www.intermittens.org DEVELOPMENT THREAD

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Ok, I have a basic site up at www.intermittens.org. I'm looking for feedback and people interested in doing graphics etc.

Also, I only have the text of a couple articles in the archive. This is mostly for feature testing etc.

Registering will give you access to submit articles.

UPDATE: Existing Editors get registered and PM me, I'll upgrade your accounts so you can access the back end to get to new articles etc.

[Triple Zero]

okay, time for some feedback it's going to be critical though.

what's your idea with this site? cause so far it just looks like a sort of vague blog-like, maybe social community, or perhaps whatnot unclear thing, website?

the purpose of the site is very unclear to me. what's the search function for? what happens if you log in? where are the already published intermittens issues? what's with the "buzz" and "past articles" tab? why aren't they in the main column?

so, here's what I'd like to see, on the frontpage of a website for Intermittens:
- a short three sentence paragraph explaining what Intermittens is, with a "read more" link to a longer article about it (like Cram's text that is currently at the front page)
- another short three sentence paragraph explaining the relation of Intermittens.org to the Intermittens magazine (basically a "what this site tries to be"), possibly with a "read more" link as well (although I think this doesnt really need more than one paragraph)
- a small newsfeed/blog (comments disabled) with updates about the site, the project, new issues, editors, etc. again, short bits, just to show what's going on and that the project is alive.
- in a sidebar, a vertical list of thumbnails of all the Intermittens covers up till now. they link either directly to a downloadable PDF of the issue, or a subpage of the website for this issue, perhaps showing a table of contents or something. also put the not (yet) published issues in this list, but clearly mark them "(unpublished)" (you don't want to have to click the link to find out, or hover your mouse cursor over it to see if it's a link, etc).
- it seems you want it to hold a repository of articles. so, another sidebar (or something) showing the titles of the last, say, 10, articles that have been put up the site. maybe marked with "#3" to show which issue they belong to.
- if you're going to have a search form, make sure it says what it searches, the site? the articles? all issues of Intermittens? comments? are people going to use it so often that it should be on every page?
- similar for the login form. why do you want to log in? or register an account? right now people have to register and then log in to even find out what would be their advantage for doing so. that's not much of an incentive. make the form smaller, but have it say "log in to ... (whatever it is people get to do when they log in)", and next to the "Register" link, a smaller link saying "Why register?" with a small article telling you that if you register you get a free cookie and are able to submit articles (people are going to want to know why submit them there, not email them to the editor, post them on the forum etc. will the editor be notified, will you post new submissions to the forum? the wiki?)

and now some more criticism from a web development point of view.
- putting the entire site in an iframe makes it impossible to bookmark or link to specific pages.
- although if I jump out of the frame and look at the URL "http://intermittens.theinvisiblecollege.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49:how-to-make-what-i-had-for-dinner&catid=34:intermittens-issue-1&Itemid=53 " I can imagine why you'd want to hide that. any reason why it needs both the title of the piece, three different kinds of IDs, the filename and extension of the script running it all in the URL? answer is no, http://www.intermittens.org/articles/how-to-make-what-i-had-for-dinner/ would be enough.
- the HTML is absolutely terrible and top-heavy. layout is done with a mixture of tables and DIVs with inline style definitions. this is not just code-aesthetics, but it's heavier for the browser to render. which you can feel as slowness and clunkiness in scrolling and using the site (at least, on this old windows 2000 machine).

- did you try the registration screen? how many flashing stuff, automated checks and tiny icons can you possibly need all just for entering a username, an email and a password? you gotta admit, it's maybe a bit much
- now I'm logged in. The extra feature is .. that I can submit articles, that it? do I need a profile for that?
- Actually, submission doesnt work (in Opera), I type some text, press "Save", get a Javascript alert with an error message (seems like some debugging code left in, JS errors dont usually pop up in an alertbox) and nothing happens.
- I absolutely despise TinyMCE btw. It's 350kb of code. The toolbar is mystery meat (gotta wait for the tooltip to see what a button does). It has a zillion options you don't need, the HTML it produces is unvalidated and insecure, it's anything but tiny. and it appears to exist for the single purpose of allowing customers to completely wreck your carefully designed page style (sorry I got bad experience with this, I could rant about TinyMCE for hours)

now I understand that this is all standard Joomla stuff, and that a lot of these features aren't under your control. but this is exactly what I don't like about overcomplete CMSs like this. it's like using a Hyper Mecha Droid 3000 Ultra War Planetblaster in order to step on an ant.

