You may have noticed a fair amount of this already, but I thought it was worth summarizing some of the improvements that we’ve brought to the site, largely in response to your comments and concerns, over the last few days.
- Comments: The commenting system is vastly improved from where it was when we launched last weekend. Most importantly (from my perspective, anyway), you can now see and search for “new” comments since the last time you viewed a page. Also, there is now a “Preview” feature on comments, and there is a thumbs-up/thumbs-down rating system.
- Promotion: We have resolved a few bugs in the promotion system that may not have been evident from the outside, but that were making it difficult for us to promote posts to the front page and to “Page 2.” Now that these have been fixed, we can take full advantage of the excellent contributions from BMGers to keep the front page as lively as ever.
- RSS feed. There was an issue with the RSS feed, which I think has been fixed. Please let us know if you are still having problems with it.
We are aware of a few outstanding issues that will be, we hope, resolved quite soon. These include:
- Recommending. We are working on improving the algorithm that determines what is in the “Recommended” list so that it more accurately reflects the amount of interest recent posts have garnered from the community (this will include taking away the ability to recommend your own posts). We will also be implementing a way to view who has recommended a post, and an “unrecommend” option.
- Editing. At the moment, once you publish a post, you cannot edit it. We are working on resolving this (the problem has to do with the way the new BMG Network works). In the meantime, if you publish something and then see an edit that you desperately want to make, please email us and we’ll take care of it.
- Duplicate posts. The “Recent Posts” list currently contains every post, including those on the front page. We think that’s unnecessary, so we will be changing the list to include only those posts not already promoted to the front page, Page 2, or the Recommended list. That will allow everyone to see more content on the site at any given time.
- “My comments” list. Several users have requested a way of seeing a list of all your comments in one place, just as you can see all of your posts at bluemassgroup.com/author/NAME. We’re working on that and hope to have it in place soon.
Several of you have commented on the speed with which BMG now loads, as compared to Soapblox. WordPress is simply a better and more stable system than Soapblox, and our developer/host has invested heavily in creating an optimal environment in which to run it. Also, as we move forward, we hope and expect to start implementing some of the many features that are now available to us as add-ons. Because WordPress is open source and is very widely used, a lot of people are always working on improving it. We look forward to taking advantage of their creativity.
As I’ve said before, we very much appreciate your input and your patience as we continue working through this transition. Do keep letting us know what you would like to see.
Such as my unintentionally, and unfortunately, placing the “Ads” and “Links” pages on the front page. Live and learn. :-/
I just tried to post a comment with a blockquote but it didn’t show up when I previewed it. Italics doesn’t show in preview either.
Test of blockquote.
Great job with everything. Very impressive changes.
I was traveling and I couldn’t read the page – it keep bouncing into tweeter. Not sure if I like the layout or not – it’s different and clean.
That sounds peculiar – can you explain what you mean? Maybe it’s something we can fix.
using safari not logged in, I try and open bluemassgroup and it bounces me into http://twitter.com. Tried straight safari and it works fine – it’s my password manager Must be a bug between my password manager/Safari and my Ipad.
drop me an email and I’ll give you further info url is correct
by chance? Just want to make sure we are testing the right browser.
last pass
I had a tough time finding a post I had left a comment on from a couple weeks ago that had dropped off the recent posts list. I was able to find it by going to another post and removing the name of the post from the url, leaving only the http://vps28478.inmotionhosting.com/~bluema24/2011/04 part, which revealed some kind of calendar and archives. I then had to click on “older posts” three or four times before finding the one I was looking for.
I think there should be a link to the archives from the front page, probably right below the list of recent posts, and it should display at least 20 or 30 posts per page.
Also, it isn’t loading very fast for me. I see the logo and the top post on the front page right away, but can’t scroll down because it’s loading, and the sidebar is blank until it loads the Page Two and recent comments after probably five or six seconds. RedMassGroup by comparison loads in about a second (though some annoying blogfeed pops in to the sidebar a few seconds after that, moving the recent comments down right when I’m trying to click on one, grr)
I’ve added a dropdown for the Archives. You’ll find it directly under the Recent Posts list. From that dropdown, you can quickly get to any month you desire, and then either view the full month’s archives, or click on a particular day.
