Adil Najam and Owais Mughal
Regular readers might have noticed that ’something happened’ to our two side columns yesterday. Essentially, a lot of the material about past posts disappeared. You might also have noticed that we have been having ‘overload’ outages on the page (these are the equivalent of internet load-shedding, I guess; we have recently had days with nearly 10,000 visits/20,000 views). The former happened as a result of our attempt to fix the latter.
Old readers would remember that we started with a fairly simple format and then had a really useful set of inputs from the readers on redesign last August. As a result of these ideas we moved to our own domain and launched a new page with new features in September (with great help from friends like TeethMaestro, BD, etc.). Since then we have been implementing occasional changes (in style, in number of posts, and especially in the side columns). We had hoped to implement some other major changes by our first anniversary, but that was not possible for time reasons.
The essential principle is “Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.” We believe that MUCH on teh page is ‘not broke’ and does not need to be fixed. So tell us also about what are the things that work for you and should be retained. But then also on things that can be improved or should be dropped or need to be added.
We know that speed is a problem, especially for those without fast connections. Ideas on how to improve this without going too far away from the current ‘visual’ style of ATP.
Is the page too cluttered? Or do you actually like, what one reader called, the ‘candy store’ look of the page?
How many posts per day should we have. We started from about 3 per day. For last many months we were at one-per-day. Is that too little? Too much?
What about the mix of posts. Some like only politics. Some want only cultural stuff. We are committed to having a mix. But the question is, what is the best mix?
What are best ways to incorporate ‘news’ posts and to make them even more interactive.
All bloggers are always worried about how old posts just disappear. We have been very very lucky in that many of our old posts still get significant traffic. People are always interested in the music of Attaullah Niazi, the films of Waheed Murad, the life of Edhi Sahib, the caps of Pakistan, the trains at Bolan Pass and the adventures of Inspector Jamshed. A major interest for us is to provide easy to use ways for readers - especially new readers - to visit older posts that are still of interest to them. Any ideas?
Also, do please tell us which particular posts - or what types of posts - from the past you think we should feature in teh right-hand columns?
By the way, what do people think of start ‘reposting’ interesting posts from the past? There was some great, not time sensitive, posts in the early days that many have not seen yet.
Please, please, please help us figure out how to deal with the few ‘shararti loag‘ who never seem to learn and force us to waste too much time in managing moderation lists.
We know many do not like ads on the page. Please hold your comments on that for now. We will say something on that separately soon. Meanwhile we will try to have fewer but more effective ads in the future.
Not every idea, not even every good idea, may be feasible or possible to implement. Also, we suspect, different readers may want different - sometimes opposite - things. So, readers, please be patient with us and understanding if we are unable to do what you suggest.
We are sure we will think up even more questions soon. But those are a few that come immediately to mind. Any suggestions? On these and other things we should be thinking in redesign.
I love the headers, whatever you do keep them and add more new ones.
I am quite new and I have foudn teh links in teh columns to old posts and teh related posts buttons very useful. I can always find gems from before that I had missed. Maybe there are others like me.
WoW! After reading all that I think I can pass an IT exam.Seriously I dont care what the world think about Pakistan.I always knew that this country has pottential.
One thing that you guys can do better on is less advertising, all the banners are ok, but that new thing that you guys have added that ebay page opening up out of no where is annoying
Forgot a few things…
12. You design is 1000px wide, not recommended. Have it flow to 100%.
13. Archives can be a separate page or a drop-down list on top. Analytics would tell you the frequency of the pages people usually read and that you give you a good idea of how many times page-archives.php is being accessed. If it is not much, you can either use a drop-down menu for that or reduce the entire list to a drop-down list. Reduces clutter.
13a. Similar case with Categories. 3K2 uses the same page for archives and categories I believe.
14. Google Ads. Well, I don’t know how much money you make off of them but I would like to believe your readers are well educated enough to not click on them. See if you can do without them.
15. For an ad supported system I’d rather link to online commercial enterprises from Pakistan rather than Google, which btw doesn’t return very valid results.
