« Weekend Events FCR Fined Over Ward's Collapse »
August 10, 2007
Brownstoner 2.0 Coming At You Today
After months of planning, we’re going to be launching the first significant upgrade of the site later this morning. While the overall look at feel won’t change too much, there will be a few noticeable differences: 1) readers will be able to create user profiles that track their comments, forum posts and responses to forum posts; 2) registered users will also be able to upload photos to the forum; 3) all the renovation blogs will stream into a centralized reno blog so you don’t have to (though you still can) check each one individually. In addition, we’ve tried to make searching the site’s archives by topic and neighborhood a little easier. Oh yeah, the site should load faster too.
While we encourage everyone to sign up for a profile and use it as the primary way to interact with the site, it will still be possible to make anonymous comments. That said, anonymous comments will appear in a lighter font than comments from logged-in users. The hope is that regular commenters can establish credibility (and not have their identities stolen) while purposefully disruptive anonymous comments can be easily spotted and discounted.
This first step into a web 2.0 world will lay the groundwork for a bunch of other new functionalities in the upcoming months, including the ability for anyone to start a renovation blog and the creation of a map-based archive of the 2,000 or so property-related posts we’ve written over the past two and a half years.
The site upgrade will start around 10:30 this morning. Access to the site should not be interupted, but any comments or forum posts made between that time and when we tell you it's complete (hopefully only a couple of hours) will be lost.
Look forward to hearing everyone’s feedback.
Mr. B
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.brownstoner.com/mte/mt-tb.cgi/1850
Comments
Awesome!!! I'm excited.
Posted by: cwh812 at August 10, 2007 8:49 AM
Let the countdown begin!!!!
Posted by: clinton hillbilly at August 10, 2007 9:11 AM
can't wait to see it! yay!
Posted by: anon at August 10, 2007 9:19 AM
cool! lets give it a try!
Posted by: bren at August 10, 2007 9:21 AM
that's fantastic! Thank you :)
Posted by: tag482 at August 10, 2007 9:23 AM
/wonders to self
"Gee, what does this big shiny red button do?..."
Posted by: webster at August 10, 2007 9:29 AM
why so focused on clinton hill? plg is dangerous. smash the old brick buildings and build glass! i wouldn't live in bed-stuy. i love atlantic yards and hope fcr builds a tgi fridays. the property you like is overpriced. <-- looks forward to the lighter font
Posted by: Anonymous at August 10, 2007 9:41 AM
Yup, that pretty much sums it up ;)
Posted by: Brownstoner at August 10, 2007 9:54 AM
Great ideas. I'm not sure I trust registration--still remembeer the incidents where people accidentally gave away their real names with Typekey--but the light/dark options make a great compromise.
Posted by: slopion at August 10, 2007 10:18 AM
we've got the team that created Movable Type doing the new site so hopefully those kinds of technical issues won't be a problem, 10:18...but never say never...
Posted by: Brownstoner at August 10, 2007 10:21 AM
Slopion,
Go go go with OpenID, then.
I believe this next version of WP that Brownstoner is moving to fully supports OpenID, so hopefully we'll be able to tie OpenID authentication into our login accounts.
Posted by: webster at August 10, 2007 10:24 AM
Er, I meant MT, not WP. Sorry.
Posted by: webster at August 10, 2007 10:26 AM
Quick.
Post something that will be lost in the void.
"Two seconds to non-existence, so wtf do you want?"
;P
Posted by: webster at August 10, 2007 10:27 AM
Bam. I'm in.
Posted by: webster at August 10, 2007 11:49 AM
In, beatch!
Posted by: Action Jackson at August 10, 2007 12:16 PM
Is this the new version???
Posted by: guest at August 10, 2007 12:47 PM
Jon/David,
One quick usability issue:
Can you control session timeout settings?
If so, it would be great if you could change the settings to allow for longer sessions, say...24 hrs before inactivity timeout.
It appears to be set to time out (and punt you back to anon/unlogged mode) after only ~20 or 30 minutes of inactivity, and it'd be much better to push that wayyyy out so users don't unnecessarily have to keep logging in several times per day.
Like many, I keep this open in a tab that I check in on from time to time during the day, and having to log in each time I want to comment would be a bit of a nuisance.
Am guessing others would prefer to avoid this as well.
Thanks!
Posted by: jeffrey at August 10, 2007 1:00 PM
Love it! I have only one complaint -- where is 'Gowanus' in the list of Brooklyn neighborhoods for my profile? We may be the seedy underbelly, but our canal built this borough! And our Lowe's and Home Depot are building many of your homes.
Posted by: gowanusaurus at August 10, 2007 1:52 PM
Great idea Jon--I wondered what was happening when I couldn't connect to Brownstoner earlier today.
BTW--what's wrong with giving away your real name?
Posted by: Bob Marvin at August 10, 2007 2:20 PM
I set up a profile, but when I tried to enter my neighborhood, I got "Error: Invalid value "Prospect Lefferts Gardens" for profile field: Neighborhood."
I know PLG doesn't get much respect here, but REALLY :-)
Or, is it just that none of the neighborhood names on the profile set-up page don't yet work?
