Home › Forums › Coffee Break › New Site–New Forums!
- This topic has 44 replies, 23 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 5 months ago by kimberly-rowe.
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September 28, 2012 at 3:54 pm #102496Amy WilsonParticipant
I hope that my comments will be addressed as well!
Amy
September 28, 2012 at 7:24 pm #102497SylviaParticipantI agree.
September 28, 2012 at 8:52 pm #102498kimberly-roweKeymasterWell, I have tried to bite my tongue, but I’m afraid I just can’t after these last few comments. To be clear, the current site has to change because it uses antiquated software that makes it impossible for us to post news and event updates in a timely fashion. In addition to maintaining these forums that you all love, we also want to let harpists know about what’s going on in the harp community worldwide and that isn’t happening with the current site. So we have spent quite a lot of time building a site with lots of features that we think are really cool, but which you can easily choose ignore if you don’t like them. The new site still contains forums, and while they might look a little different at first, we are taking all your suggestions into account in an effort to design something that will work for you the way you want it to. To that end, please post your website feature requests here: http://musicstand.harpcolumn.com/forums/website-issues-and-feature-requests
Hugh is reading every request and working very hard in his spare time to implement them all. I’m sure he’d much RATHER be volunteering to register voters.
September 28, 2012 at 9:06 pm #102499diane-michaelsSpectatorI thought i’d chime in here just to add some balance in case people who haven’t been to the new site are reading this first. I’ve been playing with the site since July and can see so many positives about it. And Hugh has been an amazing web master, listening to our endless critiques during the beta stage and making tremendous progress in its appearance, ease of use and content, so know that your input will help this new version grow into something really wonderful.
There have been many occasions where the needs of the harp column community exceed the parameters of this site – I’m thinking about things like sharing fingerings, getting various bits of information about a piece in one place (like is it in print, which edition(s) are available?) etc… which the new site handles beautifully. And there is more user control with edits, too – something I really appreciate! Additionally, some of the threads that get started here – like “what’s on your stand” can really be developed so fully on the new site, away from the forum.
Ultimately, we all love Harp Column for so many different reasons, but with this new version, some of the users are going to find new ways to love it. The forums will be there for those who only want to use them, but I think there are many in this community who have been the inspiration to expand the notion of an online harp community and I can’t wait to see this new site serving everyone in the future.
September 28, 2012 at 9:39 pm #102500jennifer-buehlerMemberThanks Kim and Hugh for answering my questions!
September 28, 2012 at 10:25 pm #102501Philippa mcauliffeParticipantWe really like the new ideas about the library and musicstand
September 28, 2012 at 10:58 pm #102502elizabeth-annParticipantAs a college-aged harpist, I am LOVING the new website design. I feel that the layout in much more intuitive and it’s nice to have the news updated on a daily basis. (I’m hoping they might add a ‘like’ button similar to Facebook.)
Certainly, there will be a temporary learning curve while everyone adjusts, but it seems like a very small price to pay in comparison to all of the hard work that has gone into making this new site. I doubt that HarpColumn would spend lots of time on a project that was unnecessary, so I’m sure that there was a reason that the new site was needed. It sounds like there are lots of improvements and new features for users to enjoy. I know that I appreciate HarpColumn’s continuous efforts to provide us with a forum to connect and share ideas!
September 29, 2012 at 5:53 pm #102503Lynne Abbey-LeeParticipantOh my goodness (OMG), people! Some of you sound like me when I was five and tried spinach for the first time! Or (if my memory serves) like the emperor to Mozart in the movie Amadeus – “Too many notes!” Or like that first audience of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring! The new Harp Column website may or may not reach the same exalted status of the above examples, but do you really want your reactions to join the ranks of those early detractors?
September 29, 2012 at 5:55 pm #102504carl-swansonParticipantKim and Hugh- First off, my apology if I sounded offensive. That wasn’t the intention. It was late at night, I had spend about 20 minutes trying to figure out how the site works and was getting nowhere.
The problem I have with many sites on the web is that there is a confusion of information on each page. I have to search all over the page, scrolling up and down for 15 minutes to find out how to do something. I end up hitting endless buttons until, by accident, I hit the one that makes the computer do what I wanted it to do, and by that time, I have no idea what I did that made it happen. The new site, and it’s new home page is to me like a big wall with sticky notes pasted all over it at random. If I search long enough, I will probably find what I’m looking for and figure out the route to get there. But I shouldn’t have to do that, and I didn’t have to do that with the old site. It was perfectly clear from day one how it worked and how I had to navigate around it. I think the problem with the new site-and I run into this all the time with my computer guru who sets everything up for me-is that it may seem obvious to someone whose whole life is computers, but it is not obvious to someone like me. I hope as you work on this more that you bring in a couple of people who know almost nothing about computers, ask them to do this or that on the new site, and then stand back silently and watch what they do. Ask them to talk out loud as they try to do what you want them to do so you can hear what problems they are having.
