As you may have noticed, we're rolling out some exciting navigational changes to OS. Here are the big ones:
User blogs: Each blog now includes four tabs at the topic: "Blog," "Activity," "Favorites," and "Followers." The "Blog" tab is the default option and it looks pretty much the same as the standard user page used to look -- you can still sort posts by "Recent," "Editor's Picks," and "Popularity." The "Activity" tab shows a blogger's recent activity on Open. The default is set to display each user's most recent comments, but you can also check out which posts a user has rated (by clicking on "Ratings"). The "Favorites" tab lists each blogger's favorites -- you can sort them by most recent or from A to Z. The "Followers" tab is brand new: It shows all users who list this particular blogger as a favorite on OS. We've also added a list of each user's most recent posts on left side of the page above the list of his or her most recent comments.
Topics page: The new page has 30 popular tags that you can sort by "Editor's Pick," "Top Rated," "Most Viewed," Most Commented," and "Most Recent." You can search for posts written by all users, or only those written by your favorites.
People/blogs page: First of all, it's now called "Blogs" instead of "People." You can sort user blogs by "Editor's Pick (Total)," "Top Rated," "Most Viewed," "Most Commented," and "Favorites." Within each of these categories, you can choose whether to view all users (or only your favorites). You also sort blogs by time frame (ranging from the past 4 hours to the past 1 month).
We're all really excited about the changes we've made to the site. My personal favorite may be the new Topics page -- it makes navigating OS by subject matter infinitely smoother. (It's a tough call, though -- all the new features are pretty cool).
Please use this comments thread to let us know what you think (and to ask any questions you may have)! I'll be checking back regularly to answer questions and to address any issues raised here. Your feedback is more than welcome and feel free to point out any bugs we may have missed while testing (I know you will...).
Enjoy!
UPDATE: The new "Blogs" (formerly "People") page is now live! Tech is currently hard at work solving the following glitches: The inability to remove favorites who have left OS, the problems with AdSense, and the issues using various browsers (Opera, Chrome, Safari, earlier versions of Firefox). Thanks for your patience while these problems get worked out. And let us know if you come across any other bugs!
UPDATE #2: The "Next" problem on the "Most Recent" page has been fixed! You can easily navigate through the most recent OS posts once more.
UPDATE #3: The "View Responses" issue on Open Calls has been resolved. "View Responses" now directs you to a list of posts written in response to that particular Open Call.
UPDATE #4: The "Most Viewed"/"Most Commented" glitch on user blogs has been fixed. You can now sort all your posts (and those of other bloggers) by number of views and number of comments.
UPDATE #5: All known glitches have been fixed (including issues concerning Adsense). Let us know if you encounter any other problems!
whatsthematterwithks
Michael Humphrey
Charles Yoo
Kerry Lauerman
Joan Walsh
Salon.com
Comments
Those hip kids were back in 1982!!! But still...:)
Seems like you are promoting user friendly reader engagement.
Appreciated.
But the update itself includes a lot of information that I have wanted for a long time.
{[R]}
Thanks for bringing this to their attention.
I noticed some have them already while others do not. I am guessing the change will be universal to all blogs and not selective to certain ones.
Thanks for keeping this place in constant motion and with useful upgrades.
On the 'Favorites' tab, when you click on 'remove favorite' next to any favorites who have left OS, it goes to a 'page not found' message. That's the only quirk I've seen.
I am also finding some OS members who added me as a "Favorite," but I didn't know about all of them until just now looking at the followers' tab on my blog page. It must be that some email alerts did not get through telling me that these members had added me to their lists, but now there is an easy way for all members to see everyone who added them as a favorite, just in case they did not receive an email alert along the way.
Another wonderful feature that you added allows a look back in time at all bloggers' comments or ratings ever made on OS! Anyone can look back in time and find posts of others that they had rated or commented on, but may have forgotten about these many months later.
Again, the new features are terrific. Love em.
But I wanted to rate, so I did a comment/post a second time. That's whats I was talking about in my prior post.
Thank you.
Lezlie
Great changes - thanks so much!!
Thanks to everyone who worked so hard on this.
I just tried to update one of my old ones to add one of these standard tags (I realized I've mostly used non-standard tags, so can't take advantage of the new "sort by tag" system unless I go back and add'em to old posts) and when I did so, I lost my embedded videos on that post (all I did was add a tag and hit "Update"). I tried going in to add them back by putting the code in the HTML editor again, but it won't take.
I created these posts back when I was using Firefox, so I'm wondering if it's a browser issue?
Thanks!
Holeee crud, that's a lot of comments and ratings.
But not nearly enough lately...
THANK YOU, Salon. We knew you were working on this. You told us. I know the impatient tappyfooting must have driven the techs nuts, but this is marvelous.
How is it possible to gauge the readership of a particular post now?
---GG
Just a suggestion: Many have needed of late to "take a break." Is there some kind of status line that could be created allowing us to say simply "I'll be back soon, please enjoy my archives until then"?
Thanks!
That would be the ultimate fix.
Thanks again and fingers crossed it happens soon.
I used to be able to click on one of my story tags and they would pop up. Not anymore. Please advise.
my 2 cents in case this gets added to the list of next possible tech changes: I'm not sure this would be a good thing. I think it would encourage even more mass mailings than are happening now, without people considering at all whether the people they're PMing ever come and read their blogs in response to them.
The issue, of course, is that our address book is populated with our own favorites, not our "followers" (to use the new OS term). It would make more sense to be able to PM your followers that you have a new post up. Of course, followers can see this in the feed on the right side of their blog, but it can be easy to miss someone's new post if you have a lot of favorites and/or a lot of posting is going on.
(sob!)
And "spell check"!!!! I'm running off to find this now.
Thank you to all OS Techs
But it sounds good to me.
Small question, maybe I missed something... there's a whole lot of white space on the right nav between my Favorites and Updates. Will something go in there?
Thanks to all!
Some of these changes seem pretty cool.
The coolest is the tab showing who is following... nice to know!
Appreciate the work you're doing in selection for EPs as well, it seems to be a much more level playing field for all of your writers - there's a lot of good stuff flowing through these OS pages, hopefully you'll manage to find many more of them than the previous editor/s might have had time for (trying to be PC here ;).
Kudos to Emily and the techies!
I'd like to see “followers” called something that made these people feel a little less like a congregation following a religious icon, but the tab is still useful even with the awkward name.
R
thank you so much.
FYI.