and I'm sorry if I sound a littlebit bitter or perhaps condescending in this critique. but websites like this just piss me off. so remember, it's not you, it's websites like this

[Faust]

the intermittens url thing is my fault, I have the intermittens url and I cant foward it on properly.

[Phineas T. Poxwattle]

I've been meaning to pick your brain about the site on IRC but I think we've been missing each other by like ten minute intervals for at least a week.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

okay, time for some feedback it's going to be critical though.

what's your idea with this site? cause so far it just looks like a sort of vague blog-like, maybe social community, or perhaps whatnot unclear thing, website?

My idea is this:

1) A place to download current and past PDF versions of Intermittens.
2) A place to submit articles, anonymously (if desired), to Intermittens.
3) A place for Editors to search through and select submitted articles. (backend)
3) A place to search past articles individually. (Archive)

the purpose of the site is very unclear to me. what's the search function for? what happens if you log in? where are the already published intermittens issues? what's with the "buzz" and "past articles" tab? why aren't they in the main column?

The search function will search through archived content. My thought was that each issue would be avaailable for download, until the new issue came out. When the new issue comes out, we simply publish the individual articles into the archive. The format is different, but the content is the same. So in the current build, I have two sample articles that I pulled from Issue #1. Once I get the text for all of issue 1's articles, I can have all of those published in the archive. When Intermittens #3 comes out, all of Intermittens #2 can also be published into the archive (and be searchable).

The already published Intermittens Issues are in the "Issue Archive" tab. Right now there is only Issue 1 there, but Issue two can join it when #3 comes out.

The "buzz" was just something I pulled off of the Wiki and threw up there. I think it was a promotional material kind of idea. So I tossed it in to see if tit would be useful.

EDIT: Take a look at the modifications I made. All of those were solely template option mods

so, here's what I'd like to see, on the frontpage of a website for Intermittens:
- a short three sentence paragraph explaining what Intermittens is, with a "read more" link to a longer article about it (like Cram's text that is currently at the front page)
- another short three sentence paragraph explaining the relation of Intermittens.org to the Intermittens magazine (basically a "what this site tries to be"), possibly with a "read more" link as well (although I think this doesnt really need more than one paragraph)
- a small newsfeed/blog (comments disabled) with updates about the site, the project, new issues, editors, etc. again, short bits, just to show what's going on and that the project is alive.

That's all pretty simply done Though I had planned to have a "About Us" area rather than on the front page. I was hoping to maintain the front page as the digital version of the magazine. Thus I was publishing the Editors intro for each current issue.

- in a sidebar, a vertical list of thumbnails of all the Intermittens covers up till now. they link either directly to a downloadable PDF of the issue, or a subpage of the website for this issue, perhaps showing a table of contents or something. also put the not (yet) published issues in this list, but clearly mark them "(unpublished)" (you don't want to have to click the link to find out, or hover your mouse cursor over it to see if it's a link, etc).

Well all of that is available in the tabs at the top. The first tab is the Current Issue with downloadable links ()fixced today, since I just got the PDF's ). The second tabe will host all older articles in PDF format, downloadable (as Issue 1 is currently) and the third tab shows the cover art for all upcoming Issues that have published cover art, I'll change out the publish date from a hover to a caption though

- it seems you want it to hold a repository of articles. so, another sidebar (or something) showing the titles of the last, say, 10, articles that have been put up the site. maybe marked with "#3" to show which issue they belong to.

That's the Issue Archive tab on the left. I will show the last X number of articles and the Title which can include the Issue Number.

- if you're going to have a search form, make sure it says what it searches, the site? the articles? all issues of Intermittens? comments? are people going to use it so often that it should be on every page?

Good point I should probably label it "search past Intermittens" or something like that. I have it on every page currently, but I could limit that to just some pages.