The old site has very clearly defined sections on the home page. The new site in my opinion does not. On the new home page, the right hand column has “LATEST BLOGS AND POSTS.” Which is it? Blogs or posts? I like seeing the various categories in a list, going to one of those, and reading, in the order they were posted, the whole conversation. I don’t want to have to read the latest post for some thread on the home page, then click on that to find the thread it is commenting on, and then looking for the begining of the thread. I shouldn’t have to do a fishing expedition every time I want to read the latest commentary. Seeing the ‘LATEST POSTS” on the home page presents them out of context. These LATEST POSTS work for the moment because for the most part they are the first post for a possible thread. What happens when you’ve got 25 posts on a thread and what appears on the home page is post #26? Do I then have to click on that, have it take me to the thread, and then figure out if the thread started at the top of the page(like the old site) or at the bottom, with the latest post at the top of the thread?
I just clicked on the first post, something about Paraguyain harps. To get to that thread, I couldn’t click on the text of the post, but rather the title of the section it is listed under(Harps and Accessories). But that didn’t take me to the Harps and Accessories section, it took me to the Paraguyain harp thread. To get to the Harps and Accessories page and the various listings, I had to go first to the Paraguyain Harp thread and then click on Harps and accessories. This seems confusing. Also, the post on the home page shows you what the person wrote, but doesn’t show you the subject title. So I now have to sit there and read some of each post on the home page to figure out what the subject is. Once there are 15 or 20 posts on a thread, this is going to get very confusing without the thread title at the top of the post.
September 29, 2012 at 10:57 pm #102505carl-swansonParticipantHere’s another example of what I consider to be very confusing page design.
September 30, 2012 at 1:23 am #102506Briggsie B. PeawiggleParticipantI like it. 🙂
Briggsie
September 30, 2012 at 1:36 am #102507HBrock25KeymasterHey Carl.
You’re completely right about the event links on the upcoming events portlet on the front page — that link should go to the public events page, not to Hester (the site mom’s) page. There are so many contingencies in sites like these… Anyway, that’s a bug, I’ll put it on the list.
The Library (under the “pieces” tab) is actually one of the things I’m most excited about on the new site. We’re hoping that harpists in the community will go here and add pieces that aren’t already there, or comment on those that are, in the process creating a wikipedia-like thing for harp music — basically a free (as in open-source software free) discussion and catalog of harp repertoire. I need to work on making the sorting and filtering on the library clearer, but the idea is that if you click through to one of the pieces there, you (and any other registered user of the site) should be able to edit it to correct mistakes, and comment on it (or respond to comments). Imagine if we had some of the discussion between you and Jane Wiedensaul preserved in the comments on the Faure Impromptu? What a scholarly resource, right?
Anyway… I know I have a lot of work yet to do to make this more usable, but I think when you get the idea of the vision of the thing you’ll be as inspired as we are. In the end we’re trying to do two things: Get more harpists talking to each other, and keep the resulting ferment of ideas preserved for the future in a really well organized, searchable way.
I really appreciate the usability comments and please don’t be afraid to continue posting them — I’ll do my best to get them addressed.
Thanks,
–Hugh
September 30, 2012 at 1:56 am #102508HBrock25KeymasterHmm… I was unclear… by “correct mistakes,” I didn’t mean correct mistakes in the actual piece… I meant correct mistakes in the data about it, like the year written and the edition and the spelling of the composer’s name and so on.
A site that would allow you to correct “mistakes” in composers’ work would also be interesting, but probably out of scope for now… heh…
September 30, 2012 at 2:00 am #102509HBrock25KeymasterGeorgina, thanks, and I hear you on the font size. I’m going to poke around with fonts and sizes and type color on the new site to try to answer the many complaints I’ve had on this issue.
As far as the layout, I’m aiming to make the new ones hold up to the spirit of these if not the letter. It’s all completely new code so getting there is an iterative process. Please keep the suggestions coming!
–Hugh
September 30, 2012 at 2:02 am #102510carl-swansonParticipantHugh- Maybe you need to put at the top of each category page a paragraph as to what the page is there for and how to use it, as you did in your second paragraph above. For the pieces page for example, there should be an explanation at the top that says, in part, if you fill in the boxes under Browse pieces, X will happen. If you fill in the box that says Find and View a Single Piece, X will happen, etc. Because right now, I don’t know what is supposed to happen when I fill in those boxes. Am I filling them in to see something already up? Or filling them in to add something to the page?
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