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Megalithic Portal various tweaks and improvements |
Andy B
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|  Posted 12-02-2010 at 16:43
These don't belong under 'improving navigation' but are just general tweaks and improvements you might be interested in trying out:
At risk of inflaming things in the rating wars 
I have tweaked the 'Top' gallery display so that it shows the top 100 images. The popularity score is calculated as Rating^2 x Hits, which seems to give the fairest outcome (Rating x Hits puts photos with a low score but lots of votes in the top 100 so a squared weighting on the rating favours ones with a high rating.)
http://www.megalithic.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=a312&file=index&do=top
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Andy B
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| Posted 12-02-2010 at 16:44
I have been fiddling with the site layout to fix odd HTML and formatting bugs and generally try to improve the appearance without doing anything radical. So various tweaks to how things look are ongoing.
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Andy B
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| Posted 12-02-2010 at 16:49
Some 'back of house' type fixes, a long-standing one with German characters causing problems with image thumbnails is now fixed. We now shouldn't now have a problem whatever language characters are in the file name or image name - the Portal should handle them all fine.
I've also made a change to the image submissions. If the image file name is less than 14 characters then the Portal will add two random letters onto the front of the file name.
This will stop people getting an unfriendly 'file already exists' error when the submit 'stonehenge.jpg' for example. It also prevents problems when some people (who shall remain nameless) send photos called 1.jpg 2.jpg 3.jpg . Duplicate names were causing all sorts of strange problem which shouldn't now happen.
[ This message was edited by: Andy B on 2010-02-12 16:50 ]
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Andy B
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| Posted 12-02-2010 at 16:52
I mentioned this under navigation but it's my favourite new feature - I have added red and grey site icons to show sites with pics in red, in the style of our original UK 'Meglith Map'. The main purpose of this is to highlight how many 'green' sites we still have that need photos (hint hint).
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Andy B
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| Posted 12-02-2010 at 16:56
I have added HTML buttons to the Add a Site and Submit News/Article form, similar to (and borrowed from) the ones used in the forum.
This should make it quicker to add HTML tags such as links and basic formatting. I have added one called 'Quote' which adds the full 'Read more at + link' text (name is not great but I didn't want to make a new button - hover over the buttons for a reminder of what they do)
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cerrig
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| Posted 13-02-2010 at 12:52
Andy
Is there an easy way to post images or sketches on the forum. I have tried but failed miserably, not being too good with IT. 
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Runemage
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| Posted 13-02-2010 at 14:10
I'll second that!
I was going to suggest a For Dummies page in vivid yellow  showing all of us technoincompetents how to do all the really simple things we don't know, literally click by click.
As well as Cerrig's picture or sketch question, links are another which confuse. For example, some posters print a phrase or single word in their text which shows as blue and is a clickable link relevant to the topic.
The rest of us just c+p a link, but sometimes it's enormous which distorts the page width until someone with the know-how comes along and puts it right.
I've tried both the Image and URL buttons (under the message box) respectively and haven't been able to achieve an image in a post or a URL as a word.
Also, for all of the images posted, there's a Rate button. Are we supposed to rate every image we look at, every new image only or just rate something if the fancy takes us?
All advice very welcome,
Rune
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Andy B
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| Posted 13-02-2010 at 18:46
Would this be for photos of ancient sites or more generally?
For general pics I'd say upload them up to a 3rd party image hosting service such as
http://imageshack.us
http://tinypic.com
or of course get an account at
http://www.flickr.com
Then once you have a URL for your image on the web you use the blue IMAGE button at the bottom to create the link.
Or if the photo is already on the web somewhere then get the URL location from your browser with 'copy link location' or similar and insert it onto the page with the blue button.
For photos of ancient sites I would like to create a way to reference our photo and site listings in the forum by photo and site ID.
This is something I should get back onto as it would essentially allow you to 'blog' around your contributions in a more informal and chatty way to string them together into a recommended walk or suchlike.
Cheers
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Thingy
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| Posted 13-02-2010 at 19:30
Andy, Runemage made a good suggestion during the current discussion on the Forums/Mysteries/Stone or Tree? topic. Where an ancient site is under discussion, it soon becomes apparent that much information about that site is missing. Every contributor then begins compiling a personal 'wish list' of things to check, measure, photograph, etc when they next visit that site. If there was a sub-page to each ancient site's main page that allowed anyone to add items they want checked, then those visiting the site can effectively tick off items dealt with on the wish list by posting the results on the main page.
For example: someone adds a request to the wish list page for 'Stone X' that reads "How tall is the stone exactly and can it be seen from 'Circle Y'? A visitor to the site checks these items and replies: "Stone X is 2.457m tall and can be seen from Circle Y. See photos added to site's main page."
The sub page would be text based, all pictures being posted to the main pain.
