Weblog entry #161 for Steve
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Today it is my elder sister's birthday. Which reminds me that I shall turn 31 in four days...
In other news I've been revisiting the idea of a small "tips" section for this site, a summery of which will appear upon the front page in place of the security update notices - which are available elsewhere.
The intention is that the tips will be :
- Short snippets of text with a title and a collection of tags.
- Unmoderated
- Although questionable content may be reported for removal.
- The tips will be searchable, and there will be an RSS feed of new additionons.
I'm not 100% convinced they will be a success given the relatively small number of article contributors - however if the content is much smaller and looser then it might encourage people.
Suggestions welcome for additional (simple!) facilities, or means of encouraging submissions.
Comments on this Entry
Sounds like a good idea. Were you planning to have it as a random tip when the page loads or a daily tip? Either way might want to get a bunch added in first so that there is a little bit of a buffer? (ie so that there isn't the same tip for a month!)
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I figured the front-page would show the most recent N tips, probably 5/10.
Then from each tip page there would be links to next, previous and random.
The only part I'm struggling with is the searching. Adding a simple "tip search" would be simple enough - but that would mean searching in two places for things - tips & articles.
I think the better solution is to overhaul the site-search so that it can search more things; weblogs, tips & articles.
PS. Thanks!
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-Tom
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Yes - I figured that was redundant.
The other page(s) should only show relevant options such as edit/bookmark,etc.
A good example is the tag cloud which shows real-time updates of recent additions.
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Your idea of a small "tips" section is a good one. Writing articles is a daunting task (to me at least), especially when i'm trying to live up to the thoroughness and quality of the rest of the d-a site.
That said, folks are already sharing tips in their weblogs right now. what's stopping folks from just using the tagging features to highlight the entries that have tips in them?
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Nothing really, although it is easier to see them when not mixed in with other content.
It has been raised as a suggestion in the past, and I think that was probably before weblog tagging was added so it might be redundant now.
Still the code is live, and we'll see how it works out.
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I think a tips section would be a nice addition. I don't contribute articles because I just don't have the time to devote to it, but tips and workarounds I might post as they come out of the daily grinder. And I might be able to use a few that others might post, too, especially now that I've bitten the bullet and upgraded to AMD64.
As always, thanks for the excellent site. Be well!
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