16. Copy images from the “Keeping Tabs” section on your own server. Reduces delays.
17. Youtube clips fetch data from Youtube servers. You may want to think about that as well.
18. Check analytics for user screen-sizes and analyze the amount of pixel wastage from 800×600 to 1600×1200.
19. Personally I’d prefer ATP to take a cue from NYTimes Online.
One last thing… in design circles we like to call this Realignment rather than Redesign.
Here are a few things you can do to improve site performance.
1. If you are satisfied with your host then let it be, otherwise look for a host that has the least hops from the root servers. The more the hops the more delays or problems there might be. Of course the lesser the hops the more more you will have to pay for it, but a trade-off can be reached. You can check for hops using www.visualroute.com (better than tracert)
2. You can optimize Wordpress performance by using the WP_Cache (if your not using it already)
3. I understand your need to have ads, but there are workarounds. The more ads you place the more servers a page has to query to collect all information. Try to reduce the variety of ads. Get ads from one or a few sources than a lot of them.
4. The other alternative to ads is donations. I think we as a nation can be very generous in these terms. Plus you can get rid of the ads then.
5. The home page of ATP comsumes about 75-100KB on average, which tends to be a lot when coupled with images and javascripts. 3K2 as a theme includes a lot of javascript. Maybe you guys can find a theme that provides a more streamlined interface.
6. The links on top… personally, I’ve only gone through them once. Google Analytics will tell you how many new readers you get, and perhaps you can best decide whether to let them be or not.
7. I personally love the header image, although I would rather have u guys put better images. But ur compression is already enough to not warrant any changes. This feature I believe is not available in other themes, which is why you can stick with 3K2 sans the scripts.
8. I’d disagree with Adana on AJAX. One of the emore potent uses of AJAX can address most user’s complaints. AJAX enabled comments would allow you to show only the first few lines of any comment and users can choose to view the entire comment. AJAX would therefore reduce loading times and the script itself is not more than 1kb.
9. You can add ratings to you posts and/or comments to allow a fresher approach to viewing various old or new articles. It would certainly keep us more engaged.
10. You searchbox is un-necessary. Use the built-in facility to reduce the connections to google servers.
11. Generally as a design guideline, I prefer that links be differentiable in the hover-state.
That’s it for now. If i find something else, I’ll let u know.
I see a few good suggestions.. blogs of note and atp related posts should go. I think you should have/create more headers and when there is no good shot available for the day a generic computer designed header should be used.. google looks cool when occasionally they go with the theme of a special day or season.. but you can’t have one for every day. Frequency is fine, which I believe on average is one a day.. If a post is too dry or specialized for an entire day, another won’t hurt.. In another words no need to be religeous about it. Know that a lot of the things that you guys have done are right which is one of the reasons why you have made it this far. Best mix is a subjective question.. and I think you have done well there as well.. one wouldn’t want to read poetry on a day when Chief Justice is being manhandled.. occasionally posting earlier posts again is a good idea and goes well with the thought that this is not a news website..
Salamalikum,
Do whatever you want but please don’t implement the suggestion made Zain Saeed. I know everyone has different taste but this is not a typical forum. Rather, it’s a blog and shouldn’t have forum-type threads. It doesn’t look good and actually gets difficult to read some times. Also, the current format may have the added benefit of forcing people to at least skim most of the comments when intially writing their own comments.
Before doing anything against sharati people, please think what is the definition of sharati here? If you even have the slightest of doubt that it might mean not allowing comments completely opposite to that of ATP administration and most of its visitors, then abandon the idea of doing anything to “rectify” shararat. That’s not to say that people shouldn’t use good ikhlaaq.
I agree with the suggestion that one post per day is enough. Too much eating kills the appetite.
Sharaarti loag, as we call them, should be allowed to do the unharmful and innocent Sharaarats. When they go beyond the limit as defined by ATP, the part of the Sharaarat shpould be deleted and concerned Sharaarti should be informed.
There should be also some check and control over the post writers. A Post-Writer (PW) should remain neutral and impartial in his post. If he wants to criticise the subject matter of his post he should do it in him comments as a reader. If a PW is presenting a Writer or an Auther, he should refrain from “Auther Bashing” in his post.
If editors or moderaters find it necessary to delete a part of the comment, they should inform and explain the writer.