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Andy B
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| Posted 14-02-2010 at 12:05
I wonder about a wiki page attached to each site page that anyone logged in could edit or leave 'notes and queries' on? Wikis can be tricky to work though if you're not 'in the know'. Perhaps something based on our forum which is quite easy to edit without all the wiki twiddly bits.
Mmm
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cerrig
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| Posted 14-02-2010 at 14:29
Andy, something that would interest me would be a site link to any drawings or plans of that site, something like the very impressive drawings of Angie Lake. Photo's are great but plans and sketches can show things that get lost in a photo. It would help if it could be kept separate from the general photo's, but perhaps attached to photo's relevant to the drawing/plan. I'm thinking of Angie's drawing and Thingy's photo's of Pentre Ifan for instance. Seeing them together would be be a great source of information.
Probably asking a lot there, but if possible it would be nice.
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Andy B
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| Posted 14-02-2010 at 17:02
Anyone is welcome to submit ground plans of sites via our standard photo submission system, I would welcome this. The dowsing plans have caused controversy with some contributors and I'm not sure how many of these we should accomodate but standard plans are fine.
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Thingy
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| Posted 14-02-2010 at 17:28
Quote:
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On 2010-02-14 12:05, Andy B wrote:
I wonder about a wiki page attached to each site page that anyone logged in could edit or leave 'notes and queries' on? Wikis can be tricky to work though if you're not 'in the know'. Perhaps something based on our forum which is quite easy to edit without all the wiki twiddly bits.
Mmm
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Andy, the trick is in the editing. A forum-style page would benefit contributors and those searching for updated info, but these can soon become long, repetitive and/or contradictory. A means of removing redundant info, or info later shown to be incorrect would make the sub page work as a real research resource. That then leads to the question of who does the editing.
Cerrig's suggestion for another list of photos or, especially, site plans that could perhaps be deemed 'informative and definitive' views, rather than general or artistic views is I think another good idea. But this may not be worth the additional hassle as anyone seeking 'definitive' views need only trawl through all the views available until they find what they want.
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Andy B
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| Posted 14-02-2010 at 17:38
Very true, which is why we keep control of the main site page information in house as it were.
> That then leads to the question of who does the editing.
Indeed, especially when you have 50,000 pages and 50,000 photos (no make the 55,000).
The idea of tagging seems most promising. Once we get some tags set up then people can start filtering and searching on them. I'm not sure at the moment how to make it work but will have a think.
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cerrig
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| Posted 14-02-2010 at 20:05
What about a mysteries Gallery, for the more controvertial items.
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AngieLake
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| Posted 15-02-2010 at 11:22
On 2010-02-14 17:02, Andy B wrote:
Anyone is welcome to submit ground plans of sites via our standard photo submission system, I would welcome this. The dowsing plans have caused controversy with some contributors and I'm not sure how many of these we should accomodate but standard plans are fine.
Hi Andy
I'm sorry that these dowsing plans are a nuisance to some people, and won't submit any more til I get approval.
However, I've just added the Y Pigwn plan because Cerrig and Sem wanted to see it.
I'm always hoping there is something in my findings to enhance our knowledge of these sites. (This seems to have been shown with the Ox Burial at Bryn Celli Ddu and the Oval Shrine at Maiden Castle, for example.)
Cerrig kindly said that he thinks they are worth looking at and maybe a separate section could be created for those Meg P users who are interested? I thought that was a very good idea.
Long ago I suggested to you that we could have separate sections for 'Britain' and 'the rest of the world', as I am personally only interested in our own sites. Would that be at all possible?
(When I started using Meg P it was more Britain-orientated, but it's grown massively since then. There's obviously a need for 'Europe and the Rest of the World' info, but my preference would run along the lines of Julian Cope's 'Modern Antiquarian' book, which is separate from his 'Megalithic European', for instance. ... and I'm honestly not being unfriendly to our 'rest-of- the-world-friends, or devaluing their contributions!
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Andy B
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| Posted 15-02-2010 at 17:01
Angie, I think you're OK to send a few more plans, they have provoked some interesting debate.
I should be able to do a UK only news page but it will rely on us setting the country for each news story which we don't always remember to do.
I'll include Southern Ireland as it's quicker to test for all 5 countries for technical reasons.
[ This message was edited by: Andy B on 2010-02-15 17:04 ]
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AngieLake
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|  Posted 15-02-2010 at 18:30
Thanks Andy!
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Andy B
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| Posted 15-02-2010 at 23:37
Another bonus for UK and Ireland pages. For site pages where we don't yet have an image I've got the Portal to pull in some thumbnail images from Geograph. Which may not be of exactly what we want but should give a flavour of the locality. I'm enjoying browsing them, see what you can find.
You have to be registered and logged in as a user to see these.
Thanks to Barry from Geograph for providing this great feature.
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Andy B
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| Posted 22-02-2010 at 12:49
I have added a geo lookup link to 'Scotland's Places' which is a multi database lookup including images from Canmore. It's now on all our Scottish pages, look for the  icon.
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