- similar for the login form. why do you want to log in? or register an account? right now people have to register and then log in to even find out what would be their advantage for doing so. that's not much of an incentive. make the form smaller, but have it say "log in to ... (whatever it is people get to do when they log in)", and next to the "Register" link, a smaller link saying "Why register?" with a small article telling you that if you register you get a free cookie and are able to submit articles (people are going to want to know why submit them there, not email them to the editor, post them on the forum etc. will the editor be notified, will you post new submissions to the forum? the wiki?)

Yes, my idea was to include this info in the "About Us" area. Mostly the registration is only for article submission, so that Editors can contact authors (anonymously if they want to use a gmail account or whatever). That's about it.

EDIT: Oh and also the profile would be visible to readers of the articles in the Archive. "Who's this author? 'click'" kind of thing...

and now some more criticism from a web development point of view.
- putting the entire site in an iframe makes it impossible to bookmark or link to specific pages.

Not my preference, Faust's DNS options were limited to a redirect. The site is also visible at intermittens.theinvisiblecollege.com sans iframe.

- although if I jump out of the frame and look at the URL "http://intermittens.theinvisiblecollege.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49:how-to-make-what-i-had-for-dinner&catid=34:intermittens-issue-1&Itemid=53 " I can imagine why you'd want to hide that. any reason why it needs both the title of the piece, three different kinds of IDs, the filename and extension of the script running it all in the URL? answer is no, http://www.intermittens.org/articles/how-to-make-what-i-had-for-dinner/ would be enough.
- the HTML is absolutely terrible and top-heavy. layout is done with a mixture of tables and DIVs with inline style definitions. this is not just code-aesthetics, but it's heavier for the browser to render. which you can feel as slowness and clunkiness in scrolling and using the site (at least, on this old windows 2000 machine).

Well, I haven't turned on SEF etc yet, since this was still dev phase and I usually leave pretty URL's for last.

EDIT: http://intermittens.theinvisiblecollege.com/index.php/last-issue/49-how-to-make-what-i-had-for-dinner

- did you try the registration screen? how many flashing stuff, automated checks and tiny icons can you possibly need all just for entering a username, an email and a password? you gotta admit, it's maybe a bit much
- now I'm logged in. The extra feature is .. that I can submit articles, that it? do I need a profile for that?
- Actually, submission doesnt work (in Opera), I type some text, press "Save", get a Javascript alert with an error message (seems like some debugging code left in, JS errors dont usually pop up in an alertbox) and nothing happens.
- I absolutely despise TinyMCE btw. It's 350kb of code. The toolbar is mystery meat (gotta wait for the tooltip to see what a button does). It has a zillion options you don't need, the HTML it produces is unvalidated and insecure, it's anything but tiny. and it appears to exist for the single purpose of allowing customers to completely wreck your carefully designed page style (sorry I got bad experience with this, I could rant about TinyMCE for hours)

I got two submitted articles from you. But I'll have to take a look if theres a javascript popup error, that shouldn't be happening. TinyMCE is one of several options we can toss in there. I haven't bothered to pick a default and I think thats the Joomla default.

The Reigstration was checking for a valid email and if the username was free. I set up the valid email script to run, rather than try to send email to verify accounts, but I shut off the name checker. If people try to use the same uid, it will make them resubmit, rather than checking when they fill out the form.

now I understand that this is all standard Joomla stuff, and that a lot of these features aren't under your control. but this is exactly what I don't like about overcomplete CMSs like this. it's like using a Hyper Mecha Droid 3000 Ultra War Planetblaster in order to step on an ant.

All of this stuff is configurable mostly through CSS and php templates. Mostly I had access to several magazine friendly toys that usually cost money but I could pick them up at no cost for Intermittens as a side to other projects. If you would rather build it in Drupal or hack you own code from scratch, I don't care. I think that this option is pretty configurable and should be quite easy for Editors to use on the backend. But, if someone wants to do it differently, I don't mind. This site took about 4 hours to build/tweak, I figured it would at least give us a stepping off point.

and I'm sorry if I sound a littlebit bitter or perhaps condescending in this critique. but websites like this just piss me off. so remember, it's not you, it's websites like this

... in some sense

[Triple Zero]

1) A place to download current and past PDF versions of Intermittens.
2) A place to submit articles, anonymously (if desired), to Intermittens.
3) A place for Editors to search through and select submitted articles. (backend)
3) A place to search past articles individually. (Archive)

ok that's really cool. use these points for the short "what this site is for" piece.

