Calling all - website upgrade coming, need your help

8 September 2008 - 9:51am — tech

This website is our primary tool for interaction, coordination, and attracting new members. We have been lucky enough to get attention and grow, however the site may not have kept pace. Based on your feedback, we are on to a revamp. The things we have heard fall in these main categories

Lots of content, hard to find and track them
Site is getting slower
Unfriendly for new visitors - they don't know how to signup, find posts, problems logging in etc
Need more tools for member-member interaction. Private Messages are not enough.

So we are starting on a project to address these issues over next few weeks. Towards that, we will appreciate some help from members. No, no, we aren't asking folks to come and code, not yet :) As of now, we need help in following forms:

Report problems you know (in categories mentioned above)
Help out with testing the new website (we have a separate testng-only website)
Suggest how you want the pages (frontpage, post pages) to be structured or layed out.

You can leave comments here, or simply send private message or email to "admin".

Comments

My items

swamy - 8 Sep 2008 - 9:59am

Have two separate home pages, one for regular members (veterans), second one for new visitors. You can educate new visitors about Praja and the website also on the second special home page.

Also, looks like only some people can blog, we can only post in forums. Please allow everybody to blog, anyway nobody has been posting bad things.

Orkut like scrapbook for all members.

Allow members to post pictures and documents.

Have a place for file sharing

srkulhalli - 8 Sep 2008 - 7:02pm

Have a place where one could upload files and one could point to them for discussion

Suhas

city based home page

silkboard - 9 Sep 2008 - 12:47am

Separate landing page for each city is a long pending request and amust do now.

Organizing the entire content efficiently: some points

psaram42 - 17 Sep 2008 - 1:55pm

The current Praja web site is totally mixed up. The whole site needs to be professionally organized. Currently there is “splashed up” text appearing all around, totally confusing the viewer. The primary reason may be that it is modeled on Google blogger style, which has to cater for the general public blogging. However Praja can do better as its agenda is specific to Praja. Some points that come to my mind are:

1. When some one enters the site through the link http://Praja.in/ a clean page should come up with a simple logo of “Praja” as it is now. The current logo is excellent. How ever the scenery Lal Bagh glass house, Court, Vidhana Soudha and greenery occupies a lot of real estate, giving the site a Typical Indian Babu looks. This could be done away with to save space.

2. This page should be for the general public and members. However members can login too if they wish so.

3. A page can be divided into say 3 zones, with each zone reserved for different sections, like Core activities, Site specific details and visitors / member specific.

4. The entry page zone-1 should contain the main activity around the blog entries of the content creators and the other Forum Topics thrown out for discussion by the other ordinary members. By clicking the blog button the list of all Bloggers should pop up, so that any one blogger can be selected. Then the all the blog entries and comments can be browsed in this window. Similarly the Forum topics via the Forum button. The Button Tree looks some thing like this:

a. Praja Logo

b. Blogs

i. Slik Board

ii. Tralesubba

iii. Etc

c. Forum

i. F1

ii. F2

iii. Etc

5. Similarly the entry page zone-2 button tree

a. About

b. Policies

c. Know

d. Care

e. Participate

f. Etc

6. Entry Page zone-3

a. Login

i. Box For name

ii. Box For Pass word

iii. Button Login

b. New Account

7. The Login Page Zone-1 Button tree

a. Blogs

b. Forums

c. Events

d. Etc

8. The Login Page zone-2 Button tree

a. New

b. Comments

c. Etc

9. The Login Page zone-3

a. Logged in member list

b. Chat

c. Conference

d. etc

10. Logout Button

Thanks

admin - 17 Sep 2008 - 2:18pm

Sir, thank you very much for your insightful suggestions. As we grow, we have been recognising the need to better organise the content on the site both visually and taxonomically. We are currently working on reorganising the site into separate subdomains to facilitate organisation based on cities. The next thing we are working in parallel is the redesign of front page and the whole website. Your suggestions are indeed very useful as users perspective. Rest assured that we will do our best to implement them. We do not have the luxury of dedicated technical personnel for running this website and most work is voluntary currently. This means that we dont see things moving as quickly as we wish. Please bear with us. Currently, we have launched a new feature called 'My Praja' that we suppose would be useful for logged in users to track their favourite topics and posts. Please have a look at it when you can (just click on 'My Praja' on the top menu). We would love to hear more from you and other users about the usability aspects and suggestions for improvement. -Admin

New look for website

admin - 24 Sep 2008 - 10:32am

Website has a fresh new look now. The change is part of ongoing works to make the site better from presentation and usability point of view. Feedback welcome, can use this thread itself. Or email/PM admin.

Developed in an ad-hoc unplanned basis

psaram42 - 8 Oct 2008 - 11:26am

To day was a lucky day for me on Praja Site. I found a (real life?) demolisher whose comment on an earlier thread on the same topic was precise and to the point. I also found a guy Postgraduate in Transportation Engineering, working in Infrastructure Projects in India/Abroad, who does a lot of research on road safety/traffic and other issues, who is senior to me in Praja.

