LIke it. No love it. Bike pages look great, can't wait to see what the blog and club pages have in store for them.
LOBP v2 beta ... updates to the site
What's up everyone.
I finally found some time to upgrade www.leagueofbikepolo.com. At first the plan was just to upgrade the code but keep the design and functionality, but i started to add some new tools and then i felt the layout didn't fit and one thing lead to another. So there are lots of new things going on, and a few design and functionality changes in the pipeline.
Changes
New design, though it's kinda half-baked at this point.
New homepage that's more friendly to the public. I'll be promoting some forum topics and tournament announcements to the homepage.
Forums
- No longer on the homepage.
- More focus on regional/club forums to help facilitate things like NA Hardcourt and regional projects like EHBPC, an Australian forum, etc.
- Much better listing of recent threads.
- "All topics" view for those who sit around refreshing all day. This view excludes off-topic stuff by default.
- Ability to mark all posts as read.
- Each comment displays author's groups etc.
- Coming back soon, for better or worse: the x2 button.
Tournaments
- Better tournament listings.
- Better listing of those signed up to each tournament.
Clubs
- Now have walls to comment on, so for example if you're visiting a city you can leave a message there.
- Club forum posts are now all private by default.
- You can add a blog feed to each club, which then goes to the aggregate blog
- Coming soon: notification for wall comments, better twitter/facebook integration
Bikes & People pages have new layouts
User pages
- Comment walls
- User's primary club
- User's groups are now visible
- User's twitter
- Coming soon: email notification for wall comments, Facebook Connect
What you might want to do
- Join your region or local club if you haven't already.
- Edit your profile: location, notifications, twitter if you have it, etc.
- If you have a polo related blog, add it to the blogroll. If it's related to your club, add it from that there.
- Report bugs in a comment, i'm sure there are lots of them and i'll get to them ASAP.
OK, let the confusion reign....
Wed Jan 20, 2010, 10:01pm
#2
Wed Jan 20, 2010, 10:01pm
#3
looking good. your hard work shows.
one thing (bug?) i noticed was in the bikes section, the gray panel on the right that has "my groups" in it overlaps the bikes all the way to the right in the first two rows. could be because of the resolution i'm viewing the page, which is 1280x800 on a macbook. i'll see if it's looks alright on my much larger resolution monitor at work tomorrow.
this isn't a bug, more of a feature request if it's not too much trouble: is there any way to get a "home" or "top of page" button at the bottom of each thread so you don't have to scroll to the top of the page on a long thread to get to the homepage?
Wed Jan 20, 2010, 10:01pm
#4
ok it's on my list. forgot to move that from v1
Wed Jan 20, 2010, 10:01pm
#5
oh ya and i just made the bike gallery more narrow. there's probably a few similar issues, i've been working off a pretty wide monitor this week.
Tue Feb 2, 2010, 08:02pm
#6
thanks for the home link at the bottom! your work does not go unnoticed.
Wed Jan 20, 2010, 10:01pm
#7
great job. i respect you, kevin!
Wed Jan 20, 2010, 11:01pm
#8
Added nopolo.org to the blogroll and it appeared 3 times. Showing 2 of us in "My Groups" as well.
This is huge. Looks great.
Wed Jan 20, 2010, 11:01pm
#9
Ya you had added it to several clubs, i hadn't anticipated it but it makes sense. I've tweaked it so that it only shows up once on the /blogs page.
Thanks!
Wed Jan 20, 2010, 11:01pm
#10
Nit-picking to make the great, perfect, not to knock your hard work:
I can't make any sense of the "people" page. Pics are different sizes and there is no apparent order or way to sort.
I personally don't use twitter or facebook, and am not interested in this site becoming more like either of them. Perhaps a minority opinion. But to "write on my wall" and subscribe to twitter feeds are things I could do outside of this site. Don't understand their inclusion here.
Club administrators need to thin their list to people actually in their club. In the first days of the site, a lot of us joined every club as it was formed. Now that that info is in an autosig, it's silliness is obvious.
Not one hundred percent comfortable with my local blog being accessible here on an international site. A links page including it is one thing, but now I feel like I'm posting in two places at the same time.
Plus I'm even more of a dick on the local blog and don't want to further besmirch my own reputation internationally before meeting the rest of you.
I'll get used to the new forum set-up.
Thanks for it all.
Wed Jan 20, 2010, 11:01pm
#11
you couldnt be a dick even if you tried. and thats an insult not a compliment
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 12:01am
#13
I can't make any sense of the "people" page. Pics are different sizes and there is no apparent order or way to sort.
Regarding sizes: either i pick the width, the height, or i crop photos. All three suck. I'll add some kind of UI for filtering, but the sorting is pretty obvious if you examine it for any length of time longer than what it took you to write the above sentence, or it took me to write that last clause. And if you need a hint, it's pretty close to the old site, just more compact.
I personally don't use twitter or facebook, and am not interested in this site becoming more like either of them. Perhaps a minority opinion. But to "write on my wall" and subscribe to twitter feeds are things I could do outside of this site. Don't understand their inclusion here.