The search function will search through archived content. My thought was that each issue would be avaailable for download, until the new issue came out. When the new issue comes out, we simply publish the individual articles into the archive. The format is different, but the content is the same. So in the current build, I have two sample articles that I pulled from Issue #1. Once I get the text for all of issue 1's articles, I can have all of those published in the archive. When Intermittens #3 comes out, all of Intermittens #2 can also be published into the archive (and be searchable).

The already published Intermittens Issues are in the "Issue Archive" tab. Right now there is only Issue 1 there, but Issue two can join it when #3 comes out.

on the wiki there's more front pages available already, might be nice filler to put them there as well, but without link to download?

also, I still rather see the issues in a sidebar, vertically. it just makes more sense to me. tabs like that are very uncommon in webpages, usually a click triggers a complete page reload, so users are hesitant to click a tab, even if it turns out to be quite fast and AJAXy, cause the first page load already was 400+ kilobytes. plus it requires an extra click, instead of a quick overview. making it an AJAX-tab does not make it very different from being a separate page on a fast site.

The "buzz" was just something I pulled off of the Wiki and threw up there. I think it was a promotional material kind of idea. So I tossed it in to see if tit would be useful.

problem is, the link+image bit looks just like i'd expect a link to an intermittens issue to be. a link should explain what it's linking to. if this is meant to be a collection of stuff/graphics people can use to advertise intermittens, you need to explain that in or near the link. also the buzz/promo page requires a "Call to action", which can be as simple as "please hotlink this image to repost at forums or communities you think will be interested in Intermittens!" (but probably stronger than that). if hotlinking is undesirable, mention this. without a call to action, people will think this is promo already used to promote intermittens, instead of promo created with the intention of being copied/linked for users to spread intermittens.

in addition, tell them what to link to. maybe even give them a TEXTAREA or three with HTML, BBcode and such for easy copypasting.

EDIT: Take a look at the modifications I made. All of those were solely template option mods

don't see it, what's different?

so, here's what I'd like to see, on the frontpage of a website for Intermittens:
- a short three sentence paragraph explaining what Intermittens is, with a "read more" link to a longer article about it (like Cram's text that is currently at the front page)
- another short three sentence paragraph explaining the relation of Intermittens.org to the Intermittens magazine (basically a "what this site tries to be"), possibly with a "read more" link as well (although I think this doesnt really need more than one paragraph)
- a small newsfeed/blog (comments disabled) with updates about the site, the project, new issues, editors, etc. again, short bits, just to show what's going on and that the project is alive.

That's all pretty simply done Though I had planned to have a "About Us" area rather than on the front page. I was hoping to maintain the front page as the digital version of the magazine.

yes, but it needs to be done, if you want to draw users to use the site. now it takes effort to figure most stuff out and it's just people that already have a vested interest in Intermittens that join. but these people would already be using any means necessary to spread Intermittens, and your site has the potential to draw in these extra resources.

- in a sidebar, a vertical list of thumbnails of all the Intermittens covers up till now. they link either directly to a downloadable PDF of the issue, or a subpage of the website for this issue, perhaps showing a table of contents or something. also put the not (yet) published issues in this list, but clearly mark them "(unpublished)" (you don't want to have to click the link to find out, or hover your mouse cursor over it to see if it's a link, etc).

