Improving SecretLeeds

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dsco
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Post by dsco »

Hi everybody,As regular visitors will know, we've been going through some changes here at SecretLeeds recently. I just wanted to update you all with what's been happening and why, and to share some plans for the future and get your feedback.Change in ownershipWay back in 2006, James Hill (site name 'munki') and myself (Duncan Scobie) came up with a concept called SecretLeeds that we planned to be part of the "Celebrate Leeds 2007" festivities for the 800th anniversary of Leeds being granted its town charter. We were working for Leeds City Council and Marketing Leeds respectively, and wanted to harness the rising power of social media to investigate and celebrate some of the more unusual and unique aspects of our home city. This website was the result, and it turned out to be quite popular Fast forward six years to 2012 and James had moved on from his job to pastures new and the company I worked for was merging with various departments of the council and becoming a new entity. SecretLeeds had not been developed for many years and was something of an anomaly for the new organisation that inherited it, Leeds and Partners. As I was about to leave my job too, I was keen to ensure that the site's future would be secure and began to investigate what L&P's plans were for it.One way or another it became clear that L&P were not interested in maintaining and developing the site, so I began a bid to take it over and run it on behalf of the community. L&P were happy with my proposal and the transfer of ownership was completed in January 2013 and the site was then transferred to a new server under my control.So in short, SecretLeeds will now be run on behalf of you lot, by me! One of my first acts as the new 'curator' of SL was to get James/munki back on board, as he's been sorely missed since leaving the council. Recent changesI've been busy for the last few weeks making various tweaks and improvements to the site. The initial focus has been on sorting out the site layout and updating it to display better on modern computers and browsers. Hopefully it's a bit easier for folk to read now. Improvements will be ongoing, and we're running competitions at the moment to update the banner images at the top of the site as well as the SecretLeeds logo. For more information and details on how to enter, please see here: Photo competition and here: Logo design competitionToday I've implemented a new search function as that was something that people seemed keen to have working. It's a service provided for free by Google and as a result there are Google ads served next to your search results. It seems to work really well (certainly leaps and bounds better than the old search function!) but let me know if you have any issues or can suggest improvements.Coming soonThis month we celebrate SecretLeeds' sixth birthday and naturally we're going to have a party! It would be great if you could come along, it's going to be on Friday 22nd February at The Victoria pub on Great George Street. We have reserved "Bridget's Bar" for the do; there will be nibbles and cake provided but you'll have to pay for your own drinks Hope to see as many as possible of you there.One of the top priorities for future development work is sorting out the system for uploading and displaying images. This has been broken for a long time now and I'm not too sure what the problem is. I'll be working on it over the coming weeks though, trying to either fix it or find an alternative solution. I'll keep you posted.In order to pay for our server costs we will be implementing advertising on the site in the next few weeks. I know this may not be welcome news for everyone but we do have to pay the bills somehow! They won't be too intrusive though and we're looking at using a Leeds company to serve the ads as well as major providers like Google - we like to keep things local where possible. SecretLeeds is all about you guys, so if you have any suggestions for new features or improvements please post below or email info@secretleeds.com with your ideas - no matter how outlandish!Long term plansUltimately I hope to rebuild SecretLeeds on different forum software. The site was originally constructed on a shoestring budget and the background system that runs it all is pretty basic, a bit outdated, lacks some key features (like private messaging for example) and the team that built the software are no longer working on the project.For SecretLeeds to move into the modern era of the web we're going to have to migrate all the site content to a new system. To be absolutely clear that does not mean losing any of the existing site content - we'll be preserving everything but we'll be able to add new features to make the site easier to use and more informative. Current ideas include things like GPS mapping, a site wiki for important SL subjects (so new users don't have to wade through 100+ pages of info about The Skulls for example!) and more social media functions to connect with the modern web. I'll get any interested parties involved in the design process when the time comes.And finally...This post is way too long already, but I wanted to keep everyone fully informed about recent developments - thanks for taking the time to read this far This site is nothing without its users - it's all about you guys, so if you have ideas, comments or suggestions about any of the above, or anything else SL-related for that matter, please don't hesitate to get in touch - either post in this thread or email info@secretleeds.com. I look forward to hearing from you all - let's see where we can take this site together!
Contact me via ask@tyrell.mobi if you have any questions or comments about the site.

String o' beads
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Post by String o' beads »

Looking forward to a PM facility in the future.Pleased that a grip is being got.