Currently the site is a maze (Bhool Bhulaiya). By the time one masters the maze it is updated to an entirely new maze. My experience with lot of software is that the new versions keep the basics same till the next major overhaul is planned. Beta versions need to be evaluated first on guinea pigs. All this is well known. I do not have to repeat, I know.

While our comments on Praja issues (Know, Care, and Participate) could border on rants sometimes, it is not understandable when it comes to web design. There is no dearth of IT professionals in Praja community I guess. I guess one could/should be patient till Praja finds enough funds through sponsors to have the best site design, version 1.0 made. The Praja site is worthy of getting very good sponsors I am sure! I can be of some help if so desired, in getting funds. Kindly let me know.

Editing a post

psaram42 - 12 Oct 2008 - 4:28pm

When I edit my post, it is considered as a "new" post. This is not correct in a strict sense. It should be labeled as "updated". The "date posted" in that case, should not be changed. By changing the post date the sequence of posts also gets altered. You should either not allow edit after some time or consider treating it as "updated" post and not a "new" post. I also observe that the authors post edit option is not available, for the author at some places, where as it is available in some other places. Can this also be taken care of? Another suggestion is to provide subject wise sorting option in track.

Re: Editing a post

shas3n - 13 Oct 2008 - 4:19pm

Sir,

Thanks for pointing to these issues.

When you edit the post, the date on the post should not change. Can you please tell me to which of the posts did this happen? I tried updating a post but it only showed as updated and not as a new post.

I have changed the permissions on the site so that they are more uniform across the site. Can you please check and let me know if you can see the edit link on all your posts?

-Shastri

See post no 7 and 8

psaram42 - 14 Oct 2008 - 5:48pm

The post 7 has edit option but not on 8. Both 7 and 8 are my posts. I shoud be able to edit both.

I re edited this one. Both buttons were there.

..and are the numbers changing?

blrsri - 14 Oct 2008 - 6:10pm

I use the option of 'latest first' for comments listing. Think the numbering changes here!

by design

shas3n - 14 Oct 2008 - 6:28pm

I now understand where the confusion arised from.

By design, nobody can edit a comment that has a reply. So if you wrote a comment, you can edit it as long as someone replies to it. Once the comment gets a reply, you can no longer change the comment. This is by design so that nobody changes what they said earlier.

To know whether a comment has a reply or not, choose 'Threaded' option for comment viewing.

You will now see that since blrsri replied to your comment (and I to his), you wont be able to re-edit comment 8 as well.

-Shastri

Can't this be fixed?

kbsyed61 - 14 Oct 2008 - 7:24pm

Shastry, Last week itself I had brought this issue of Edit-reply to the notice of Praja admin. I was hoping that this will be fixed. But your comments leaves more confusion- whether this will be fixed, can be fixed and can not be fixed? If you are trying to design based on the philosophy of not allowing edits to the postings which has replies, then edits to comments without replies doesn't make any sense. That prompts for no edits whatsoever. Period. As a user, I will urge and request Praja admin and development team to allow edits for all posts - with replies or with no replies. That way if there are any mistakes, typos, corrections, it can be edited. Syed

Some more points

psaram42 - 16 Oct 2008 - 8:40am

Some points I would like to make 1. Reply button for self not required 2. Add New Comment button should be provided at bottom 3. When some body replies a post the author should not be allowed to edit later. It is a correct decision, I don’t agree with you Syed on this point. 4. Is Post replying same as add comment? Post Comment would be better? 5. Post Reply/comment should be at the end of all posts too. Other wise one is tempted to use the reply button on the last comment visible, which is not a reply intended. 6. Every post should have date and time posted details. The original date and time of a post when first published should never be changed. Why can’t we follow some basic standards regarding such issues? 7. In fact it would be a good idea to achieve basic standards for the site on priority before embarking on more ambitious or ad hock projects.

All noted

tech - 16 Oct 2008 - 1:55pm

Working on most of them. Comment box not being available on the post page itself is due to a technical issue which will be fixed soon. Also, looking for a way to simply disable "reply" to comments. That doesn't serve much purpose. Instead, we need a way to "quote".

Watch for the fixes, we are at it.

A quick comment...

Ravi_D - 16 Oct 2008 - 5:53pm

When I directly go to bangalore.praja.in, I see no direct access to forum entries or activities. There is a dedicated frame displaying forum entries on praja.in though. Don't you think forums need to be better highlighted? This will encourage new members (who can only create forum entries) to start new entries. Thanks, Ravi

Date and time are important

psaram42 - 19 Oct 2008 - 6:28pm

I find no date or time on any of the posts: Comments forum topic or blogs. Date and time of any item comming up on Prja site is important I think. Hope it can be fixed.

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