Any ideas for organisation/style?
The theme I chose for Transport Textbook was the best magazine style wordpress theme I could find – but it does have its quirks. Although we can have as many categories as we want, only five will show up in the main menu bar – the others would have to be reached through an old fashioned list. Given this constraint, any ideas for the best way to organise categories? Furthermore, any suggestions for efficiency improvements in the sidebar would be most welcome.
I’ll see if I can work out five categories that don’t really overlap…
* Location specific (eg stuff about Eddington which is Melbourne specific)
* Transport mode specific (eg stuff about light rail technology)
* Personality or organization specific (eg stuff about certain politicians or companies)
* Money specific (eg Phin-specialty costings for projects)
* Transport theory (philosophical discussions about what makes a transport system work well or badly)
Now let’s look at a few articles on the blogs and see whether they fit those categories…
Thanks Michael – very good suggestions. I’ve also been thinking that we could use subcategories to better organise content, with five overarching areas to put them in. I think there’s a wordpress plugin that better organises them, so I’ll try installing that and see how it works. Otherwise, I don’t think my current categories will work so well.
I’ve been an avid reader of the Phin & Ricardo blogs, and I congratulate you Phin on taking the further initiative with this central website. I believe informed blogs/websites such as these can really aid the non-gunzels amongst us who, out of frustration, want some understanding of what’s wrong with, and what could/should be done about public transport. A more informed voting public can only increase the political imperative for genuine change (by reducing the gap between the real solutions and what politicians think adequate for a ‘fix’).
I thought I’d give my two-cents-worth on organisation for this site.
I think something sorely missing on the above-mentioned blogs as well as here (I know it’s only a baby) is an archives page (ie with a tab alongside the ‘Home’, ‘about’ etc buttons).
Unlike the sidebar archives by date (Ricardo) or category (Phin), I think a whole page listing full post titles (as links of course), and organised by whatever categories/subcategories you decide on becomes even more important now that you have so much more past content which both new and existing readers will want a quick and organised way of finding according to interest.
Crucial to making lists of post titles useful would be pop-ups when the mouse is hovered over, with a brief summary (given that titles are usually conceived as witty/eye-catching rather than adequate in isolation) to define the subject covered.
The downside of this suggestion is the work involved to populate the pop-ups for the mountain of past content; but if each author was responsible for their own posts, I would hope the future value added to that past work might make it worth the time & trouble for each of you.
Also I would suggest an original website icon next to each title to identify its origin rather than organisation by author or other more cluttered solutions.
It’s just frustrating when I’m scrolling though pages of full content in date order, and hitting ‘next/previous page’ buttons at the bottom in order to find something I half remember from a past post.
Congratulations again on the work you’ve all put in on your separate blogs, and good luck on solving the challenges tying them together presents.
Phin, in relation to style, at the moment there’s not a lot ‘above the fold’ – just a (too?) large title bar, and the latest post.
On my screen anything from categories down is below the fold. Hence there’s a need to scroll down for the most frequency accessed links, which I’d guess are ‘recent comments’, Riccardo, Phin & me.
Could some things be compressed so these could be put a bit higher up?
Well done on the new site. Already some great stuff on here.
Regarding the make up of the URL, there is a setting in your wordpress you can change so instead of this:
http://transporttextbook.com/?p=48
you get this:
http://transporttextbook.com/branding-in-melbourne
It looks better and it easier to find old stuff as well.
Happy with the layout
I would like to use tags (I didn’t work this out until after I’d started my training track series, and ended up putting manual tags in!)
Phin, feel free to move my post out of “Operation and Planning” if it is in the wrong place
Phin, is there a good way for me to organise my posts (transit theory)? Should I create a new page?
I was amazed to see that this site is powered by Wordpress, you’ve done some amazing things. I’d second the use of tags if possible, they’re much more flexible for organisation. One nit – could you put the author’s name on the individual article page, it seems to be missing at the moment.
James (another one).
I was thinking about the structure a little bit over the weekend. Under the tab Politics and History – wouldn’t the historical type articles be better suited to being published in wikipedia (is it a better reference for the Melbourne focused articles) – I don’t think you need to change anything, you could just use this site to notify when a new article is published / updated. Also I’m not sure you want to focus with a domain like transporttextbook.com on purely local content. The goal should be to eventually have people from all around the world participate / contribute – you don’t want to have so much local content on the site that it creates a barrier from this occurring. Even if you shifted to a transporttextbook.com.au domain name, the site should at least accommodate national content…ie make the sense to someone reading in Queensland – they should be able to apply the same principles to their respective systems. Sydney / Melbourne rivalry is still big – not sure you want exclusive Melbourne examples. Readership should be as broad as possible.
Thanks Cameron
I’ll endeavour to keep the focus national as much as I can – I tend to quote whatever examples across the nation fit the theory. And it is my modus operandi to relate poor practice in Australia to better practice elsewhere; my tone will be a bit more measured than it has been on other sites. I’ve lived in Brisbane and Sydney and have travelled on just about all rail lines in the mainland capitals, Newcastle and Wollongong.
I can’t speak for the other posters and authors though.
Cameron, I’d like the site to have a national focus too. I don’t really write about much outside Melbourne/Victoria because ultimately Melbourne is my home, and consequently my knowledge of Melbourne is far better than of Sydney or Brisbane for example. Riccardo has a much better knowledge of interstate issues and is much more able to post authoritatively on them. It is a group blog and I’d heartily encourage others from outside Victoria to post (ColinW is always good to read for example).
I’d hoped to get a .com.au domain, but apparently you need an ABN to get it – in the end a .com was far easier; which is a bit sad really, as I would have been very happy with .com.au and red tape was the only thing that stopped me.
cheers
Phin
I don’t think it actually costs anything to get an ABN (IIRC). See: http://www.abr.gov.au/
How many regular users of this site (other than myself) are there who aren’t from Victoria?