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Posts: 9895
 Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 11:01 pm
With the new site design, I changed the way the News Links are displayed.
There is a bit more space betwen each link, so should be esier to read. The font size is also large. The extra details aside from the title are now on a new line below the title, rather than all in a row.
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Posts: 9895
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:42 pm
I need some feedback on my plans to change up the news links a bit.
The news links have become very successfuly, there is now more links submitted per day that fit on one page, so i think there needs to be a way to narrow the news that makes it on the front-page, only the popular news items.
so I am thinking about a reverse digg effect. in the mornings, any link will make it to the front-page, but if a link doesn't have a certain number of hits by a certain time, it falls off the main page.
there would be a link at the top of the news links to "unpopular stories" that one could see these links still, and if they got enough hits, they could still make it back to the front-page.
I also will make a popular stores page, showcasing the top stories of the day and week, month.
any comments, suggestions, other ideas?
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Posts: 14063
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:59 pm
Yeah... order the articles according to number of hits. Sounds like a fairly simple and reasonable solution.
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Stagger_Lee
Active Member
Posts: 215
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 4:59 pm
sounds like a grand idea
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Stagger_Lee
Active Member
Posts: 215
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:01 pm
or... maybe each category can go with 2 or 3 'top hits' stories, that way Mel Gibson's DUI doesn't overshadow important news like Lebanon that may not be as popular...?
Just a suggestion
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Posts: 9895
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:04 pm
Blue_Nose Blue_Nose: Yeah... order the articles according to number of hits. Sounds like a fairly simple and reasonable solution.
well that would be easy but thats not what i meant. i still want the newest ones to go at the top, but links that have like 1 hit, after X amount of hours will be removed from front-page and goto the unpopular stories page.
do you think the spacing betwen each link should be increased? is it to crowded?
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Posts: 9895
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:05 pm
Stagger_Lee Stagger_Lee: or... maybe each category can go with 2 or 3 'top hits' stories, that way Mel Gibson's DUI doesn't overshadow important news like Lebanon that may not be as popular...?
Just a suggestion
thats a great idea for the "popular stories" page, I will do that.
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Posts: 14063
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:07 pm
Maybe if each article was on a single line, and you moved the hits and comments counters to the mouseover popup box...
But Stagger_Lee is the guy to ask, since he's the News King
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Posts: 7510
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:35 pm
A comment or two...
What's more popular? The amount of hits or the amount of posted links?
Since Stagger_Lee started posting links it seems that many links aren't getting many hits. I do think he needs to be a bit more selective in the news he posts. (example: the item about gas prices going up 3 cents a litre...)
It would seem that quantity over quality is the order of the day lately. When there were less than 50 news items some links were getting up to 100 hits but now there seems to be a glutton of links that aren't even getting 10 hits. I think some quality news items are being lost because of the sheer volume of links.
Onto suggestions...
When you make a top stories page perhaps you could then break down the other stories into their topics. If someone is interested in science news then the related items would all be in one place rather than scattered through all the other topics. More like an actual news website. This may keep items that are a few days old more accessible to readers and easier to find.
This may also enable you to have two windows on the main page. One for the top stories and one for the last 10 posted links. This may help you clean up that long column of links and direct readers to the main news page.
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Posts: 9895
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 5:52 pm
$1: It would seem that quantity over quality is the order of the day lately. When there were less than 50 news items some links were getting up to 100 hits but now there seems to be a glutton of links that aren't even getting 10 hits. I think some quality news items are being lost because of the sheer volume of links.
this is the reason i am going to do the "unpopular" thing, where links get dropped off the front-page after a certain time if they dont get enough hits. I think if a link gets a comment, it will get excempted.
Also, I was thinking about adding a story/link summary box. a brief sentance or two describing the news link. The reason I didnt add this at the start is because i wanted to make it super fast and easy to add links, but now that its active, it might be worth adding? maybe?
It would still be optional
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Posts: 7510
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 6:06 pm
$1: this is the reason i am going to do the "unpopular" thing, where links get dropped off the front-page after a certain time if they dont get enough hits. I think if a link gets a comment, it will get excempted.
This is were I think my suggestion about breaking up the links into their subject categories would be good. I may not have time during the week to search through all the links for science articles but it would be easy to catch up on them during the weekend if they were separated out from the rest. Someone else may want to hit the showbiz articles only etc etc...
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Posts: 9895
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 6:21 pm
well you already can view links by category... just click the "science" under a sciens link.
I guess i can add a link to all the categories, make it more prominent.
Here is sports category for example:
http://www.canadaka.net/modules.php?nam ... ry&catid=2
im going to clean up the category pages a bit, make them look more like the front-page format
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Posts: 7510
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 6:30 pm
Oh yeah, I did know that....
But I was thinking if you were going to create top stories page you could make it similar to a CNN main page where they have their top stories and then down the page they have subcategories.
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Posts: 9895
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 6:49 pm
yah i know what you mean, I am going to do that for the top stories page, break it down per cetegory.
and do an overal top stories per week, month.
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I have shortened the main-page links, just experimenting, right now i dont have a "unpopular" page so the links not showing are... MIA for now. But I will get it done tonight.
The way I have it setup now is
$1: date='$result3[date]' AND ((hits>10 or date>'$cutoff') or (forumlink>0))
whcih means, for friday links, if the link has more than 10 hits, or is newer than the cutoff, which is 4 hours from the current time. it will show. OR if the link has any comments, it will show no matter what.
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Posts: 9895
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2006 9:21 pm
i've added the "unpopular" news page. you will notice 2 tab links on the homepage now, at the top of the news links.
also in the very top right of the news links, you will see a "?" icon. this links to a News Link help page, which I just made.
http://www.canadaka.net/modules.php?nam ... &file=help
now to work on the "popular" page. 
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