Facebook appears on the homepage as a block, and as a little button on a bunch of other pages. Twitter is similarly easily ignored.
Club administrators need to thin their list to people actually in their club. In the first days of the site, a lot of us joined every club as it was formed. Now that that info is in an autosig, it's silliness is obvious.
I agree. except that
Not one hundred percent comfortable with my local blog being accessible here on an international site. A links page including it is one thing, but now I feel like I'm posting in two places at the same time.
It should be up to each city whether or not to post blog feeds here, I just added a few to get the ball rolling. So i can delete it, no prob. As an aside, you may want to know that your local blog will be internationally accessible either way.
OK, Maybe i'll add some means of deciding whether not the blog goes to the main /blogs page or if it just stays on your club page.
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 12:01am
#14
For anyone else who's screen contrast was set so that you couldn't see it, there are gray rectangles surrounding each player in the "people" section, which makes the pic sizes thing a little easier to sort out. Also, the people are sorted by the date they joined the site, which is the last piece of information I would need if I were looking for someone here.
A filtering UI would be appreciated when you can get around to it.
As for the blog stuff: yes, please, make it an option to have your local discussion stay as local as the internet allows. I didn't realize that you had just grabbed a few StLbikepolo (among others) posts as examples.
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 12:01am
#15
I don't think club admins should be responsible for the member list. If you keep the autosig, have it so that users can choose a home club and only one.
On a semi-related note, Drizz and I had a conversation recently about club page members. I felt then that they should be open and more importantly not used as a measure for club size as there are possibly many players not interested in using this site, but are still definitely members of the club.
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 12:01am
#16
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 12:01am
#17
Having read this, why not just display the primary club in the autosig and let people continue to be members of multiple clubs.
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 02:01am
#20
Looking good. Nice work.
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 04:01am
#21
Nice work Kev. Where do I send the beer $$$?
-Mike
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 10:01am
#22
x2
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 11:01am
#23
word - can we send beer to your whois contact Kev?
- LOPB v2 beta - dig the half bakery!
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 05:01am
#24
Hi Kev...wow great work! I wonder if the Australia region could be changed to read Australasia or perhaps Oceania. As much as we love our Aussie cousins New Zealand isn't a state of Australia. No rush tho', Cheers.
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 03:01pm
#25
I feel like an old dog learning new tricks!
Great job Kevin. Totally appreciate the 'free' labour you are putting into this.
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 09:01pm
#26
I am wondering if I can make the map appear on the club page again, or if a location link can be added to the club page. I really liked that aspect of the old version. Thanks for taking bike polo way too serious!
Thu Jan 21, 2010, 10:01pm
#27
OK i just restored the location block on club pages. However y'all only have one location now where as previously may have you had several pins on your map (eventually i'll create a separate form for adding each court, so they can displayed individually or linked to from tournament pages etc).
Fri Jan 22, 2010, 08:01am
#28
Nice work, really like the many tools.
One question (who im sure have already been asked ou answered), why threads take place in one page, i mean, big thread result in an almost inifinite page.
Is it a technical issue or a choice?
regards'
Fri Jan 22, 2010, 12:01pm
#29
The reason for this is that comments are threaded, ie when you reply or quote someone, your comment appears directly beneath theirs. This makes pagination really confusing.
I may switch eventually to flat comments, but not quite yet.
Just remember to click the "(X new)" link on each thread and you'll skip all the unread comments.
Tue Jan 26, 2010, 02:01pm
#30
This has been an annoyance to me since the original launch of .ca. It is confusing to me that all the new posts don't go to the bottom but insert in the middle of the thread.
It seems to me that any other forums I read don't organize things this way. I'd much prefer the 'quote' option used by most other forums
Tue Jan 26, 2010, 04:01pm
#31
I've considered switching to flat comments, and i still am, though i gotta say flat lists are much less useful for discussion, quotes are good but they don't capture an ongoing sub-thread very well.
Tue Jan 26, 2010, 06:01pm
#32
I think a line connecting replies to their parent might help a bit with the readability.
Fri Jan 22, 2010, 02:01pm
#33
where is the "home" or "back to top" button ont he bottom of page?
Fri Jan 22, 2010, 02:01pm
#34
ok found the to the top button but its not working
Fri Jan 22, 2010, 02:01pm
#35
Huh, i'll get to that soon, maybe scrap it all together and just add a "home" link at the bottom.
Wed Jan 27, 2010, 01:01pm
#36
i think the "top" link in each post is a good idea, but i'd also like a "home" button all the way at the bottom below the comment box near the "save" and "preview" buttons. it would decrease the amount of clicks by one and that's good cause i'm lazy.
Wed Jan 27, 2010, 01:01pm
#37
oh, and the "top" link isn't working because you're referencing an anchor (forum-topic-top) that doesn't exist as far as i can tell. :)
Fri Jan 22, 2010, 02:01pm
#39
I am not a fan of the timer on image lightboxes.
