Big directory overhaul… again.
Yes, I know I just overhauled the directory in February. It hasn’t even been two months! But for whatever reason, a lot of you are choosing it in the survey as the section that needs the most improvement.
The problem is… I don’t know what you guys want me to improve! Are there broken links? There shouldn’t be. Is it the way I’ve organized them? Not sure how to organize them differently. Is it the layout? I hope so, because I agree. Even though I made the previous layout, I don’t really care for it.
So I converted it all to WordPress, and gave it a brand new look! It’s even neater and cleaner, and I hope this solves some of the problems you guys had with it. The best part is that it’s now searchable. I can’t guarantee the search works perfectly, but it exists. Also, it’s located at a slightly different link; click here or on the link up there in the menu to see it. In the near future, I’m going to be converting the other three sections to WordPress as well. So hang on for that!
And please let me know what you think of the new directory, and if it has solved any problems you might have had with it.
2 thoughts on “Big directory overhaul… again.”
About the directory, since it only includes other fanfic sites & blogs but not individual fics, you should call it something like, “Directory of fanfic sites & blogs” instead of just “Directory”, since just calling it that implies (to me, anyway) that it’s a directory of everything that is posted on your site.
Also, regarding the reviews, when you post a message about new reviews, instead of having the name of each fic linked to the actual fic, it should link to the review, and the review should then contain a link to the actual fic. But if you don’t want to do that, it would be very helpful if you would at least state the era after the name of each fic you are reviewing, since you list your reviews by the date the fic was written, and not by the date of the review.
In addition, under “Content” on the right hand side, you should also have “Reviews” & “Monthly Spotlight” (and anything else that can be found on the site) listed. I know they’re listed on top, but they should be listed under “Content” as well since one expects that the contents of the site would be listed by category under that heading.
Finally, I’m personally not a fan of the “view more” feature that shows up under “Hostees” and also under “Affiliates”. Is there a reason why they can’t all be listed under each of their respective heading?
Anyway, you have some great content on your site, it’s just hard to find, sometimes! ;]
I get what you’re saying about the Directory, but I think that’s a little too long of a title.
And you also have a point about the reviews, but I think I’ve found a compromise that will work. I’m working on a new layout right now which will have a drop down menu. So if you hover over the era (say, Middle of Nowhere, for example), it’ll drop down a list of all the stories reviewed for that era. So you can click on the story title right there, or go to a page with the list of all the stories for that era. I know that’s not exactly what you suggested, but I hope it will clear up some of the confusion.
The reason that those four sections — Directory, Articles, Spotlights and Reviews — aren’t listed under the contents is because they’re really bigger sections, almost sites unto themselves, than the rest of the content. Perhaps I should come up with a different title besides “Content” for that part of the sidebar?
The View More thing exists because I like to provide some additional information about my hostees that I couldn’t provide if I just had a list of links to all of them. Plus, the lists would be pretty long if I did put all the hostees and affiliates on the front page. It’s pretty common for blogs/sites to only list a few ‘top’ affiliates, really.
I’m really not trying to be argumentative or make my site difficult to navigate. This is the first time I’ve had anyone question some of the way I’ve done things, and while I do see where you’re coming from with some of it, I do have a reasoning behind the choices I’ve made. But I know that sometimes my organizational methods can be a bit illogical, so I will consider what you’ve said and hopefully for at least some of these issues, like the reviews, I can make some changes that will be helpful to you and others.