So, my understanding of the new site is that Game Journals serve as design diaries, while blogs are user-oriented entries? The change to the new site (which is very slick!) is still somewhat disorienting, and I'd like to know how people are gearing up to use it!
Blogs and Game Journals
Sun, 08/03/2008 - 09:25
Sun, 08/03/2008 - 14:32
#1
Yes
Exactly. Blogs here user-oriented, while Game Journals replace the old site Game Blogs.
Sun, 08/03/2008 - 16:02
#2
Quietly upload images?
Is there any way to upload an image for use in a posting or journal, and not have the image show up on the front page? I put up three images yesterday, and it looked like I was spamming the site. I didn't need to call attention to the images, I just wanted to get them into my journal.
Sun, 08/03/2008 - 20:23
#3
Re: Quietly upload images?
Not sure if that's possible. Zzzzz did the right hand links code, so maybe he can make it skip images from a particular gallery. If so, we could have a "Post images" gallery or something, so you and others can upload images for the posts there and not have them listed on the Recent Topics list. We'll have to wait for Zzzzz to see how viable that is.
Sun, 08/03/2008 - 20:44
#4
Anything is possible, but
Anything is possible, but personally I wanted all content to get some type of attention. So even posting an image for a journal/blog/etc should be noted. As the say, an image is worth a thousand words (maybe not when I post an image but for others it seems to make sense!). So your image itself might spark discussion, comments, interest. So I would not want to *hide* that from others.
With that said, I believe you can use the Attached Images option that shows up on the same page as the blog/forum/journal areas. I do not think this will create two posts, so your image post might be hidden. Sadly I have not played around enough with all of these options to know if this is true or not.
Mon, 08/04/2008 - 09:18
#5
What exactly are
What exactly are "user-oriented entries". Is this a kind of catchall for our ramblings?
I agree with you Zzzzz that entries on this new (yes slick!) site should get some attention. But I also see a problem with 10 image posts displacing 10 forum posts. Can you do a more BGG-like front page (but slicker) where post-types are separated into groups: images, blogs, journals, and forums. BGG's not the prettiest front page, but it does give you a lot of info very quickly.
And couldn't the real estate taken up in the middle of the front page where all the announcements are right now, some that are sometimes months old and not "current", be better used?
Have a look at fortressat.com, at the bottom of the page of the. Nice content summary there.
Just some thoughts. Overall, the new site is a lean, mean, design machine. And much faster! Thanks.
Mon, 08/04/2008 - 09:35
#6
bluesea,
All good thoughts
bluesea,
All good thoughts but I cannot agree to those type of changes. personally I dislike when a page is cluttered with a BUNCH of various blocks/areas/content. Sometimes too many different thngs on a page is *bad* design. Though stuffing too many things into one area (as I did), might also be bad. I also agree that the front page often gets *outdated* but hopefully this can be corrected with more submissions of useful content. And again, I might consider changing this down the road.
While I agree that too many posts of a specific type might *hide* or distract from another type of posts, i am not sure about the *best* approach. I will consider your thoughts and figure out if there is another option, but at this time I would like to see how the site works *as is*. If at some point the images or some such specific type of posts seems to be overwhelming the *real* posted content, I will determine another option to reduce the impact.
As I also mentioned, I believe there is a way to post images for a blog, journal, forum posts that will NOT yield a separate image post. I will confirm this, at somepoint this week.
Mon, 08/04/2008 - 11:00
#7
Fair enough, Zzzzz. I agree
Fair enough, Zzzzz. I agree cluttered sites can be a pain to use and to look at. It will be interesting to see how the new site will evolve. Cheers!
Mon, 08/04/2008 - 22:33
#8
About the Game Journals... is
About the Game Journals... is it possible to have multiple entries in a Game Journal, or is it meant to be more like a single page?
Obviously, if it's a single page, you can keep appending entries to it to make it seem like a blog, though I don't know if RSS feeds would update. Seems like it would be more like a wiki edit than anything else.
Tue, 08/05/2008 - 00:12
#9
You can have multiple pages
You can have multiple pages for a game journal. If you take a quick look at the Meeple Wars™ Scoring, this is a sub page of the Meeple Wars™ game journal entry.
Here is the catch to using/creating sub pages. When you make your initial game journal page, you assign a *book outline* to it. You can choose an existing outline or create a new outline. If you create a new outline it will use the title of the new game journal page you are creating.
After you create this initial entry and outline settings. You will see a new option at the bottom of the page, "Add child page". This will allow you to add additional pages. It will also update your main page with a TOC like listing of any other pages you add. The listing of the TOC items will be based on the weight value you assign when creating the sub pages. So if you want to reorder the subpages, you just set the weight value according to your desired listing order.
Not sure this helps much, but I will clarify more as questions are asked.
Tue, 08/05/2008 - 12:18
#11
From Hedge:
I do have
From Hedge: I do have questions about formatting within forum posts, though, since standard HTML tags just show up as typed, and Markdown and Wiki formatting don't seem to work, either. What am I doing wrong?
Really? I haven't used the HTML options yet, but I've found Markdown to be working great (you should see 2 formatting examples in this last sentence, along with the quote block above).
What are you seeing when you try to use them?
-Bryk
Tue, 08/05/2008 - 15:46
#12
Never mind, Markup is working now.
I'm not sure why, but after a few strange results, with my formatting instructions (in both HTML and Markup) showing up as typed into both posts and blogs, I seem to have the results I was looking for, and can't reproduce the problem. So I'd guess it was just me being obtuse.
Great news about the child pages; this will make my Megiddo blog a lot easier to navigate for people who haven't seen the earlier entries and want to catch up.
I do have questions about formatting within forum posts, though, since standard HTML tags just show up as typed, and Markdown and Wiki formatting don't seem to work, either. What am I doing wrong?