Well all of that is available in the tabs at the top. The first tab is the Current Issue with downloadable links ()fixced today, since I just got the PDF's ). The second tabe will host all older articles in PDF format, downloadable (as Issue 1 is currently) and the third tab shows the cover art for all upcoming Issues that have published cover art, I'll change out the publish date from a hover to a caption though

with some proper layout and usage of screen real estate, you could have all this info on the front page without hiding it behind multiple tabs.

tabs in webpages are usually used as some sort of menu-options, that trigger a complete page reload and go to a different section of the site. contrasted to what you'd expect in a non browser GUI, where a tab just reloads a section. also it requires a click action. which just means something different on a webpage than in a GUI. (even if GMail and such wants us to believe otherwise--notice how slow they are)

i suggest you take a look at what content and information your site offers on first load, without any clicks. then check out a bunch of other magazine-like websites, especially the ones with a LOT of information on their front page. try the sites of some (mainstream-ish) magazines you admire, especially the ones with good design and the ones you'd expect to have a high quality webpage.

- if you're going to have a search form, make sure it says what it searches, the site? the articles? all issues of Intermittens? comments? are people going to use it so often that it should be on every page?

Good point I should probably label it "search past Intermittens" or something like that. I have it on every page currently, but I could limit that to just some pages.

I think just having one entry in the main menu "Search" that goes to a search page (kinda like PD forum) would be enough?

- similar for the login form. why do you want to log in? or register an account? right now people have to register and then log in to even find out what would be their advantage for doing so. that's not much of an incentive. make the form smaller, but have it say "log in to ... (whatever it is people get to do when they log in)", and next to the "Register" link, a smaller link saying "Why register?" with a small article telling you that if you register you get a free cookie and are able to submit articles (people are going to want to know why submit them there, not email them to the editor, post them on the forum etc. will the editor be notified, will you post new submissions to the forum? the wiki?)

Yes, my idea was to include this info in the "About Us" area. Mostly the registration is only for article submission, so that Editors can contact authors (anonymously if they want to use a gmail account or whatever). That's about it.

well that info needs to be written, then also, I still think it may be better to have the "About Us" link be a small paragraph (in a box, somewhere) doing a very short intro, with a "more about us" link to that article. it's slightly more user-friendly that way (in the sense that it does not require a click if the paragraph is enough info), but since About pages (in the horizontal top menu, always) are so ubiquitous, people would know where to find them, so you could potentially skip the paragraph on the front page.

and now some more criticism from a web development point of view.
- putting the entire site in an iframe makes it impossible to bookmark or link to specific pages.

Not my preference, Faust's DNS options were limited to a redirect. The site is also visible at intermittens.theinvisiblecollege.com sans iframe.

that really sucks. i hope Faust didnt pay too much for the domain name then. can't he do anything about that? cause I'd pretty much prefer the invisiblecollege subdomain, in that case.

- did you try the registration screen? how many flashing stuff, automated checks and tiny icons can you possibly need all just for entering a username, an email and a password? you gotta admit, it's maybe a bit much
- now I'm logged in. The extra feature is .. that I can submit articles, that it? do I need a profile for that?
- Actually, submission doesnt work (in Opera), I type some text, press "Save", get a Javascript alert with an error message (seems like some debugging code left in, JS errors dont usually pop up in an alertbox) and nothing happens.
- I absolutely despise TinyMCE btw. It's 350kb of code. The toolbar is mystery meat (gotta wait for the tooltip to see what a button does). It has a zillion options you don't need, the HTML it produces is unvalidated and insecure, it's anything but tiny. and it appears to exist for the single purpose of allowing customers to completely wreck your carefully designed page style (sorry I got bad experience with this, I could rant about TinyMCE for hours)

I got two submitted articles from you. But I'll have to take a look if theres a javascript popup error, that shouldn't be happening. TinyMCE is one of several options we can toss in there. I haven't bothered to pick a default and I think thats the Joomla default.

ok. one thing I think TinyMCE can do, is to disable a lot of tags. you only need a few. H1, H2, H3, H4, P, A, EM, STRONG .. and something for images. but the point is that people shouldnt want to create the layout of their article in that editor. hell, they shouldn't even be trying to write it in their browser unless they're retarded. and the layout should be for the editor to make up, as long as they get to specify paragraphs, emphasis and headings.

now I understand that this is all standard Joomla stuff, and that a lot of these features aren't under your control. but this is exactly what I don't like about overcomplete CMSs like this. it's like using a Hyper Mecha Droid 3000 Ultra War Planetblaster in order to step on an ant.