String o' beads
Posts: 1360
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Post by String o' beads »

I have 'new thread' and 'new message' showing at the bottom when I click on this thread so all seems to be working okay.

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Croggy1
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Post by Croggy1 »

Sounds good to me.DM/PM is very useful feature on any forum.

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mhoulden
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Post by mhoulden »

A few thoughts, some of which might be a bit technical, but that's what I do:Standardise on either secretleeds.com or secretleeds.co.uk and have a redirect in global.asax so that if someone accesses one, they get sent to the otherAllow people to add tags to a new thread, so something might be tagged with something like "tunnels" or "Whitehall Road". Click on a tag and it shows you all threads with the same tags so you don't have to search for something that may not have been covered before.Image uploads: I'm working on a little web app to do this on my own website so I may be able to help out with thisUser badges and ranks: ranked automatically depending on the number of posts made. Badges could be a bit of fun assigned by moderators if someone's got a special interest in particular areasURLifier: I keep getting caught out by the thing that makes links clickable including the full stop if I have them at the end of a sentence, like http://www.example.com. There's probably a small code change needed to exclude the full stop if it appears. Actually, it looks like this may have been fixed.Mapping: with the number of Google Maps and Google Streetview links that get posted, it would be useful to have a Secret Leeds map (or maps) with points of interest, like this sample one: http://goo.gl/maps/N8ZgyI've been holding off a bit with ideas because I have an idea who might be asked to implement some of them, but I could probably help out a bit.

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liits
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Post by liits »

While I agree with most of the things proposed by mhoulden, I have to take issue with the badges / rankings.Several of our less prolific users have provided the most comprehensive, interesting and accurate information while, conversely, and with the best will in the world, some of our most prolific members have posted very little of any value whatsoever!I would hate to think that members would begin posting tosh just for the sake of moving up in “rank”.Another fourum that I read regularly 28DaysLater, has this ranking system. Their higher echelon members have certainly set themselves up as a clique and, in lording it over the lesser members, deter people – me, certainly – from posting items that could be of interest to other members.        

Tasa
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Post by Tasa »

I totally agree with Liits about rankings. I've seen members on other forums (fora!) being discredited because of a low post count, and wouldn't want SL to go down this route. I know we can already see a person's post count, but I think the ranking/badge system draws undue attention to it and potentially rewards quantity rather than quality.I would be OK with the DM/PM facility as long as there was the option to block someone or switch off the facility if you didn't want to receive these (having had a "stalker" on another site in the past).It would be good if, when clicking on a person's profile to see which threads they have participated in, you could see the actual posts they made to a past thread (or at least the actual page of the thread which featured their post) rather than just the list of threads. Sometimes you remember that a forum member contributed a particular piece of information, but you need to trawl right through the thread to find it. The search facility doesn't always help with this as you need to know the right keywords to use.Thanks Duncan for your hard work and consultation with forum users, and I'm looking forward to seeing the site develop!    

String o' beads
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Post by String o' beads »

I dislike rankings too. Another method used on other boards is for people to 'like' in some manner or other a post they agree with/appreciate. However, this is also flawed as people tend to 'like' the posts of their online friends no matter what they post. I can't think of an alternative at the moment. So that was helpful.

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Steve Jones
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Post by Steve Jones »

good ideas except the ranking one.Any possibility you have now got a back up of the site Duncan in case of accidental erasures ,server failures etc? I know it is something touched on often in the past.I don't mind the odd ad as long as they help with the upkeep of the site.
Steve JonesI don't know everything, I just like to give that impression!

dsco
Site Admin
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Joined: Fri 26 Jan, 2007 8:21 am

Post by dsco »

Thanks for the suggestions folks, these are great - keep 'em coming!@Marcus - don't worry about the workload, it's under control mate. My girlfriend IS getting a bit sick of staring at the lid of my laptop over the dinner table, but she'll get over it I'm sure @Steve - I have more backups than I care to mention, though I should probably organise them properly! I'll also be implementing a rolling weekly backup to keep it all up to date.@Everybody - interesting feedback on the rankings concept. I use a few forums with these and also don't use a few forums that have them for precisely the reasons you put forward. It doesn't feel very welcoming to a new user and it irritates me when I don't have 'privileges' to do stuff like upvote answers because I haven't got enough stars or points or whatever. If anyone thinks it would be a good idea though please do shout up and let us know why.
Contact me via ask@tyrell.mobi if you have any questions or comments about the site.

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