Hey everyone, remember BYOND Labs? No? Well this was where we were going to be telling you about all the big updates going on with BYOND. Unfortunately the development of BYOND 4.0 sort of swallowed up everyone's time, and so many changes happened so quickly it was just impossible to keep up. But now, it's time to clear the dust because we're doing Web site updates.
The really new part is that I'm finally jumping into the fray myself. This week I've been learning the ropes of the database and the site layout, and as part of that I've made some minor tweaks. So without further ado, and in no particular order:
Blog posts have easy-access permalinks now. You can right-click the (link) by each post and copy the link so you have a quick way of referencing someone else's post.
When viewing a post all on its own, you'll automatically have links to the previous and next posts.
When viewing a particular post, the blog calendar date will reflect that post, not the most recent one.
Website poll boxes can be set to expire. No longer will you have a poll listed on the side of your blog from three months ago just because you haven't posted a new one since. Well you can if you want, but you can set it to expire after so many days. The poll will still be there and people can still vote if you haven't closed it; it just won't clutter your main page with outdated content.
Posts can now be given a "blurb" which appears instead of an excerpt in a post listing (like on the main members page, or a guild). This is largely to support guilds such as Dream Makers that want to behave more like e-zines.
Not bad for just a few days, huh?
Oct 10 2007, 8:45 pm
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Ter13
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It's re-aliiiive!
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Excellent work. I'm very impressed by how quickly you picked this up.
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Love the (link)s !
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Awesome. Maybe I'll do some lobbying around the home so I can pay for my membership. :)
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Cool. I realized the need to perma-links to the posts from the start. It's not as big a deal now, because when you click a post on the main members page it automatically takes you to that post only(a feature I'm not fond of), so you address bar has the correct address in it. But it's still nice to have.
I'm glad to see more work going back into the site. We are still kinda shy of the move from hub to guilds. It seems like it's still a 50/50 thing right now, so if this quickens the steps to 100%, that's great! | |
Now only if you allowed <embed> tags in our blog posts and/or custom content. I have flash cartoons I make and I'd really love to feature one of them on my main page.
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Very nice!
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I think it would be better if the titles for all blogs on the main page take you to the perma-link, because the little (link) links to me makes for terrible usability.
That's just me though. | |
GoodDoggyTreat wrote:
I think it would be better if the titles for all blogs on the main page take you to the perma-link, because the little (link) links to me makes for terrible usability. I think you mean terrible "design" - the (link)s are perfectly useful. Not that you're one to talk about design, you apparently have something against MouseOvers. =P | |
I'm not sure what you mean about the move from hub to guilds, DB, but better integration of the member/guild sites and hub entries is a big part of our to-do list. If you have suggestions that you think might make things easier for you on the guild level, by all means please share them.
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Well, I thought the main point was to make Guilds replace the hub, yet games.byond.com is still around. It really feels like a separate part of the site. It doesn't match the guilds at all. Granted, all the links link to guilds, but it still feels separated. Also, the default design for the guild games lists needs some work. It just isn't very pretty.
I really feel like it should be http://members.byond.com/games/ in both address and looks(or perhaps guilds.byond.com/games/). Also, RSS feeds on the guild forums would be great(although bandwidth/cpu consuming as I understand it)! | |
Evre wrote:
GoodDoggyTreat wrote: Bad design makes for bad usability! | |
good job!
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