Need advice

[bubosquared]

The in-progress new design of the RS-X archive is up here. This is very much a work still in progress, but you can get the general idea of how it's going to look.

What's changed:

• Major design rehaul;
• Files are organised into subfolders;
• Stories are organised completely different from before: first by type of fandom, then alphabetically by fandom (on last name for indivicuals), then alphabetically by title;
• Stories in fandoms whichare no longer rare (and thus no longer archived) will be moved to a seperate page;
• Links are organised into categories as well;
• There's info on how to submit stories and how to join the list.

(Edit: Forgot to say, story links don't work except for O Canada, which I quickly recoded to give you an idea of how the stories will look.)

Do you think this is looks good? Especially the organisation of the stories page I'm worried about. Should I split it into three seperate pages -- actors, musicians and other -- or leave it like this? Is it easy to navigate?

Comments

[lido-kitty.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's good like this. Especially with the actor/musician, etc... cross-overs, it would be more work than it's worth with three different pages. And it's not like there are *that* many people/pairings, anyway. On a page this size, navigation isn't a probleM.

You don't need any help coding stories and such, by any chance? Because, blah, am incredibly bored, and (basic) coding is fun. Or I could still go play Collapse, of course.

Oh, and there's a typo in "individulas" (indivicuals) in the Stories page.

Re:

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but I'm putting links to crossovers under each of the seperate headings anyway (eg the Mick jagger/David Bowie is under David Bowie and under The Rolling Stones). And I think the page might become a bit unwieldy if I leave it like this -- especially since the stories linked as of now are maybe half of them.

Actually, if you'd be willing to recode some stories for me, that'd be great. I'm neurotic about how the code should look, though, so you'll have to put up with that. If you're still willing, I'll drop you an email with the story template and pointers to where the stories are now.

And ack! Thanks, i've not run a spellcheck through the pages yet. ^__^

[lido-kitty.livejournal.com]

Ahh, okay. In that case, I'd finish it first like that, to see how it looks. If it gets too crowded, you'll pretty much only have to copy/paste to create the different pages.

And yes! I'm absolutely and entirely willing. Anything to save me from the horror that is boredom on a national holiday. Just send the stuff at lido.kitty@wanadoo.fr, and I'll start on it asap.

Re:

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

Good call. It's a lot easier to finish coding (as it involves a lot of c&p'ing and switching pages all the time would drive me nuts) and then split them up.

Email has been sent. Feel free to not do much or whatever after all. No obligations. But thank you.

[asilvahalo.livejournal.com]

I would split up the pages into Actors, Musicians and Other.

Re:

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

Me too. ^_^ But is it good otherwise?

[asilvahalo.livejournal.com]

A little sparse/plain. But very well organized and navigable.

Re:

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

Hm. I was trying to keep it as sparse as possible, to go easy on people's bandwidths and stuff. But once the actual structure is in place, I was planning to add a banner and maybe a background for the /admin and the main story page.

[rsadelle]

I would definitely keep it sparse. This may be a more general femgeeks.net problem, but it's loading really slooowwwlllyyy for me. Also, we've been over this before, but I don't like the smaller font. I think it's harder to read.

Re:

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

Hm, it's loeading okay for me now, but it was really slow at work. I just figured it was the connection there being slow again.

I'll fix the font in the final version; the best solution will prolly be to not specify a font size so people can use their own preference. Is the arial readable, or would a serif font be better?

[rsadelle]

The font itself is readable, just a bit small. Some of us old people have failing eyesight, you know.

It's working faster now, so maybe the femgeeks server was being slow.

My two cents

[coneyislandbaby]

Overall, I like the design (I'm a fan of sparse and easy to negotiate web pages).

I think actor, musician and other might work - will other include crossovers, though? Or will they get a separate link. Like if I ever go mad and write that JC/Matt story I thought of when I found out Matt auditioned for The Mickey Mouse Club when he was younger...*g*. Really! I don't even have to make this stuff up!

And *puzzled look*:

Stories in fandoms whichare no longer rare (and thus no longer archived) will be moved to a seperate page;

I thought you (or Dara at the time) archived stories in no-longer-rare fandoms anyway? Did that change and I didn't hear about it?

I'm always the last to know these thing...*g*

Re: My two cents

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

Crossovers will be listed under both/all fandoms seperately.

Yeah, but that was when the idea was to have an all-encompassing multi-fandom RPS archive. Right now, it's really nothing more than a list archive, and I needed to make things clearer and easier for me to handle. :/

Re: My two cents

[coneyislandbaby]

Ah, good.

Oh, and that's not the idea any more? I liked that idea (I know how much work it would be, though).

Makes sense now. Thanks for letting me know.

Re: My two cents

[bubosquared.livejournal.com]

It's not even just the work of the archiving itself, it's also that it would require people to send their stories to me on their own, or me going out and looking for things to archive, which is what I'm really not willing to do anymore.

Re: My two cents

[coneyislandbaby]

Ah. Well, probably people would send them if they knew they could, but I know what you mean about not being willing to search them out - since when did RPS get so big anyway? Still, it's a (mostly) good thing.

And on another note - thank you for the list discussion - you know which one. It's helping. It really is.