Posted by: Brian Krueger, PhD
Posted on: Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 8:27 pm CDT

I really do like that design a lot. I think the videos/music section is fine in either spot. I also don't have a problem swapping the Blog and news sections to make the featured blogs more prominent. The news doesn't have to be the first thing people see, it can definitely have its own section "at the bottom of the page" :P I'll mock up a few designs this weekend and let you all pick one. Thanks for all the great ideas :)

I think I'll do away with the text profiles on the main page. They take up a lot of space, I do like having those on the main blog page though. We can also redesign the blog page layout if you'd like.

Posted by: biochem belle
Posted on: Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 2:56 pm CDT

I'm with the rest-I think Becca's mock page looks great, and I like the idea of moving the videos section as suggested.
Also kudos on the manifesto, Brian-maybe that will clear up some misconceptions and promote some more participation in the discussion :)

Posted by: Lady Scientist
Posted on: Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 1:34 pm CDT

I like it a lot. And agree with everyone else on the swapping of the two.

Posted by: Evie
Posted on: Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 1:22 pm CDT

That looks pretty good @Dr Becca, and I agree w @Odyssey about swapping the two.

Posted by: Dr. O
Posted on: Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 1:18 pm CDT

I like it Dr. Becca! Agreed with Odyssey's point on swapping the music/video with the most viewed/commented sections.

Posted by: Dr Becca, Ph.D.
Posted on: Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 12:42 pm CDT

Hey guys! I made a pretend front page to show what I was thinking about the layout. The news is still prominently featured!! The colors, fonts, and names of sections are basically meaningless (insofar as I don't care if we call a section "writers" or "bloggers" etc). Let me know what you think of the set up, and tear it to shreds if you hate it, seriously.

Posted by: Evie
Posted on: Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 11:09 am CDT

@Biochem "I, for one, have not been very involved in the discussion of science news, but maybe by bringing our voices to those discussions, we can bring the two aspects together." -- Sounds great to me! :)

Posted by: Dr. O
Posted on: Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 10:50 am CDT

Good points by both Dr. Becca and Evie - what about having a columns for news and the latest/most popular blog posts on the home page. I think having the news is a nice difference of LabSpaces from other platforms. But, with all the new bloggers, I think highlighting the blogs on the first page is also a great idea. I bet we can do both.

As far as how to display the blog posts - is there an easy way for visitors to toggle between the latest blog posts and most popular blog posts - sort like what Facebook has done on their news feed? Or...the page could by default display the top blog posts, but provide a link near the top for the most recent posts.

Posted by: Dr Becca, Ph.D.
Posted on: Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 9:42 am CDT

For those of you who were on twitter this morning, Ed Yong had some thoughts on the LS layout. I asked him to expand, and he sent me an email. Here it is!

"The way I see it, on your site, you have the blogs, which provides unique, original and interesting content, written by an impressive collection of people. You also have “news” (and I use the term charitably), which amounts to nothing above what you could achieve by plugging the Eurekalert RSS feed into a blog. In terms of which of these should take pride of place on your main page, I personally think it’s a no-brainer."

I have to say I agree. We've now got a pretty large and extremely strong team of writers, and people are going to come to LS for the blogs, not for the news headlines they could get anywhere.

Here's some more random spewage of thoughts:

Re: "best rated" - how well is the rating system working? Are people actually voting on blog posts? I have a couple that have been rated, but only 1-3 actual votes per post. Also--and this may just be me--but I initially found the "rate this blog" to be confusing, because to me, a "blog" is the entire collection of posts by a single person, not an individual entry. Obviously, we know what the rating system does here and can go nuts voting on each other's posts to generate the Featured posts, but I wonder if for the masses, "most viewed" and "most commented" will be enough to push the popular posts to the front.

I like the idea of having a "recent posts" column and a "all the bloggers" column. I think that in "recent posts" you should probably not put our bios there--it looks a little silly, for example, to have 3 Genomic Repairman bios right in a row. I do think bios should go in the "all bloggers" column, though.