All of this stuff is configurable mostly through CSS and php templates.

CSS templates are nice. PHP templates really aren't.

If you would rather build it in Drupal or hack you own code from scratch, I don't care. I think that this option is pretty configurable and should be quite easy for Editors to use on the backend. But, if someone wants to do it differently, I don't mind. This site took about 4 hours to build/tweak, I figured it would at least give us a stepping off point.

yes!

don't worry man, that's why I said, I'm being critical, but it's meant to be constructive criticism.

but you already got a good foundation down, my advice is just to dress it down in some parts cause simpler = better (tabs, tinyMCE), and improvements in other areas (front page view, clarity of links and function).

no way I'm gonna redo this in Drupal (it's PHP) or hack my code from scratch, maybe once I get some skillz in Django, I can have a go at stuff like this, but I can't code large web projects in PHP anymore.

and I'm sorry if I sound a littlebit bitter or perhaps condescending in this critique. but websites like this just piss me off. so remember, it's not you, it's websites like this

... in some sense

what do you mean? seriously Rat, you know I respect you a lot, right? clunky websites piss me off yeah, but only SOME (but not all!) of the people building them piss me off. and you most definitely are not one of them. for one thing, I completely understand that Joomla is a great solution for developing community-style websites. it would never be my tool of choice, but you have a lot of experience with it and that counts for a lot. I don't even have a tool of choice for community websites. and sometimes doing with what you can easily get is way better than masturbating over what you could create if you'd make it from scratch. (i dont think i would make a community site from scratch however, but look if there's something in the Django repository) [btw in case you dont know, Django is not a CMS framework, but more like a Ruby On Rails kind of thing framework--PHP Cakewalk is like that too, iirc]

anyway, it looks good. if Joomla is the tool, let's see what we can make it do. if it's got a "sandbox" theme (like wordpress, one with plain semantic HTML) I could even work on the design. not gonna fuck with PHP templates, however. also I won't have time for that until a few weeks.

[nurbldoff]

I've suddenly got a lot of time on my hands and could do some graphics for you, if you tell me what you need.

[Cain]

Suggestion: the site really, really, REALLY needs a direct download link for those who don't want to wait for Adobe Reader or Foxit or whatever lameass pdf program one uses to spend 20 odd minutes warming up before it actually loads the issue.

Because seriously, if anything else took this long, I wouldn't bother with it.

[Reginald Ret]

Agreed. i still dont get why pdf's are so popular.

[Cramulus]

Re: Intermittens.org development

-I'm still not clear on how to start an issue on IM.org. Is there a way to do it at the user level, or only admin?

-when you click "Submit an Article" you should also have the option of submitting an image.

-it'd be nice to have a forum, shoutbox, or other way to communicate on the site

-when I submit an article, I get an error, but the form still seems to submit. Now I'm not sure how to find my article. Is there a way to see the articles qued under each issue?

-what's the function of the Editor's Corner section?


-edit to add: gray text is hard to read.

Agreed. i still dont get why pdf's are so popular.

If I'm sending a document, it's the only way to ensure you're seeing the same fonts and layout I am.

[Cain]

Agreed. i still dont get why pdf's are so popular.

I have no problem with pdfs, I have a problem with it opening, embedded on the page, before I can save it.

[Cainad (dec.)]

The embedded PDF doesn't even show up on my browser. It tells me I need a plugin, but then says no such plugin exists.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Agreed. i still dont get why pdf's are so popular.

I have no problem with pdfs, I have a problem with it opening, embedded on the page, before I can save it.

Agreed - There is no positive side to embedding pdfs and a hell of a lot of negatives. Solution would be a "view in new tab/window" button and a "download" one. I view the web in 1280x1024 which is higher res than the standard 1024x768 and even on my display I get a tiny little pdf applet that isn't really any use for anything, slowing the page load down to - make yourself a coffee - speed

[the other anonymous]

Solution would be a "view in new tab/window" button and a "download" one.

Firefox context menu has both. That's why I always use direct links: easier than two buttons.

[Cramulus]

Intermittens.org now contains 169% moar of this: