GWoP Too Difficult to Navigate?

We have received a lot of feedback from readers via the comments here and via email regarding the difficulty of navigating the blog. ...continued
Posted by Serena on 8/16/2008

1 comment:

Serena said...

GWoP TOO DIFFICULT TO NAVIGATE?

We have received a lot of feedback from readers via the comments here and via email regarding the difficulty of navigating the blog.

One of the drawbacks of the way blogs are programmed is that they are not intended to function as discussion forums. So when a blog gets as big and active as GWoP, it can be very difficult to keep up with the comments even if you check in daily. There is no way to place a bookmark that you can go to and start reading where you left off, no way to know just from visiting the blog if any particular topic has new comments since the last time you read it, etc.

Please be assured that we share your concerns and are currently working on a few solutions. One immediate solution that will be implemented today is to expand our Top Three Topics to Top Ten Topics. This way you can instantly jump to any of the ten most recently-published and heavily-commented blog entries.

One possibility we are considering is to enable the subscription option so you can receive new comments in real time as they are published. Another is to change the blog template so that each new blog entry is displayed as a few introductory lines along with a link to click to "expand" the blog entry. This will allow several dozen blog entries to appear on the home page as expandable synopses rather than just the most recent 4-5 in their entirety, and will require much less scrolling up and down to get to a blog entry.

So hang in there, we hope to be able to offer you some relief soon!

In the meantime, don't forget that our sidebar does include a Blog Archive section where you can view a list of all titles published by month. We try to make the blog titles distinct and memorable enough to remind you of what was in that blog entry.

Other helpful features already in the sidebar:

- at the very top of the bar, under Contact Us, there is a hot link to our Questions and Answers section and to our Gosselin Family Sightings section.

- in the middle of the bar is an area titled Episode List where we list all episodes produced to date, by season. Any episode which has been published as a blog entry with comments is listed as a hyperlink -- click on it to view the blog entry and comments for that episode.

- similar to the Episode List is an area titled Episode Recaps where all the recaps we have published to date are listed as hyperlinks as well.

We have also increased the number of posts displayed per page.

8/16/2008 4:01 PM

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