Sites we like

[rtaquelim]

What are your thoughts on maintaining the list of the sites we like at the bottom? On the old template this list looks amateurish, i'd much rather have a look such as the one featured on Engadget (at the bottom).

Your thoughts

[Haas11]

You mean like the categories; Tech, Design etc. that Engadget features?
for the rest they're pretty much the same right?

I guess we could sort them in categories, although as always... they overlap

[rtaquelim]

We don't need to sort them into categories, we could keep the general listing as we currently have on the old one. I was just suggesting a slightly more professional look.

[Haas11]

oh right I see.

I like the image of the little twitter bird poking its head through the page just above the links. Not sure why it's there but it looks nice. I say he's a keeper. (or she? ;)

[rtaquelim]

Could you paste your suggestion onto the Social Network thread please? :-)

[JStMartin]

From an SEO perspective, including that many outgoing links on each page is a bit destructive (pagerank bleeding). I could do a dedicated page called Sites We Like and list them all there with and image and a bit of information about each site. I could put a link to that page in the footer. This reminds me of old school SEO link trading pages! :)

Will that work?

[rtaquelim]

If you reckon that will jeopardise our overall page rank than it's not worth it. Would that "sites we like" page have the same effect on our ranking?

[JStMartin]

No a separate page shouldn't do any harm. It's only when you put so many outgoing links on every single page that worries me. Link swapping pages used to be fairly common.

We can leave this open and implement. Please paste in all the sites you want listed. Thanks!

[rtaquelim]

Cool, let's go with that. The list is at the bottom of our frontpage, so it'll be easy for you to copy it. Or, teach me how to and I'll do it :-)

[JStMartin]

These are here in case we migrate to the new site before implementing this feature.

Greenpacks EcoOficial Ecologist Greenpeace Friends of the Earth Earth Watch AE News ScienceDaily DailyTech SingularityHub The New Ecologist

Robots.net GoRobotics Robotic Trends LabAutomation News GenEng News Hydroponics Guide ACS Publications Treehugger The Future of Things GizMag Technology Review

NanoTech Now NSTI.org PhysOrg MRS Space.com SpaceDaily SpaceVidCast PopSci TechCrunch Gizmodo Materials Today

Scientific American EurekAlert MIT News Stanford News NewScientist SAGE ScienceBuddies Discovery News The Green Optimist Slashdot LiveScience

The Zeitgeist Movement The Venus Project ZDay Media Project NASA Kids Education City EdHeads Scientific Method UberGizmo Wired KurzweilAI

[rtaquelim]

Yep, those are the chosen ones ;-)

[rtaquelim]

Is this done? If not, Joe I could do it as long as you tell me how. ;-)

[JStMartin]

Nope. Milestone is 1.1. Delete the Resource page you made for this. Create a Page node. Make the title Sites We Like. Make a list of links appear how you like. Add it to the Footer secondary menu maybe? Administer > Site Building > Menus > Footer secondary (/admin/build/menu-customize/menu-footer-secondary). Enter title for the menu item and the page's path. See what the page's path is after creation, for example, "/sites-we-like", or "/node/1234". You can see the node ID (number) by editing any node an look at the address - "/node/9/edit" - or just hover over the edit button and look in your browser's status bar. Look at the other menu items for examples.

Or, re-edit the node after creation and in the right column under Menu settings enter the desired info. Weight is how you control list order. -50 is highest at top and 50 is lowest at bottom. Menu list order/weight is drag and drop when you edit through /admin/build/menu-customize/whatever.

[rtaquelim]

I'd rather it stayed in the Resources section, unless anybody has an issue with it. I have corrected it, so it looks a lot nicer now - with a link to our Terms of Usage

R

[JStMartin]

I think the sites we like page should be a Page node type. What we have here is a ton of resources inside one resource and I don't think it looks right. Ideally each site listed in the sites we like list should be on their own individual resource node. Each site resource would have its own explanation, photos, and links.

Since that is probably not feasible(?), what we essentially have here is like an old school links exchange page. These are normally linked from the footer. I can fix this for you if you agree (copy/paste to a Page node and delete the current Resource node). If not, just leave it as is.

Or maybe individual resource nodes are best? It's a bunch of work but would make for a bunch of good original content. A short write-up on each site, photos, links, etc..

[rtaquelim]

It definitely looks awkward and old fashioned, I'll give you that, lol.

Individual resource nodes would probably take days to complete, and it could run the risk of having some of them not working after a while. I noticed that when I was migrating the links some were no longer active or have been compromised, such as Hydroponics Guide.

How about we do the image and description for the main ones (the ones we're both using loads and know they'll be around for a while) and leave the rest as a list?

[JStMartin]

Sounds good. So all of the reliable sites - individual resource node for each.

If you still want to link to the less reliable ones, it should be a Page node containing all of them. That could then be linked in the footer menu. But since that footer menu link is highly visible, I'm thinking we should include all the links to all the sites on that Page node.

With resource nodes, over time old resources will be pushed off the main resource listing page and won't be highly visible.

I hope that makes sense!? :)

I think a Page node with all sites listed linked from the footer is most proper. Also easy. Then maybe only a handful of really good sites we could also give them their own individual resource node?

[rtaquelim]

I prefer the latter to be honest. We already have banners advertising the main ones anyway...

I like what Engadget has at the bottom of their frontpage: http://www.engadget.com/

We could have what you suggested, a column style listing like they have, but rather than accessing it at the bottom of our frontpage (like Engadget) we could go with your suggestion of having a link in the footer (next to terms of use).

Your thoughts

[JStMartin]

The Sites We Like (page) node is done. http://dev.zeitnews.org/sites-we-like I deleted the resource node. I added it to the footer menu - you mentioned "(next to terms of use)" so I put it in the secondary footer menu and moved Authors up to the primary footer menu.

If you really want to do an Engadget-like footer menu, reopen or create a new issue. It's gonna take some work (re-theming).

[rtaquelim]

Re-theming? Gods no!! It would be an unnecessary waste of time, it would mess up the gorgeous new frontpage, it'd look silly. No, what I was suggesting is to have what Engadget has but inside the node. So, when people click on that node in the footer they would be directed to the sites we like page, as they do right now. The difference is that, rather than that ugly listing I published, it would be in columns like we see in Engadget.

Catch my drift?

[JStMartin]

Yup I still get the emails even though the issues are closed. We can make the links into columns. It will take custom HTML though that I'd have to do. Give me a visual mockup and I'll do it.

[JStMartin]

Ok going to come up with some columns for this page a la Engadget and see if Ric likes it...

[rtaquelim]

At home in bed, drowsy, dehydrated and feverish. Watching reruns of Family Guy and American Dad... I'm sure it'll look fine :-)

[JStMartin]

What do you think of this Ric?

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/69058676/zeitnews/sites_we_like_cloud.mp4

I ran into this and thought it might be cool. If you don't like, I'll do columns.

[rtaquelim]

That is freakin' awesome!!!

Do it!! :-)