We at the tech team are happy to announce new and improved navigation features on Praja.in. These will be launched today. We hope that the changes make it easier for our users to find, read and create relevant content on the site. Read on to know more about the new navigation.
Changed front page
The homepage of Praja (http://praja.in) now has a simplified look when you are not logged in. It has a small slideshow to tell what Praja is about and leads to creating or finding discussions. (We are currently working on improving the looks of the graphics and buttons on this page). This design is done keeping in mind the new users to the Praja community who want to understand what Praja is about.
When the users login, the front page will automatically change to a more personal version. This page is the centre of all the action on Praja for all the users.
PrajaBytes
At the top of this page you will find 'PrajaBytes' box which you can use to share brief updates. Use this feature to tell others what you are currently doing (Praja related, or otherwise) in a maximum of 140 characters. Below the Chikka Chokka updates you will find updates about other users who you chose to follow. Their recent posts, comments and other actions appear for you to click and know more about. If you want a particular user's updates to appear here, just follow them by going to their profile page.
On the sides of the new front page are the links for your account settings, creating new posts, event calendar and other related links. We will add more content to this page as we go along.
Changed navigation menu
The menu at the top of the site now has changed to make it more relevant and easy to use for both new and old users. You can use this menu to create various types of posts. The latest posts, comments and top rated posts are also accessible from this menu.
In addition, you can use 'topics' menu to navigate quickly to the topic of your interest.
We have removed other un-used menu items and have consolidated the help menu.
We hope these changes make the site easier to understand, reduce confusion and allow users to interact with the community better. As usual, we would love to hear about your feedback on this new interfaces, especially on things that you think are not working on need to be improved.
-Tech team
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Comments
A shortcut to help you adjust
While the tech spruce up the discussions/analysis/projects pages one by one, you can access the old-styled discussions front page using this URL which is still active: http://praja.in/en/home
Suggestions
Why not have public timeline where you can see updates from all users for Chikka chokka' box like identi.ca or subject-based timeline. I think this is more useful in the beginning. Anyway you can see this option if you log in.
Another suggestion is to give ratings for suggestions also.
When I press back button after clicking links from second tab, I always come back to the first tab in the front page, I hope you can change that. I appreciate you new and interesting changes.
"Most Discussed/Commented" Tab in Front Page
1) This will probably give highlight on issues currently people talk about. This is somewhat different than Top Rated posts. If implemented hot/urgent topics will be prominent.
Format a) :
Subject No. of comments Last comment on
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Navigatio on... xxx 3 mins ago
Format b)
"New Navigatio on Praja" is most discussed with xxx comments, last comment 3 mins ago.
Alternatively, Sorting option also good idea for "Active" Tab. People can sort based on Author, Topic or # of comments to find out topics of their trend.
2) For those who prefer old navigation, can you retain it using cookies ? But with a link to new look. Hence old timers will have advantage of legacy look.
Help page is too verbose
This help page is too verbose to be understandable. A good way would be to have a screen shot of a typical home page and explain the features using callouts.
Their recent posts, comments and other actions appear for you to click
Is it possible to color code them differently? Maybe not.
roadhumps in residential areas/unscientific roadhumps
I had suggested removal of illegal unscientific road humps as they cintribute for accidents/fall espcially for 2 wheelers.To my knowledge no big city/metro has this kind of "road safety measure".Even the high court has ordered removal of these backbrakers. These are got erected by the people close to their houses.
Can't Bbmp instruct their contractors to not erect these and instruct their staff to get these removed ?
allotment of P I D numbers to newly added C M C areas
As all are aware the newly added areas for formation BBMP need to be reorganised by alloting PID nos to the property in addition to identifiyng main roads,cross roads house nos etc as these areas had I D nos in terms of survey nos /khata nos etc allotted by erstwhile GP/CMC
I guess this is one of the task for BBMP which may help them to recover property dues.
don't post here please
Mr Rao, you should go to menu item on top of this page "Create Post", then select "Blog Entry", and then write these as new posts on Praja.
By leaving comments here (this is a post about website technology), you will not reach the right readers.
About Making a consolidated complaint page in Praja
I just happened to create a single link for online complaint systems for Bangalore utilities. Just to make it at one place for me to start with. Even though it is not user friendly, it brings all complaint forms together.
--- Cross posted from here.
As silkboard suggested offline, it would be great to have it within praja.in.
I quote :
"How about we build such page on Praja itself, should be able to make an interactive page fairly easily."
Site Tech Team, for your consideration please.