Hi Pat,
site is looking good. I posted some suggestiond on the Galciv galatic council forum which I'll repost here. Some may already be done.
a) Improved from screen:
when I enter the joe user website I am presented with an overwhelming and slightly confusing screen. The top part, Joe user banner, links, local user info, channels and top stories are all fine. It's the rest that's confusing me. I always see a selection of your articles and really just a topic list would be enough (scrolling through pages of articles and images is painful). This is also true if I click on any channel. A topic list as the front screen would be preferable to a long list articles. In reality what I'd love to see would be a watch list (yes I can click on the spyglass), or a list of my personal favourite blog sites (not sure how to do this). A marker beside any of these updated since my last visit would be even better.
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while it's great to see a list of recent articles it would be very useful to also see a list of recent comments on articles. Take the top stories for example. As well as when they were posted, I'd like to know when the last comment was or how many comments there hav been
c) user update list:
I find over time that I like reading the comments of certain users as well as their articles. It would be nice if their was some method of choosing a favourite user and seeing which posts they have been commenting in so that you can go read their advice/ comments.
d) favourite user / site list:
as mentioned above this is what I miss most. I want to have a list on the front screen of my favourite users and sites. If it also displays whether new posts / comments are available on their sites then even better.
e) previous posts / views:
Amazon have this excellent ability to let you knwo what you were previously looking at. I keep spending lots of time looking around for the articles I posted in. yes I can use the watch list, but there is a big difference between articles I'm interested in watching and those that I just want to check if anything else interesting was posted a few days later. Adding articles to your watch list and deleting them later is a bit tedious. Anything I post to should be automatically added to a previous post list that I can click once on to see any further replies. Or better yet, with a further reply numbers or date beside it to save me clicking if nothing happened since my last visit.
f) Page Title: (What page am I on?)
when looking at any channel, it is very hard to tell which one you're on or whether you're on the top page or not. This is a lesser problem with users as the web address usually gives it away (and any title they use)
g) Return to top level: (how do I get back to where I was before I wrote a comment)
after writing a comment it's quite difficult to get back to your starting point again. A simple back to article list button would be nice.
Looking great,
Paul.
JoeUser Forums
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