Not sure why the site wouldn’t be loading more quickly for you. No doubt your frequent visits to RMG have something to do with it. 😉
Yeah, that’s a neat way to do it. But word from the IT department – don’t do things so fast or they’ll start to expect that every time…
I like that if I click on a front-paged post’s title that I go to the head of the post, but if I click on “Discuss (XX comments)”, I go directly to the comments. The previous BMG didn’t do that and I wasted precious seconds of my life 🙂 scrolling down to the comments.
Whether intended or just a part of the WordPress upgrade, thanks!
I’m having a hard time adjusting to the new look, but I have no complaints. The unfamiliarity has a somewhat chilling effect, I think, on people’s willingness to dive right in, based on the numbers of comments I’ve seen lately. Personally, on an entirely frivolous note, I like the purple and blue combo. lol.
and who gave a thumbs up or thumbs down?
Liking it more every day. .
on making the names of recommenders available. Coming soon.
As of now, there’s no way to identify thumbs-up/downers. That’s an off-the-shelf plugin. We’ll see what we can do.
This is a blockquote.
This is not. Have they been fixed?
And do we have auto-formatting? Like *bold* or _italic_?
Wait… my “blockquote” got turned into a perfectly normal paragraph! And “blockquote” is not in the list of allowed HTML tags under this comment window! Can we get blockquotes back, please?
And I miss the auto-formatting… the strike-through was pretty annoying since it relied on hyphens (and so sentences with two hyphens often ended up getting struck out), but being able to surround words with *asterisks* for emphasis was very nice. Much easier than typing the HTML tag. Any chance of bringing it back?
I see the “blockquote” has returned to the list of allowed tags under the comment.
As for formatting, the * and square-bracket options aren’t available. However, there is now a series of buttons in the shaded “Preview” bar that allow you to highlight text and then add the HTML automatically. Should be just about as good. 🙂
Mmmm… not just as good, but I’ll take it. 🙂
(“Just as good” is a pretty high bar, when the original was a one-character shortcut I could use without moving my hands from the keyboard. Just sayin’. 🙂 )
The “thumbs-up” and “thumbs-down” ratings provide almost no information in the absence of knowing *who* cast the vote. When I write a comment that expresses a strong point of view about a contentious topic, a thumbs-down from someone who I know and respect is VERY different from a thumbs-down from someone who I know and usually disagree with.
I’d like to see a rating system that preserves the identity of the participant giving the rating.
And one of the thumbs up on his comment is mine.
Two more things.
First, the RSS feed (showing in Firefox as a Live Bookmark) is now incredibly long — maybe 50-75 articles on it. I actually have to scroll down to the bottom to hit “open site”.
Second, the colors and layout still don’t seem effective to me. I think it would make sense to have the original post a slightly different color than the replies to the post. Maybe even change the “housekeeping” information on the post (poster, time, etc.) to be a different color than the body of the post. It’s just not pleasant to read, for some reason.
Would it be possible for you to send a screenshot of what you are seeing so that we can better understand the color issue that you are experiencing? Thanks! blue [at] bluemassgroup.com
I wouldn’t call it a “color issue” — this is mainly preference, though I like to think that my preferences aren’t out of the mainstream. I feel like I’m working harder to pick out the things to read among all the whiteness. I checked with RMG to see what the difference is, I think that the old BMG had harder breaks between posts — the color of the rule was thick width light grey on top, medium width dark grey on bottom. Now there is just a very thin, very light grey rule between posts.
I found that changing the title bar of each post to a different color helps separate things. I’m doing this on my end, via Stylish, so no worries.
As for the formatting … I guess I’m not sure what you mean. On Soapblox, the background was always white (except in the sidebars); the author was blue; the title, timestamp, and text were black. Here, the title and author are blue; the timestamp and text are black. Frankly, I don’t see a lot of difference, except that I think the font here is nicer.
Are you looking for something different from what Soapblox had? If so, can you give an example?