Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Back

After net problems and being stuck up in some work, back after break of 3 days.
Update: 4 new users, 0 new posts


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Saturday, June 23, 2007

For text only files

After listening to many complaints by people visiting the site, a (amateur :P) feature for uploading text only files has been incorporated. The text then uploaded will be viewable in form of online text. If any problem is faced, post it up :)

I got a mail today from a person named Lavanya, suggesting that I keep the posts only for people who are logged in. It reminded me of a feature that I had thought of but was at back of my mind for a while. That is introducting closed groups and communities where files uploaded will be viewable only by people of those groups.
Suggestions to this idea invited ...


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Friday, June 22, 2007

Summary

My author friends on this blog have made quite a few good points regarding how the website can be improved.
1) Being able to read text files online without downloading/uploading them
2) Improving the classification and flow of database on website
3) Improving the tab structure
4) Introduce tags

I am working on first option and its nearly complete. Hope to incorporate in the website by tomorrow.
But I often think that most of these suggestions would be relevant only when there is material on the site, of if, presently there is just about nothing :)

In few weeks, site will go have many additional features

I have not been advertising/spamming ppl since 2 days, so ... :)

Update: 4 new members, 0 new posts :)


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Thursday, June 21, 2007

Categorize and organize

Leaving beside the presentation and technicalities, commenting on the bare and basicity of the contents posted, I would say that it is absolutely essential to categorize and classify the postings. Let the contents posted be a complete literature/writings and convey the complete data and not just an aphoristic phrase.
Categorization will help improve the browsing experience and ease to find relevant entries.
Let it develop into a comprehensive database and not just social networking prototype.


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Future direction

First thing is to improve the interface as suggested to me by many ppl as well as and also mentioned in the post below ...
that is .. for giving an option to users to read text file online instead of downloading every file that is tedious ....
Same also to be done then for image files.
A suggestion column .. but that is not needed presently, for ppl have access to my mail id as well as this blog which is specially for this purpose.
Tags have to be there ofcourse, but that will come after 1 month or so cause that will involve quite a bit of change in database.
However, the important step that now has to be taken is to finalize the aim or vision of the site, to take it out of its present anonymity :)
A closed community of few hundred ppl to interact among themselves and go through each other stuff??
or sumthing else??
Suggestions invited

Another point is, if I spam 10 users, 1 user logs in and if 10 users log in, 1 will make a post, and 1 will come back again.

Update: 8 new users, 0 new posts :)


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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Some ideas

This is more of a review of the web site and as a member what I would like to see in the web site.

The site could certainly use recoloring, instead of the existing color. Use a dark background and a light color text, say blue background and white, or blue background and yellow text etc.

In the login window the tabs need not be there, actually the tabs are not necessary at all. It is just my personal opinion. The tabs need not be there t all. Instead have a frame, have a vertical navigation or horizontal or even better have a menu that would "Category " which contains the sub menu like "Science" , "Business" etc.
Instead of the upload tab make that also as a menu option and make it "Submit"
Once I login the login information need not be displayed, well if you insist you can displayed it at the top of the page
Well the whole idea of have to download and read the content well I am not comfortable with that. If i want to read it I would read it on-line. So instead re-organize the material page.
First name it in such a way that it conveys the meaning that people get the idea that they are going to read some thing. You need to have more categories not just "Science" or "Business", allow the user to create a tag or category fir his/her writing.
Layout could be like

Title:
Category/Tag:
Summary:(This should be just one-line summary)
Content:(This is where the user actually submits his content)
Now the rating part
Have more rating option say : presentation, idea,content flow, consistency of writing, you can add few more like readability, over all quality.
Suggestions (this column would suggest how to improve)

The when presenting the material the table is actually required. You can have this layout

Title Author, Rating(if there is no rating, don't display 0 (zero) leave it blank) , Instead of genre have the text as "Category/Tag". If you want to have a table have it without the borders.

Have a search option, you can use both combinational search and a simple search.
The main idea would be to have it like a on-line library, where any body who is registered can come read and contact the author, if you know what I mean.

Guess I did too much on the ideas thing. Let me stop it here

Nothing personal meant, just my ideas and some of the idea which I have implemented in some of the software that I worked on.

Any way there is a similar web site called http://www.fanstory.com/index.jsp, have a look at it.

Anand.V.V.N


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Tedious

Point is, marketing (salesman kinda) is boring :D
Neither do I have brand name or the SEO capabilties, I am an amateur. So, what I can do is the spamming stuff: that is, either posting link of my site on other discussion forums or sending message individually to ppl.
I hate them both, but in second option atleast you get to talk to interesting ppl.

Second point is ... is the site offering anything different from others???
Ok, I have rating of posts and users and also linking of related posts and extension of posts.

BUT, there is no fundamental difference as of now. And ofcourse many ppl at first sight will see it as near to a blog site .....
So, its like an amateur peneteration attempt in a saturated market.

UPDATE: 12 new users and 2 new posts in last 2 days since its been launched .....


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Sunday, June 17, 2007

Revamped!!

Ok, there were some initial lazy attempts, but then I the whole site is now revamped.
Ofcourse, its not the final attempt, its lets say an initial draft. I will now begin to advertise it. Lets see how many come to this draft ....
Last comment, site www.idea-hub.com intends to be a community of amateur creators, and this site looks amateurly created :)


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