After 2.5 years with the same design, I’m looking to do an upgrade to WUWT to give it more modern features. I’ve got some professional help involved to do this. It will be a complete rework from the ground up with a new theme
I’ll be staying with wordpress.com as a host, since it solves all my bandwidth and DDoS attack issue with ease. That means I won’t be able to do wordpress plugins, such as a comment edit/preview feature that everyone asks about. I wish I could, but the security outweighs the convenience.
One thing I do plan is a way to keep the most viewed/discussed stories available on top longer. Some days they scroll off too fast when there’s a lot of news.
That said, I’m open to suggestions. Feel free to drop suggestions in comments.
Tell me what you want to keep, tell me what you want changed or improved. Brainstorm ideas. After all, its a community blog, so I value the input.
RE: Stark Dickflüssig says:
September 2, 2012 at 1:02 pm
On the gripping hand, a ton of horrible javascript & maybe a big flash intro would keep jerks like me away. 😉
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Java – Arrrrgh!
I had my own share of Java-debacles only recently, when a broken or corrupted Java-applet shut my computer down.
It took me a whole day to restore everything back to working order.
And about Flash Intros: Again – Arrrrrgh!
RE: Frank de Jong says:
September 3, 2012 at 2:26 am
How about threaded comments (as slashdot has), i.e. a second reply to someone else’s original reply are placed directly under the original reply, indented. Easier to follow discussions than having to scroll to find the next reaction.
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Excellent suggestion!
EternalOptimist was seen on September 2, 2012 at 3:56 pm saying:
Keep it simple
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Bingo, +1
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Paul Deacon says:
September 2, 2012 at 12:13 pm
Anthony – please keep your font and font size, and your simple clean layout.
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tallbloke says:
September 2, 2012 at 12:15 pm
Disagree with Roger Sowell. People who disagree or want to say “me too” should do so in words, not by waving arms.
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By and large I like the site the way it is, it’s the content that counts.
However, these two comments are ones I particularly agree with as, if you spend as much time as I do reading here, you want something easy on the eye. There’s enough work to do following the discussion points.
I don’t like the idea of like/dislike buttons, one can read and make up one’s own opinion, I always feel they can be misused and ‘bombed’ by one side or the other of an argument to make it look like there is a ‘concensus’!!
Keep up the good work.
Steve T
Make sure it fits and works on an iPad.
Would like to see a better way to post a link to someones comment so that other can review it . . . other than this long option . . .
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/09/02/wuwt-web-retooling-comments-welcome/#comment-1070333
it works, but sometime it gets real long . . . so it is not a really a abject priority . . .
How about a spell check . . . and an option to send a copy of ones comment to one self for ones files! Especially for those comments that get snipped, that way we can ‘not repeat’ our mistakes.
I would rate the current set-up as excellent. However, in general, be aware of the load times, I have no option (economically viable, anyway) but dial-up, 28.8 Kbps usually. This may partially be an XP issue, but I often get a minute or so of blank page before the browser starts to render(98 did not do this). It varies from web site to web site. WUWT is longer than most for some reason, I suspect it is due to web pages calling off site content, icons, widgets, etc. Fyi this is using Firefox 13.0 with all the “speed up” settings in the about:config that I have found. Keep up the good work.
How about a more visual pleasing and easy to find donate button? – I like this one a lot:
http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR-5bvKSR9yhfpQBGP7GasOKMYutQSq4XhALZXB_hudEG31RnOx7Q
Spellcheck wouldn’t have helped you, since “shout” is a correct word, just not the word you wanted. Read through your comment before you post, that’s the best “spellcheck”.
I would get rid of the left and right empty borders. All they do is take up screen real estate for only aesthetic purposes.
apologies if this has been suggested, but keep it simple and include hints or buttons for html coding e.g. “blockquote” “/blockquote” etc
JMHO
I favour keeping the discussion threads in chronological order rather than embedding by response. I’ve found it’s much easier to scroll for changes in discussion rather than having to revisit each thread. Sites that have + or – buttons and let you sort by “most liked” will often only have 1 “liked” comment on the top 2 to 3 pages with all of the linked comments below. I don’t want to see the responses, I want to see what the majority of readers actually support. If embedding of comments is what you chose to go with, please allow for the user to toggle whether to see the embeds, and default to “off” so that first-time viewers of an article can see the posts actually responding to the article rather than pages of discussing minutiae.
Oh yes, numbering of responses is a good idea. If a banned or obnoxious person interrupts the cue and has their post erased, don’t correct the numbers, leave them as an identifier. Gaps in the numbering will let the regular readers see which threads are being carpeted, and help raise appreciation for the wonderful job your moderators do. Moderators are a lot like the police or maintenance workers, when their job is done right, no one notices and recognizes all of the work that goes into keeping things running smoothly. Thanks mods!
As a developer using the WordPress platform, I believe you are making the right move by staying with WordPress.com. The security and bandwidth capability are worth it. Plus, now you can substantially customize a given theme, for an extra fee.
For a front page, I think you should always have the newest article on the top left of the page where everybody naturally looks for the newest information. I don’t think it is a big deal to have a window/section/block next to the new article where you can prioritize your sticky posts. That way it will be less confusing when you want to keep a post active, and on top.
