waraxe

digitex :: no offense… but holy smokes, no! 😉 Coporations need a CLEAN, professional and subtly sophisticated site where they can attract people to their REAL business (whatever that may be). Yours is more like a carnival… not that that’s bad for you, just bad for corporations that don’t want to look like clowns. 🙂 Check out a couple corporate websites to see what I mean.

Maybe I’m a dope but I never knew about the Flash-enabled Flickr interface thing.

…and of course I can’t get it to accpet my Flickr ID. Indeed, I am a dope (at least tonight).

I agree with Spencer. He worded it very well and used enough smileys that only those with the tightest of orifices could take offense. 😉

Also, I might mention to DGold and leroyleroux (both without site links) that not including a link to your blog leaves others who you are looking for help from to sometimes make assumptions and guesses about where you’re coming from.

Also again, don’t confuse a blog with a forum. They are different beasts. Their human-machine interface is (or rather should be) different. A blog does not usually make for a good forum. I hate to do this, but take WordPress.org for instance… this support section is really used as a forum, but in a blog format… IMHO, it is not the correct solution.

Forum software usually lists MANY threads going on and they are usually in order of when they were started. This has a few benefits. If you are returning to a specific thread you can remember when abouts it falls in the timeline so you can find it again. Have you ever tried finding a previous thread here with search? 🙂 Good luck. And if you return to a forum thread it usually has a marker indicating it has new content… which for forum threads is easier than marking threads with new content by physically moving their position. Moving blog posts around to show activity only confuses the matter. Posts that could be very valuable are susceptible to being pushed into irrelevency by newer ones, and the older valuable posts become lost. I see this time and again on this site, as well as a hoard or others. This is part of the reason why people ask the same questions over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over….

Forum software sometimes allows the ability to reorder comments in the threads by search relevancy, commenter rating, value points awarded, and some other ways. Not usually blogging software… but that’s fine because that’s not what blogs are for. A blog… short for Weblog (coined many years ago by some guy who now doesn’t have a lot of money – seriously), is a different entity with a different user paradigm from a forum… with different purposes and different use-case models.

Forum software works poorly for a blog, and blogging software works poorly for a forum. If you want to get sketchy and claim that modifications and subtle user interface customizations could turn a blogging software (like WordPress) into a forum-viable platform, then I would suggest that you are merely using the generic database query engine as a back-tier and rewriting the blog software to instead act as a forum front-tier. Basically, coding forum software into a blog so it’s no longer a blog. So in essence you aren’t using the blogging software anymore for your forum. Otherwise, any solution requiring text entries could use blogging software… CMS, Forums, B2Bs, and the list goes on.

I know that a person does not need a master’s degree in IT to understand this… but mine sure helps me. 🙂

Spencer :: Yeah… don’t be sop quasi-belittling. The Diet Coke of belittling. 🙂 No, really, you had some good suggestions. A seperate page would be better.

leroyleroux :: Seriously now… you’re probably new. Now imagine down the road you have a blog with a hundred posts. I visit and have no idea what’s new or what’s where… because every time someone comments the order of your index page posts change?! Holy smokes… think about this. I may read a post I see, then want to go back and read the next one (because it looked interesting) only to find it gone because it got pushed down by “new” posts from months ago!? And I think I already read them but I’m not sure… perhaps I don’t realize I’ve already read them until I get halfway through them and then I’m annoyed.

I’m not saying it wouldn’t be a cool add-on on a seperate page or something. I just think your readers will be better served by leaving the index page organized in a non-random order (reverse chronological works best).

If you want people to see what posts are generating the most interest you can do this with the plugin I mentioned before. Check out my site to see this in action… it’ll be on the right labelled Latest Comments.

M’lady, in IE the Featured Guest sidebar header is partly covered by the content below it (FF is fine). ‘Tis a tragedy. 😉

I can tweak dark themes… that’s just my game. 😉

Nice!

Clean and classy. I could see where this would be very popular.