Constant Content Gets an Update

[aprilaragam]

I love the new look! :)
At first I thought I'd come to the wrong site by accident, but when I realized it was a new look, I was excited.

I did try to update my profile, but I cannot seem to find a "save" or anything. If someone can help me out with that I'd appreciate it, as my profile needs an update asap ;)

I love that the categories have been cut down, I used to spend a lot of time trying to find where my article would go.

[jrichards]

Celeste and HayleyWriter had mentioned that it was really helpful to have the customers "names" along with the order number in the "My Sales" section, so this is just a quick note to let you know that those have been added.

[geniuswaitress]

I'm a fan.

However, I would still like for the newer content to display first when searching for key words. Customers must slog through content that may be out of date or not up to current standards before reaching the freshest content.

For newer folks like me, it also means we can never quite catch up. If new content displayed first, and a writer wanted to reap the benefits of that, there's a solution: write more content.

As it stands, there's nothing you can do to help when the old stuff comes up first. You can't go back in time and write some stuff.

[dsletten]

I'm happy to see that customer names have been added to the My Sales section. Thanks! :)

[HayleyWriter]

Hi,

Thanks so much for adding the customer name to the sales list. It's is lovely to have a website with a support crew that actually listens to you. CC is just miles ahead of any other website for writing. THANKS!

Hayley

[grouchy]

Greetings! I am impressed by all the changes and the time and energy and hard work they required - congratulations! I am still getting used to the new format, but I wanted to share a few initial observations.

#1 -- I came to the site as a buyer might, and had a bit of difficulty. The categories don't seem to be intuitive, but I realize (hope) that maybe you plan to do a little finessing. Take, for example, travel: Since it doesn't have a category of its own, I did go to the "recreation" category. But when I clicked on it, the categories dropped out of sight (including the important sub-category drop-down list) and the screen popped up to the top of an article list. One must scroll back down to see the subcategories, and why would anyone know intuitively to do that?

#2 -- I have written several travel articles (per the previous system's travel category, with a sub-category of Europe, then a country name), but now my travel articles are in the Regional category. I would think that the Regional category would include any historical articles, of which I do have a few, as do others. I really really want most of my articles in the travel sub-category, because I sincerely believe that's where they belong: there are tourist tips, tourist attractions and activities, travel tips, etc. Would you please reconsider this decision?

to be con't...

[grouchy]

con't.

#3 -- I agree with the others who have mentioned that they miss the rolling "new article" lists. They were so instructive and were such a great way to keep up with the work of others. I am already bummed (maybe others, too?) that there is no way to see how many writers have responded to requests due to the 3-day exclusivity policy (the reason for which I understand, I think). So please can we call it a draw and at least get our rolling list back? (It's too many sacrifices to make, she whined)

I know that the whole reason for the changes is to make the sellling and buying process smoother and better for both customers and writers in any way you can, and that's one of the things (sorry, Ed) that is so great about CC -- that you don't put what's good for you folks first by accepting junk and doing anything to make a buck. I'm glad you let the needs of buyers and sellers guide your actions. Thank you sincerely.

gigi

[Celeste Stewart]

Hi Grouchy!

From what I can tell, it looks like the content is listed alphabetically by category with each category getting updated as new articles arrive. For customers that visit once or twice per week, this is probably fresh enough. But for us writers, we'd love a page (perhaps viewable only to writers?) with the latest content added. It's really helpful to see what's new, what requests are being answered, what trends are shaping up, etc... Plus it's nice to see who's active, what they're up to, and get to know each other. This is one of the ways we bond in our odd little Internet way :)

Like Grouchy, I also miss seeing the articles that are being submitted to a public request as that often dictates whether or not I'll bother or even the angle that I might take. For example, if a request says, "write about roses, daisies, petunias, gardenias, and magnolias" and I see that three articles are already submitted on roses, five on daisies, and two on petunias, then I'll focus on either gardenias or magnolias. Likewise, if I can view a snippet of the existing articles and see that even though three articles already cover roses but none cover "edible rose petals" or something like that, then I can still confidently tackle that topic knowing that I'm not being redundant. It would be great if the writers could have their own little page where we can view titles currently submitted public requests. While pricing and word count are also helpful, I understand that pricing might be of concern to the customer and I could live with just seeing the basics - title, maybe the short summary.

[Celeste Stewart]

Continued due to 2000 character limit...


One last thing that Grouchy triggered involves the categories. Any chance that you could make the categories editable? It would be great to be able to move our articles to a new category if we feel the category just isn't quite right. I submitted a couple the last few days that didn't really feel right to me - a "benefits of college degree" type article that I wanted to be in a "college" type category. Couldn't find education/college categories so instead chose Business > Careers as that made the most sense at the moment. Later, I saw that the Society > College and University is what I really needed. Same with a personal finance article. I chose Business > Finance when I really ought to have picked Home > Personal Finance. I plan on typing out the main categories and their subcatagories for future reference (I'll post them here for everyone when I do) but it would be cool to be able to handle the change on our own end.

Glad to see you on the boards Grouchy! I've missed you :)

[geniuswaitress]

Could we possibly have easy access to a list of all the subcategories somewhere? Then we could more easily make our choices, rather than hunting around.

[Celeste Stewart]

I just posted a list of all categories and subcategories in the Writer's Exchange forum. Copy and paste them into a document and you'll at least have an easy reference list. Here's the link:
http://www.constant-content.com/forum/v ... =4&t=14385

[Shannon Christman]

[quote="Celeste Stewart"]
Any chance that you could make the categories editable? It would be great to be able to move our articles to a new category if we feel the category just isn't quite right. [/quote]

I second that -- I submitted quite a few personal finance articles and blog posts under the old system. The articles made it to the personal finance category, but the blog posts are under Business --> Finance, where they don't really fit. Strangely enough, that has put me on the "Expertise Group" for Finance, a topic I know very little about.

[BarryDavidson]

JRichards,

Could we get the size of the old pages pack. I'm sorry but centered, large text sites hurt the eyes and make people want to navigate away from them. They also tend to have a "Front Page" feel to them.

I miss the log in being on the far left of the screen. I have a 22'' wide screen monitor, so eight inches (four on each side) of screen is blank. I'm one of those people who wears glasses, and I even have trouble driving at night. Not because I can't see, but because new car lights tend to be too bright. I loved the old pages because they weren't blindingly white with bright text.


Note: The drop-down box on the search box is cutting the words in half.

[jrichards]

Just a quick update.

Thanks for all your feedback. I'm madly reading your posts and working to try and get some of these good suggestions worked into the system. Along with the regular business.

Both Shannon and Celeste mentioned that they would like to be able to edit the categories that their submissions are being put into. So, I've built that into the My Content section of the site. If you click the edit button on your article, you'll be able to update the categories that your articles are currently placed in. So now, you can re-categorize your articles.

geniuswaitress brought up a good point with the search function wasn't showing the most recent articles first. That has been changed so that the articles are ordered with the most recent articles at the top of the list. and the articles getting progressively older. Thanks geniuswaitress for this good suggestion!

I haven't forgotten the desire to be able to send counter offers to customers, but that is going to require a little more time to implement.
-jrichards

[HayleyWriter]

Hi Jrichards,

Thanks for the update. You can now ignore the email I just sent to Support about changing the categories - I'll do it myself now that you have enabled that function. Thanks for listening and making changes. It is great!

Hayley