I'm going to work on a mock-layout today, because I'm losing my job in 2 months and am too depressed to think about real life stuff.

Posted by: Brian Krueger, PhD
Posted on: Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 8:59 am CDT

@Evie, because I want you guys to have control of the feature list :) That's why I planned on adding a "Best Rated" to take into account everyone's vote.

Posted by: Brian Krueger, PhD
Posted on: Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 8:10 am CDT

So I think this is the plan, please chime in on any changes.

1. Cut the twitter feed down the the last 2 tweets, make the font smaller (Just to let people know about the twitter account really)
2. Replace that section with a "Featured Blogs" list. This will be determined by YOUR votes. I'll put a backdoor into the star rating system that can tell if you're a blogger or not. Posts with 5 or more 4 star+ votes will be thrown into the "Featured" feed. Posts can stay in here for one week.
2. The "Writers" section will be split into two columns.
2a. Column one will be the standard "This is what has been posted in the last 24hrs"
2b. Column two will be a list of all the bloggers and will have the title of their most recent blog. If you haven't posted anything in the last 2 weeks, you won't be included in this list.
3. At the bottom of these two columns I'll add a 3 column list of "Most discussed," "Most Viewed," and "Best Rated" for the last 2 weeks (Already seeing how that set-up might be redundant...)

These are just ideas, please give me some feedback :) Also, you could draw pictures and post them too!

Posted by: Lab Mom
Posted on: Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 11:07 pm CDT

I agree with Biochem Belle and Lady Scientist.

Even if you just keep the title of everyone's most recent post under their name (like you can do in a blogroll) it at least gives a new reader the idea of what kind of subject matter they blog about, even if it isn't the highest rated or most commented on.

I also agree about spotlighting the hot subjects/posts front and center (since those are the articles that drive traffic)

Posted by: Lady Scientist
Posted on: Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 8:21 pm CDT

Like Biochem Belle, this is kind of a stream of consciousness thing.

-I like the idea of keeping the list of writers on the page because it'll help with keeping the smaller blogs visible.
-Have the highest rated, most viewed, and most comments in the past 24 hours with a short summary.
-I really like Becca's idea of having the most recent post by each blogger with a title on there in chronological order. As I think that would keep some bloggers with a smaller readership (or who aren't as prolific) from getting completely lost in the mix.

Posted by: biochem belle
Posted on: Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 6:09 pm CDT

Be forewarned: This is a bit of a stream-of-consciousness post.

I know there's been some back and forth over first paragraphs vs. summaries, but I think shorter summaries might be better for the front blog page... although now when I look at it, I see that those are going on the featured page, so maybe not.

I like Becca's idea about having the most recent post of each blogger on the front page, and maybe have link to the individual's blog page adjacent to their most recent post. But I also just realized that with Tideliar and possibly another recruit or 2, we're up to nearly 20 bloggers! So once everyone is rolling out posts, that might be too much as well.

So I've been looking at the front page for other networks, like SciBlogs, ScienceBlogs, and Scientopia. It seems that what might make the most sense, in terms of keeping the front page from becoming too crowded, is to:
- have a few (4 to 6?) "featured posts" that include the first paragraph or summary of the post (a la Sb)
- keep the "writers" section on the front page (either in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page)
- have a more extensive list of recent posts with titles only (a la SciBlogs)
- possibly have a recent comments feed (also a la SciBlogs)

Just some thoughts... which may make no sense at all.

Posted by: Dr Becca, Ph.D.
Posted on: Tue, Aug 03, 2010, 4:52 pm CDT

I've been thinking about this too--as the # of bloggers grows, having only the most recent 6 or so up probably isn't the best. Maybe show the most recent from each blogger, with those in chronological order, sort of like our individual Blogrolls work, but with pictures and first couple of sentences? As it is now, I feel like there's so much white space down where the blogs go, you could probably shrink things a tiny bit and put it in two columns, so you don't have to scroll so much to see what's going on. I also like the idea of a "most viewed" and "most commented," maybe for a given period of time, though, like of the past week or two weeks or something?