Critique the blog
Please post your comments and suggestions on how to improve the blog - layout, structure, appearance, functionality and content.
Our vision for the blog is to enable every user to freely post comments on the discussion topics and to comment on each others’ posts. We plan to add the capability of using rich multi-media content including, graphics, voice and video.
The reality is that we are selecting and testing themes (designs) for the blog from a library of pre-programmed templates. Each theme has pros and cons. We are unsure about how many desirable changes (many from your suggestions) we can accomplish with these templates, given our limited programming resources - but Swathy and Hema are working diligently on this.
The current blog design is a step in the direction of achieving our vision, as we pursue our commitment to continuously improve functionality, aesthetics and ease of use - leading to a “professional” quality experience. Thanks for your suggestions and contributions. Best wishes, PC.
Nice blog. The updates are very impressive. Hats off. The update on recent comments make it easier to know who is commenting under which topic. That takes you to that question instantly.
The recent posts and the categories, very systematic.
I agree with the logout link on the top of the page. That is a good idea.
The blog seems to flow better now. Logical layout and the reply on the comments is a major improvement. The twelve steps of Purposeful Action hard at work. Congratulations to the blog team.
PS. Move “Logout’ to top of page
Will try…
The blog looks great and the only suggestion I would add is regarding replies to users posts. Is it possible for replies to another’s post being indented for clarity?
Comments by PC:
We will look into this, Margaux. In the meantime, users can identify the post they are responding to and add their initials as well. As “admin” I can of course respond directly on your post - as I am doing now. THIS IS A GREAT ADVANTAGE compared with the DB in Blackboard. Another way to identify a response could be with the use of italics.
We have much to learn about how to use this blog more effectively and by the end of this semester we will be much further along.
Thanks for your help!!!
PC
The blog looks great now and took a new shape and hatsoff to the great work done and i have one suggestion/comment. how do we comment on others postings.is it still under progress?
Okay, a couple more suggestions. When you click on a category I think all the entries in that category should be displayed instead of just the most recent. Also, when displaying the comments to a specific post they should be ordered as they are entered. I noticed that on one particular post I made comment what was in response to someone else’s comment, but because the way the comments are ordered has changed the context of my response was lost. Since we do not have the ability to respond to another comment directly as we do with a standard discussion board it’s imperative to maintain that order.
Hema and Swathy, lets look into this as well, and see if this theme is suitable for making these changes?
PC
I think that the current theme is an improvement over the last one. The color palette helps to break things up a bit more and is, in general, more pleasing to the eye. However, I do have to issues with the blog, both in its current form and in the previous. I feel that the default page for the blog should be the blog posts and NOT the about page. It’s nice to have an “About” page that provides some insight into the purpose of the blog, but it is standard to present to the user the blog posts when he or she hits the site URL.
Another issue I would like to see addressed is the lack of a listing of most recent posts as part of the site navigation. This could perhaps be listed above the “Archives” submenu on the right hand side. Typically when I’m reading up on blogs it will the title of the post itself that I remember instead of the category it was put in, especially when the posts have meaningful titles. I believe this was available on the last version of the blog.
Finally, I would like to see a search feature (again, I think this feature was available on the last site). Since the blog is relatively new and there isn’t a great deal of content this feature is not at the top of my list, but as the site grows and the amount of content increases it will be very useful.
Great comments, Joshua, especially about the opening page, the recent posts list, and the post title (instead of the category title on top) - Hema and Swathy, could you please look into these suggestions? Again I hope this template allows for these changes without significant programming…
Thanks,
PC