Constant Content Gets an Update

[jrichards]

Hi Barry,

Thanks for the tip on the drop down box being cut in half. That should be fixed up now.

In regards to moving back to the pages being the full width of the screen, I know there are two schools of thought for what the best way to organize the page is, some sites like amazon.com and Google.com have kept the full page width models and are obviously very successful using it. And then there are other sites like facebook.com and nytimes.com that have gone for a fixed width layout and are also very popular. For the time being I'd like to give this layout a significant try before I go back to the drawing board.

In regards to toning down the brightness of the empty space that exists on both sides of the layout for people with large screen, there maybe something that I can do on that front. I'll talk to the designers and see if they have some ideas.

I hear you on the oncoming traffic making it difficult to drive, I also find that frustrating, especially in the rain.

jrichards

[Celeste Stewart]

Thanks for the category change feature! Works like a charm.

[jak]

Today is the first time I've had a chance to return to the site and note all this. Just wanted to echo the congratulations I've been reading here, not only on the design changes, but also on the fast responses to the concerns expressed.

One more niggle: I checked the description of the first public request. It stated the expiry date is 1 June, but the status is expired. Obviously the status was incorrect.

[BarryDavidson]

JRichards,

Thanks for the quick response, and I too dislike driving at night in the rain. New roads tend to reflect the lights of oncoming traffic, while older ones absorb a little. One thing you may want to run by your programmers. Let the customers and authors choose which view they see. Many sites let members choose to upgrade to the new, or just check a box leaving it alone. This may not be practical depending on your hosting company, server and bandwidth restrictions. Just something to throw out there. A simple modification of the cookie should work if both pages are present.

The only problems I see are with time and the many different browsers. Doing this for IE would be relatively easy, but it's a different matter for Firefox. Add that to the fact that IE 8 is out, and you have the problem of supporting IE 6 and 7.

Barry

[Shannon Christman]

Thanks for adding the ability to change categories -- that's a great help!

[grouchy]

I'll add my thanks - it's great.

[MeggieHardy]

Great renovation.

On the old site, when you clicked on "authors" an alphabetical list popped up. Do we still have that feature or is it only the top and featured writers who show up?

[HayleyWriter]

Hi Meggie,

No, the whole list is no longer available, but you can now search for a particular author by name, or all the authors that start with a certain letter.

Also, you can search for the expertise groups in each of the new categories on the site. This means that authors who write more articles in a category will have a chance of being featured in the expertise group for that category much sooner than waiting until you are a top 10 author on the site. Check out the different expertise groups from the authors page - it's fun to see your name on an expertise group list.

I like this way better because the current and authors who submit regularly have more chance of being seen when someone is searching for an author in a particular field of expertise, whereas I doubt customers would search all the profiles on that long list of authors to find an author who matched their needs. As you write more articles in a particular category, you can get more recognition as an author.

Hayley

[TroyPankey]

I'm not sure if this is the right thread for this but here goes. When looking at the author profile and clicking read more on an article the keyword analysis that comes up on the article page says keyword analysis for article summary. Shouldn't it say keyword analysis for article sample?

[TroyPankey]

When reading public requests why aren't the authors given better information as it relates to the price for an article the customer has set? I haven't looked at very many public requests; however, the ones I have looked almost always only tell the author the price for the article the customer has set, but not to which usage right the price relates.

Once I've seen where the customer put the price and usage together in the request. When it's not clear what usage right the customer is expecting for the price that is set, authors are left to wonder if the customer is following the CC-published typical prices or the customer is setting a price quite different from typical prices for given usage.

In a nutshell, if the customers are given an automated dropdown listing the usage rights sought along with the price range, then the whole messaging back and forth between authors and customers about what usage right the price is for will be eliminated. Make it as easy as possible to tell as much as possible to the authors. We writers already know the customer isn't prone to writing even when it comes to writing out what writing they want. Again, why not make it easy as pie for customers to open up more fully in the request about what it is they want, especially including a simple fix for a communication breadown over something as practical as matching a customer's price and usage.

[jrichards]

Hi Meggie,

As Hayley mentioned the LONG authors list is gone now. It wasn't really feasible to keep on having the list just get longer and longer as more authors signed up and consequently we had to change the layout to something different. The expertise groups were a way for us to highlight a lot of different authors who use constant-content to market their work. While these groups aren't perfect I'm hoping that with some effort that most everyone will be able to make their way onto the expertise list for their areas of expertise.

Hi Troy,

You're quite right that it should say for the article sample. Thanks for pointing that out.

As for the public requests pricing having both the price and the requested rights listed and chosen by the requestor. I think that is a great idea. I'll add that onto out todo list. No guarantees at this point about how soon I can get push that through, but I'm putting it on the list.

[BarryDavidson]

I like the idea of a drop down box for rights in public requests. Most customers who post public requests want full rights however. Some well even state that in the description, but clarification is always welcome. Sometimes, if I know the subject well, I don't mind writing a 350 to 500 word article for 15 to 20 dollars, but I definitely wouldn't consider writing a 1000+ word article with full rights for 15 to 20.

In light of a recent request, could I suggest a sub-category of humor to be placed with politics? Basically, >Society >Politics >Humor which will help more customers find that niche.

[thepaintguru]

I have noticed that a lot of the buttons on various pages have text that runs over onto a new line or past the end of the button. Seems like y'all might want to fix that.

[BarryDavidson]

Check your browser font settings first, and the version. I have my text size set to medium and I have no problems. The newest version of IE has an icon to view pages in compatibility mode (they were made for older browsers) as well. It's a pain, but sometimes the easiest solution is the answer - although rarely in the case of Windows. I don't know enough about Linux or Mac operating systems to offer a competent answer, so I'll leave that to others.