Comments on: The 9rules Homepage Challenge

By: John Peele

John Peele — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 20:44:41 +0000

One thought…

What about categorizing and tagging everything. Then the user could create an “ala carte” portal page by creating a tag chain… “Hmmm, today I would like to see Spanish + Cultural + Women” or “How about English + Technology + etc etc”. It could even be drag-n-drop based like reordering todo’s in Backpack (not just for AJAX sack though), all the tags in a list on one side of the page with a hot area on the right. Drag your tags into the window to build your custom information workflow. Kinda like Automator or Mail Rules on OS X.

Then they would get a version of their home page that could look like the current one, along with some kinda save or cookie feature that would store the chain until a new one was selected. Forget the whole login thing if you can.

Then for the main 9Rules homepage, you could have a weighted display (based on popularity, traffic, etc) or a random display (like suggested above) in order to insure fair airtime.

Can’t wait to see what comes out of this…

By: Calin

Calin — Fri, 09 Sep 2005 08:08:40 +0000

What you need is most likely a dynamic categorization structure, something like what I made here: http://bloghi.com/dir

By: sosa

sosa — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 21:33:51 +0000

Forget about tabs, you could really use tags (not necessarily tagged by users) and nested panels, just like that del.icio.us director experiment http://johnvey.com/features/deliciousdirector/

Well, in that case you’ll need ajax.

By: Nicole

Nicole — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 16:28:22 +0000

Well, I have to advocate the app-less (a unique, customized URL) approach as others have before me since I really don’t want to remember yet another login and password. So, as a user, I could follow my unique URL to a stripped down portal (so to speak) where I could choose from perhaps pre-defined blocks of information related to the network. For example, I could choose to see a network block of info that would show the last x number of entries to the 9rules blog, maybe a block that shows the latest 9rules English (or Spanish) member updates in a specific category, or a block showing the most active discussions happening on 9rules member blogs.

This would all, of course, be organized in a lovely Rundle-ific interface.

By: Kobayashi

Kobayashi — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 13:29:00 +0000

You must look Home page an introduction page rather than a index. Not so much blog link but some interesting info for first timers.Then links to your real indexes.

By: Stuart Colville

Stuart Colville — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 10:28:00 +0000

I would reckon you need one space which shows a sample of everything under the 9rules banner. This may possibly be filtered by language(s); set in some kind of user prefs (cookie based or logged in?) because spanish sites are probably not much use if you only speak english.

Then I would show an additional section of a limited number of sites filtered by categorised tags (relevant to the sites content) as defined by the user (again either cookie based or by log-in).

This gives the user the best of both worlds, you get a taste of everything 9 rules has to offer plus your own customised selection.

Personally I would think about the cookie based system because there is no need to worry about login. The only concern then is user-agents with cookies off or restricted.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 05:20:32 +0000

Oh, this is a nice change indeed. But if I may say, the comment number is too big. At first I thought it was the entry date. And I think maybe it should be the entry date. Oh and one more thing. The comment list on the right panel while it’s nice but also rather annoying because when I read your entry until the end, I have to scroll up again to see the #1 comment. But this is only my opinion and the overall design is great.

By: Scrivs

Scrivs — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 01:06:54 +0000

Jake: Not quite sure where you are going with that, care to elaborate a bit more?

By: Dustin Diaz

Dustin Diaz — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 00:59:20 +0000

I would take into consideration the possibility of more languages. Future compatibility will most likely be key. Consider a relational db to store language relationships. This would also take care of the issue of bilingual websites…this way a website won’t hold the crutch of only having one language.

By: Jake Tracey

Jake Tracey — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 00:35:41 +0000

Just a thought – if you’re planning to implement a login system of sorts, don’t bother with a username or password. As mentioned on Signal vs Noise a little while ago, why not experiment with the concept of a special URL for people to bookmark (or remember) to access their customized page.

What i’d love to see is a really fleshed out forums system. 9rules already has the traffic and sense of community needed to foster an active forums system – why not up the ante and do something really special?