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Does anybody else think it would be useful to display the EG alphabetically as well as by topic? In editing the articles and topics in alphabetical order I noticed some of the advantages of a more traditional encyclopedic order: serendipity. You find out things about the OA universe that you might not otherwise discover. Now to be clear, I'm not thinking about going away from our topic-based organization: that's essential for finding things on purpose. What I'm thinking of is a parallel listing that allows someone who is browsing through to find things by happy accident. I believe it's possible to do this within our current content management system without changing too much the existing layout, though some changes to the EG's 'top' page would be required. I'll look into it further if other people think it would be worthwhile, but am looking for feedback first.
Stephen
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It certainly sounds like something worth discussing. Can you tell us more about what you're thinking of doing?
Todd
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04-07-2013, 08:54 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-07-2013, 08:55 PM by stevebowers..)
You can browse the EG by letter if you click on the 'search by letter' function at the top
But if you try to link to these searches, you get
the whole site which is kinda useful in itself.
I note that the heading 'A' already exists; is this your work, Stephen?
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/516102da1e5e9
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(04-07-2013, 08:54 PM)stevebowers Wrote: You can browse the EG by letter if you click on the 'search by letter' function at the top
But if you try to link to these searches, you get the whole site which is kinda useful in itself.
I note that the heading 'A' already exists; is this your work, Stephen?
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/516102da1e5e9
Yes, I put that together by way of demonstration just after Todd asked for an example of what I meant but got called away before I could compose a comment. As one can see the result is more informative than a listing of article names. This task took just a minute or two but some more time consuming work will be needed if the topics are to display at the top of the page or mixed in with the articles instead of at the end and of course 'A' would be a subtopic in the A-Z listings.
Stephen
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I think the A-page looks perfectly fine as it is; we would, of course, need to create a topic for the A-Z listings. This could be linked to all the other topics, so that we could find it easily.
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(04-08-2013, 05:27 AM)stevebowers Wrote: I think the A-page looks perfectly fine as it is; we would, of course, need to create a topic for the A-Z listings. This could be linked to all the other topics, so that we could find it easily.
That's more or less what I'm thinking of. There would be a top-level topic labelled something like 'Alphabetical Listing', and then each letter would be a sub-topic. I'd prefer that the topics show at the top of the page above the articles, though, and that they not say 'related topics'. The way the CMS is set up now there seem not to be other possibilities unless we give the alphabetic listing its own set of rules. By the way, I think that 'related topics' should display above the articles listing in the EG generally. Perhaps Trond can make that happen if we agree on it?
Over and above these modifications, we'd need to get the 'Alphabetical Listing' topic (or whatever we choose to call it) to show on the main EG page:
http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-front
Most other parts of the site I can modify through the CMS but if it's accessible that way I've forgotten how to get at it. If it weren't for that I'd have set up the entire model for people to look at, since it would be quick to do.
Stephen
Stephen
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We need to gain access to the Front Page at some point at the near future; it needs a complete overhaul in my opinion.
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(04-08-2013, 03:36 PM)stevebowers Wrote: We need to gain access to the Front Page at some point at the near future; it needs a complete overhaul in my opinion.
We have been talking off and on about doing a redesign of the OA website, probably starting with (and possibly mainly consisting of) the Front Page.
Bearing in mind that the forum is still quite new (if you sniff, you can still get that 'new forum smell'
and we also have the short fiction collection and possibly something involving an RPG, we could certainly start discussing site redesign options in the fairly near future, if we wish. I would recommend getting the forum more settled in first, however. And having a discussion about the other things on our plate and what needs to be done with them and how much time/energy we have available to handle multiple projects at the same time.
Todd
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(04-09-2013, 10:21 AM)Drashner1 Wrote: We have been talking off and on about doing a redesign of the OA website, probably starting with (and possibly mainly consisting of) the Front Page.
Bearing in mind that the forum is still quite new (if you sniff, you can still get that 'new forum smell' and we also have the short fiction collection and possibly something involving an RPG, we could certainly start discussing site redesign options in the fairly near future, if we wish. I would recommend getting the forum more settled in first, however. And having a discussion about the other things on our plate and what needs to be done with them and how much time/energy we have available to handle multiple projects at the same time.
I've done some checking with Trond off-list and it looks like simply adding an alphabetical listing is fairly simple, and the only part we can't do easily through the CMS is adding the link of the main EG page -- but Trond can do that one fairly easily. So, that one project can go ahead without draining our resources much if we're agreed it's worthwhile. In the meantime, I'm learning a bit more about how to access that site outside the CMS and may have more to report back later. For now I agree that we should get a couple of the other big rocks out of the way before we tackle a wholesale site redesign.
Stephen
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The alphabetic list pages are now available; I suggest we create a topic 'Articles in Alphabetical Order' and link it to as many other topics as possible.
http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-alpha&letter=a
http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-alpha&letter=b
http://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oaeg-alpha&letter=c
and so on.