You can change the header graphics, but we are all used to the current look. It is part of your brand.
I think you need to control the content of your sidebar. It is very long with lots of stuff. It is cluttered. You need to have a strategy for placement of ads, and consider what is important to put on the front page. But, that is why you are employing professionals.
So, shorten up the page. Put the sticky posts in their own block. Cut down on sidebar clutter.
Good luck.
Some kind of discussion forum facility – even one as basic as the one at Bishop Hill – could be massively useful as it will help to keep ongoing issues alive and updated separate from blog post discussions which soon go down the memory hole….
…please please please consider enabling such a facility!
Seconded!
I disagree with tallbloke: agree/disagree buttons can be very useful as long as anonymous replies are not allowed. Since our names and emails are already in your database, there is little possibility of someone spamming the responses. Simply don’t allow people who have not made (let’s make it up) 10 previous comments over a period of say 3 weeks or longer from being able to make a selection, with the only exception being someone who has already posted comments for that specific article. In other words, regular contributors and contributors to the current discussion should be able to “vote”. The options should be something like “I agree”, “off topic”, “excessively rude”, and the like. And there would not simply be a count – it must be possible to see who voted.
The chronological format if familiar and works well. One way to emphasize more important pieces with minimal interruption is to follow the model of Gateway Pundit Jim Hoff.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/
Right below the title bar on his front page Jim adds a shaded block of space containing the title/link for a “featured post.” Individual posts pages do not display the “featured post” title/link so that there is no confusion about the title of those posts.
The only difference I would make is to include the featured-post title/link in a section of the title bar itself, say in the upper right corner of the current WUWT title bar (but as Jim does, leave this off of the individual post pages). That would be better than Jim’s set-up, where the “featured story” title is still too intrusive, being in-line with the flow of his front page. Having it off to the side on the title would be minimally intrusive.
Some of us use Firefox. Be aware that it does not display comments on some blog sites, requiring a temporary shift to IE. This is NOT true of your current site. Please be sure that no changes impede display on any of the common browsers.
Rather than up/down voting, what is the problem with responding to a comment with a counter-comment? In the course of a thread, the truth is generally arrived at through back-and-forth discussion of the facts. And we can already vote on an article by clicking on 1 – 5 stars.
My 2¢: keep “The Look”, Anthony. It is your brand. Think about cost/benefit regarding any changes. If a change is not exceedingly worthwhile and beneficial, please leave it the way it is. People are comfortable with the current format. As someone pointed out above, Drudge has a very simple, stark format, and he claims more than 900 million page views a month.
WUWT doesn’t need to be fixed. It’s the Top Dog of climate sites. So any changes should be small and incremental.
/ 2¢
To the many people who have requested spell check – Firefox provides that capability. Therefore, there is no reason for WUWT to also provide that. Just find a better browser.
In addition, the size of the comment entry box is browser dependent. Firefox 13 has an icon you can drag to change the number of available lines, Firefox 15 no longer has the icon because, like IE8, the size increases as you type.
I use multiple browsers because the older ones tend to have features removed from the newer versions. Unfortunately, WUWT requires a newer browser because you can no longer post comments with my preferred older browser.
Open a Google+ Page please.
Hi Anthony,
By far the best interface for blogging I’ve encountered is that on Goodreads — see goodreads.com (it’s worth joining if necessary to experience it). You could ask the GR IT folks who provided it originally and what kind of add-ons they’ve built. It is awesome. The only thing it lacks AFAICT is a latex interface (and I never tried it for dropping graphics into replies). Otherwise, it counts characters on a (large) character limit, permits previewing and sequential re-editing (including edits after posting, although it does timestamp the last edit so people can see if you went back and edited out of sequence in a thread). It’s still not quite “perfect”, but it is damned good, and the GR people have been very responsive to user requests (they implemented several of my suggestions fairly expeditiously).
Specific features that your site could use include automatically indented and included replies — I spend a fair bit of time cutting and pasting, and am too lazy to decorate every inclusion with its origin, the ability to edit/correct your own replies (this would also make it easier on proctors), perhaps some quick navigation buttons for very long threads. I don’t like “like” and “dislike” (or “agree”/”disagree” buttons — science isn’t a popularity contest. I really, truly would like an easy way to drop graphs or graphics into a reply in a reasonably formatted way. And finally, the immensely useful “preview” before post feature, which also saves embarrassment and the need to edit after posting, especially when one is trying to enter e.g. latex and forgets a trailing $ or the like.
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Brian H says:
September 2, 2012 at 9:09 pm
I just did a search for “contol” and got 37,500,000 million hits!
I guess there are 37,500,001 people out there that need “spell-check”. 😎
As far as the site changes, on the home page I’d like to see, in addition to the number of comments on a post, the date and time of the last comment.
And, rather than muliple columns the ability to “mark” the comment being responded to so I can jump back quickly to where I was. Or a “reply” button that would open the “Leave a Reply” as a popup box.
Thanks for trying to make the site easier for the users, just don’t make it harder for you and the Mod Squad.
A couple of small suggestions:
Lose the “Recent Comments” index. This constantly changes, to the point of meaninglessness, and confuses spiders and crawlers that index otherwise sensible content.
In the Posts by Date calendar control, add arrow buttons to go back a month or to the next month, within the limits of storage.