Sun Jan 24, 2010, 12:01am
#41
The blogs are now categorized by language, you can filter the blog entries and it will remember your preference next time you come around. Eventually there will probably be more language-based features, though the main forum will remain mostly English with sprinklings of everything else.
Sun Jan 24, 2010, 06:01pm
#42
you jousting mo fo You Ride
Mon Jan 25, 2010, 09:01pm
#43
this website was changed to confuse rawbie boards
Thu Jan 28, 2010, 07:01pm
#44
this is late but well done, is there a way that you could fashion something so members could follow certain forum topics and those be displayed somewhere often or at the top. it might be a little bit of work but i think itd be worth it
Thu Jan 28, 2010, 07:01pm
#46
What are these vertical lines to the left of the "quote" option at the bottom of each thread post? Sometimes there's one, other times two.
Mon Feb 1, 2010, 02:02pm
#49
is there a way to view the bikes so that they're grouped by the owner's primary club, or region?
Mon Feb 1, 2010, 03:02pm
#50
Not yet but it's an interesting idea, thanks. Same would be true for the people page. for now most people haven't indicated their primary club, but i'll do a push on that soon (if you're reading this, go to your account and edit your profile and pick your primary club from the big long drop down).
Tue Feb 2, 2010, 12:02pm
#51
Sometimes a forum will say there is a new post, but I don't see anything new when I am viewing the forum.
Tue Feb 2, 2010, 12:02pm
#52
try hitting the "(X new)" link and it will take you to the new one. if a comment gets edited, it shows up as new.
Wed Feb 3, 2010, 09:02am
#55
A couple updates...
There's now a profile block on the right which will tells you if you have new comments on your page
Reintroducing twitter in a few places, like on the homepage during major tournaments, and on the blog blog page you have the all bike polo tweets.
Coming soon:
better email notification systems for groups and threads
better profile pages
better home page
Fri Feb 5, 2010, 02:02pm
#56
This site(especially some threads aka bench minor tourney) slow my computer to a halt and i have to shutdown
i use firefox.
my computer isnt the newest and greatest but its making me very inefficent at surfing polo stuff while at work which adversely affects my getting any work done
make this site run better. please
Fri Feb 5, 2010, 03:02pm
#57
Their is one particular javascript that does the same thing to me as well. I've told Kev about it before so he knows of its existence.
Fri Feb 5, 2010, 03:02pm
#58
i might be able to help troubleshoot any buggy/slow scripts. i've been holding back because you guys seem competent. one of my jobs is webmaster for my university's computer science dept. i deal with javascript, php, html, css, xml, cms, etc... if you guys ever need a hand and i have the time, i'll try to help.
Fri Feb 5, 2010, 03:02pm
#59
Kev, is busy slaying this weekend so he'll probably be slow in responding to these comments.
Fri Feb 5, 2010, 06:02pm
#60
ya that'd be great i've tried to reproduce this on the same browser/same operation system but haven't been able to. unclear how many people encounter this. leave a not here if you're having a script error, describer your browser, the version if you know it, and your operating system, thanks!
Fri Feb 5, 2010, 06:02pm
#61
oh, please also note which URL you were on when you encountered this. thanks.
Sun Feb 7, 2010, 01:02pm
#62
Here is what slows down my browser.
http://www.leagueofbikepolo.com/misc/jquery.js?n:13
Running:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.0.17) Gecko/2010010604 Ubuntu/9.04 (jaunty) Firefox/3.0.17
Sun Feb 7, 2010, 02:02pm
#63
ok, first things first, that version of jquery.js is from 2008 (v 1.2.6). there is a version released in 2010 (v. 1.4.1). i would suggest backing up the site, renaming the old file, and put the new version in there. if it breaks something, revert back to the old file. if it works, test again and if it's still slow, let's go from there.
Sun Feb 7, 2010, 02:02pm
#64
i noticed that the "preview" button doesn't preview. attached is a screenshot of what happens when i click preview. i've had this happen in firefox and chrome (not sure about the other browsers).
Wed Feb 10, 2010, 02:02pm
#66
i was just thinking it would be sweet to add tournaments to gCal and iCal via a link on the tournament page. that way we can realize just how polo dominated our lives really are every time we check lockinfo on our iphones. amirite?
Wed Feb 10, 2010, 02:02pm
#67
i don't really know how useful it is to have 3 tournaments on your personal calendar every weekend. but i'm planning on doing this so that people can re-publish the data elsewhere, on websites etc.
Wed Feb 10, 2010, 03:02pm
#68
i don't really know how useful it is to have 3 tournaments on your personal calendar every weekend. but i'm planning on doing this so that people can re-publish the data elsewhere, on websites etc.
i was thinking more along the lines of an "add to gcal" link on each tourny page that would create an event on one's personal calendar. there is a greasemonkey script that does this for facebook events for example.
Thanks Kev. You really know how to how do yourself! Can't wait to use the new features.
Wisconsin is taking over YOU!
www.mkebikepolo.com/wordpress