Posted by: Bob Marvin at August 10, 2007 3:10 PM
@Bob Marvin, that issue should be fixed now!
Posted by: david at August 10, 2007 4:25 PM
I don't really understand why you would still be allowing anonymous posts. Can a website form be added to the profile?
Posted by: spanishfish at August 10, 2007 10:32 PM
Looks great!
Posted by: guest at August 11, 2007 7:19 AM
spanishfish, he will allow anonymous comments because many of this site's visitors would leave otherwise.
Posted by: guest at August 11, 2007 8:16 AM
I like this new system and only wish it could have been implemented sooner. All good things take time, I suppose.
Posted by: Crown Heights Proud at August 11, 2007 8:19 AM
So, why aren't Ditmas Park and Midwood included in the drop down list of neighborhoods?
Posted by: guest at August 11, 2007 8:32 AM
I registered yesterday but never received the email to validate. So I am registered but cannot login so I am banished to faint font land. Username: Anonyme
Posted by: guest at August 11, 2007 9:31 AM
Well, I can tell you one thing right now, this site is no more secure than it was before. In fact, it's arguably less so.
Posted by: guest at August 11, 2007 11:04 AM
To cater to us over-50-year olds, suggest that the point-size of navigation text not be near-zero. This is a typical web design failure, presumably because it looks good.
On forum post, the word text box size is way too small (smaller than this one.) It would be difficult to enter a longish post (or is that the intention?)
From design perspective, the home-forum-reno navigation detracts from the nice heading image. I'dve put them on where they used to be, below the image.
Finally, if you still have the multi-posting problem (won't know till I submit, but I suspect you do by your advocating patience above,) get a new designer! As one who designs html myself, it is trivial to disable the Post button once clicked, so you can't do it more than once (till refresh.)
Otherwise, good evolutionary design.
Posted by: guest at August 11, 2007 11:16 AM
The site is slightly less user-friendly now. For example, before you could post anonymously without doing anything. Now you at least have to click on something in order to sign in as a "guest". This is just stupid. I actually liked the site better the way it was before.
Posted by: guest at August 11, 2007 4:25 PM
I think this site is much better. If you could dis-allow anonymous posts, it might get rid of the rants and raves, which would be a good thing. People will be much more careful of what they say if they are forced to register. Getting rid of all the illegal discussions and the useless banter will be worthwhile.
Posted by: spanishfish at August 11, 2007 9:25 PM
Guest 11:16,
I'm in the same category as you. Most browsers let you enlarge the type with a simple keyboard command.
Posted by: Bob Marvin at August 11, 2007 9:30 PM
Spanishfish, what you're saying doesn't make sense. Most of the nonsense on this site comes from the users who register. So, it seems the argument should be in favor of disallowing registration and forcing everyone to post anonymously.
Posted by: guest at August 11, 2007 11:05 PM
11:05, check out www.apartmenttherapy.com
People on that site are forced to register with real emails and required real contact info. They are all very civil and the website is also extremely helpful. And if a registered user abuses the system, the moderators block him/her's email address from being able to post.
Inherently, if no one can tell who you are, you'll say things you wouldn't normally say if someone knew your name and if you thought you might be banned from the site.
In any case, it appears this site is starting to get closer to that method, which I think is a good thing. It will weed people out.
Posted by: spanishfish at August 12, 2007 10:12 AM
I am in complete agreement with you, Snapfish.
Posted by: Brooklynista at August 12, 2007 10:49 AM
Mr. B has made efforts in the past to require registration and weed people out. However, the people weeded out were precisely the ones we want to stay with the site. The ones who remained were troublemakers--which of course is why we stopped requiring registration a long time ago. So, the history of this site would indicate the exact opposite of what you're saying, snapplefish.
What you're saying might ring true over at apartment therapy. I wouldn't know. That site is so boring I never go there.
Posted by: guest at August 12, 2007 11:08 AM
Spanishfly, you obviously weren't around a couple of years ago when registration became mandatory on this site. It was a disaster. Why do you think the requirement was dropped, in the first place? It was dropped because it was killing the site. Let's keep Brownstoner interesting, and that means let's continue to allow anonymous posting. The serious posts are usually anonymous.
Posted by: guest at August 12, 2007 12:26 PM
I don't like the new method. I think it will discourage posting. If you had one or two bad apples, changing the whole system to discourage posting will throw out the baby with the bathwater. I predict your site will receive fewer hits and the discussions will be much less interesting, just back and forth between donatella, an architect in brooklyn, crown heights proud, and their ilk.
Posted by: guest at August 12, 2007 1:50 PM
Agreed, 1:50PM. The new method will create a small pond in which a few little guppies can masquerade as big fish; but the actual *content* of the site is going to suffer.
I think it's interesting that Mr. B would be so comfortable sacrificing content quality for other imagined gains, especially now that he depends on this site for his livelihood. I must not have as clear a grasp of his business model as I thought.
Posted by: guest at August 12, 2007 3:20 PM
Post a comment
Please be patient while your comment is published. It may take a moment.