more than one category? > > would a site visitor be confused by seeing the same article listed in the > > Code and the Backend categories? > > >An article in more than one category means it has significant relevance to >both topics. A site visitor *might* become confused, but I think the >improved categorization and exposure of the article outweighs such a >possibility. Dissenting opinions? I don't think so - I don't even think that most people would notice, and the few who do won't lose sleep over it. >Perhaps we could include a line at the end of the synopsis which states, >"This article also appears in [other category]." That's drawing attention to it, which we don't need to do. To be honest, I'm not sure that people pay that much attention to categories anyway - we don't have a strongly hierarchical site anyway. It feels to me very much like a database search: "Here are a bunch of articles about Code", rather than "The only way I can find out anything about Code is to go to the Code topic". Now if we dropped the home page listing, and made each section a drilldown (Code->Database->CF [etc]), that would be different - we'd need a breadcrumb trail to support it *grin* Cheers Martin ________________ Martin Burns, Content Management Consultant tel: +44 (0)774 063 9985 http://www.evolt.org/user/MartinB/32/evolt.org http://www.easyweb.co.uk/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.3 for non-commercial use Comment: PGP Key ID: 0xA835CCCB iQA/AwUBOlNsLnHoHnCoNczLEQJAnACfbS/mROiZygSDoWXrpaeK/xDnOKsAoLCO y4U2uHsuDilZgWbmzC4c8IVU =hdAj -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From djc at starkmedia.com Wed Jan 3 12:36:11 2001 From: djc at starkmedia.com (Daniel J. Cody) Date: Wed Jan 3 12:36:11 2001 Subject: [thesite] December Stats.. Message-ID: <3A537108.5050508@starkmedia.com> Hola - http://evolt.org/stats/stats.dec2k.html December is usually a slow month due to the holidays, but we had a good month.. 150,000 page views 27,000 unique hosts 25GB of data transferred I'm having a hard time picking out other stats because of the different URL schemes we have in the logs.. If I get a chance and some time and then some motivation(Final Fanstasy 7 is *killing* me..), I'll run them through Webtrends Enterprise here at the new job this weekend or something.. enjoy.. .djc. -- Daniel J. Cody Systems Administrator Starkmedia | for the web 219 N. Milwaukee Street Milwaukee, WI 53202 p 414.226.2710 f 414.226.2716 e dan at starkmedia.com w http://www.starkmedia.com From marlene.bruce at cdgsolutions.com Wed Jan 3 13:03:10 2001 From: marlene.bruce at cdgsolutions.com (Marlene Bruce) Date: Wed Jan 3 13:03:10 2001 Subject: [thesite] here's a fun URL Message-ID: <93A7B5EFAA22D4119C8400105A9CA616265D97@EXCHANGE> http://www.praystation.com/municates/wit/h/repli/cant/opera/ting/sys/tems/ - Marlene P.S. Last year's content no longer seems available! Too bad! From martin at members.evolt.org Wed Jan 3 14:48:11 2001 From: martin at members.evolt.org (martin burns) Date: Wed Jan 3 14:48:11 2001 Subject: [thesite] code in comments Message-ID: <5.0.2.1.0.20010103204219.02b80ec0@members.evolt.org> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I've just been looking at Pedrito's comment to the PHP breadcrumb article: http://evolt.org/article/view/17/4455/evolt.org#comment4470 Originally, this was just bound up in
 tags, but for
some reason, it has lost its line breaks.

I've thrown it into a textarea with the same attributes as the
main one, which has cured the bigass horizontal scroll, but
still no line breaks.

I've taken it through just about every text editor I have, and they're
all showing line breaks where they should be, but it doesn't
come through to thesite.

Suggestion:
Can we have comments also swapping in