Hi all,\rI’m planning on changing the organization of the site’s tutorials from Product to Category based. For example, instead of seeing Flash 5, Flash MX, etc., you will see Basic, Advanced, Special Effects, ActionScript, 3D, 3rd Party, etc. instead with tutorials organized according to their category. What are your thoughts on this change? Do you think it will be useful or will mass chaos ensue?\r\rThanks,\rKirupa
Hey K-\r Actually, if my two cents still has value, I think it might lead to mass chaos. For example; There is Basic Flash 5 Q’s, Basic Actionscript Q’s & Basic Flash MX Q’s as well. It would seem that they would all be huddled together and make it confusing and difficult to follow or find things you are looking for. Right now it seems pretty simple; If its a flash 5 Q, you go to Flash 5, Flash MX Q’s, you go to Flash MX. It seems like many people already do not travel the boards very much or very far. Plus it seems like it would also involve extra time for the Mods that troll to give answers, extra clicks, extra pageviews, extra time, etc…And then where will the judgement of whether something is basic or advanced be made? If it is left to people it will always mean chaos will ensue, as there is always a steady stream of newcomers, a good thing, but it must be considered. They (newbies) will come and think that anything they post a Q for is advanced and then the board will also be clogged with those irritated by such ‘behavior’ posting their replies to those people telling them that this Q has to be answered over here or over there. I think it would increase pageviews by a minimum of 4 fold when all the logistics are considered. And at this point, ignoring for the moment the cost of pageviews, which could be eliminated by switching services, consideration should also be made for the convenience factor, something (a system) that makes it more difficult, makes people take more time, more clicks, more waiting, isn’t a good idea in my opinion. A brief but irritating example is; When you go to Yahoo, and want to switch usernames, they ask you if this is what you want to do. You click sign out completely. Then instead of taking you straight to another screen where you can log in as EZ boards does, they nickel and dime your time and patience with a forced ad where you have to click the REAL link to sign in again. Clever, but irritating, and hence I refuse to even acknowledge the existance of those ads, as I am smart enough to know when someone is wasting my time with forced ads. But perhaps I didn’t understand completely your plan and am harping on nothing. One might have 2 Q’s that they could do in 2 forums for example; Now they might be forced to go to 4 forums if their Q’s are divided with 2 basics and 2 advanced. (and who draws the line on whether something is basic or advanced? thats actually kind of nebulous in my opinion.) Now they would have to make 4 stops instead of 2. Same thing with the Mods, as they follow the Q’s. Hence 2 times as many pageviews, and a burn of the pageview allowance. (Speaking as a new EZ board Admin myself here) It just seems on the surface that this would be what would happen, at least to me. But then maybe I didn’t understand your Q as you meant to convey it. Is what I said above a possibility or do you forsee that these problems wouldn’t exist with the new system…\r\rWaiting for more info-trolling for more gifs to rip with the Net-Vac in the meantime\rpj\r
nar nar\rActually the more I think about it, the amount of pageviews could increase as much as 10 fold as many people do not have their posts answered right away. Now instead of them clicking on two forums to check, they view all 4. Find none answered yet and try back in 20 minutes doing the same thing. Just a thought to consider.
Hey Phil,\rGood point, but I should have clarified. This is for the site and not for the boards. The boards are perfect the way they are; I am referring to the tutorials and the way they are organized on the site. But, I think you do have a point, and the same principles apply for the site as well.\r\rSo wohoo! I may not have to spend days pouring over broken links then 
\r\rCheers,\rKirupa
Fil, I’ve not read your post, sorry but here are my 3 eurocents : I think it’s a good idea to change separations between tutorials, but you should keep F5 and MX separated. And it’s a good idea to give a level of difficulty to tutorials, you should keep that too, but differently 
\r\rscratching head OK, here’s how I see it : 2 sections Flash 5 and Flash MX containing each several sections Backend, Actionscript, Animation… and all of the flas should be sorted accordinf to their difficulty. How about that ?\r\rpom 0]
Me and my organization debt would like to butt in. If you saw my desk you would delete this thread!! \r\rAn FLA section, with just the names of the FLAs. Gradually increasing with difficulty.\r\rI think you should have a link to all the Flash 5 tutorials on one page (actionscript and animation) gradually increasing with difficulty…\r\rAnd a third page with all the Flash MX tutorials on one page, again increasing in difficulty…\r\rThen a SWIFT 3D page…etc, etc, etc…\r\rBecause the current system isn’t bad, but if you are looking for a tutorial in Flash 5, and you’re not sure what it is exactly that you are looking for, then you would have to search “Basic” then “Advanced” then “Special Effects” then if you don’t find it there you would have to go to the “Actionscript” section…putting them all on one page would be better, but just separate them according to program…
Ok, I will keep Flash MX and Flash 5 separate, and I agree Jubba, people won’t know what they are looking on belongs in Basic, Animation, Special Effects, etc. Unlike other sites, this site has a lot of tutorials, and simply placing the links on one page will simply be way too much for the people to handle.\r\rFlashkit’s tutorial section is nice, but I believe they did not based on a “ease-of-use” point of view, but I think they needed more space for their banner ads. Ultrashock is quite nice, but they only have about 15 excellent, targeted tutorials. ActionScripts.org is really good, and so is Were-here’s navigation.\r\rI’m still straining my brain cells over this site hehe…\r\rCheers!\rKirupa =)
Kir’, your site uses ASP, right?\rMeans, the display can be modified dynamically.\r\rSo what I’d do (agree with Jubba) is have one page per software; MX, 5, Swift… with ALL the tut’s on it, in a table with different clickable column headers like “level”, “backend”, “scripting”, “basics”, …whatever (haven’t thought this thru yet) so you can sort the links to the tutorials depending on what you’re looking for.\rJust a complete list of all tuts by software which you can sort according to different criteria, maybe with checkmarks in the concerned columns and a brief oneliner description…get the idea?\r\rIt’s true that right now, if you don’t know where the tut is, you have to look on 3 or 4 pages to find it…\r\rWhat you think?
Hey eyezberg,\rYou have a great point there. I’ll start on that right now.\r\rCheers,\rKirupa
I found an easier method (I hope) than taking the complicated ASP route (because my knowledge of ASP is next to nothing). I created a full tutorial index that displays tutorials in a category based upon which program it was written about: www.kirupa.com/developer/fullindex.htm\r\rI will simply add that link after the other navigation links on the left. Would this be acceptable?\r\rThanks,\rKirupa =)
Thats awesome Kir. I like that method…simple, and on one page…
I like it too. And what about the shape af the little dots ? Does it refer to the difficulty ???\r\rpom 0]
Kirupa-\r And how about adding a search function as well? So that a search might index across all the tutes and bring up relevent results and this could be accomplished simply by using key-words in the Meta-Tags. So many tutes per page, yada, yada.\r\rPom-\r You obviously do not keep current on financial stuph. It would have been more accurate to say ‘heres’ my one cent to the dollars two cents, but then accuracy isn’t everything is it? Doh! And soon enough when America gets nuked, the Euro should do quite well, or at least a bit better than the almighty dollar! But soon enough they are both going way…But I digress, don’t eye? Eyze has accused me of this and I am starting to believe him.\r\rpj\r
Hey Phil,\rYou are correct, a search feature on the top would not hurt much Pom, I will add text captions to separate the various sections of the index.\r\rBTW: since you use Netscape, does the list appear full (collapsed) when you view it. For in IE, you have to click on the appropriate text caption, and then the remaining tutorials are displayed. Just curious that’s all!\r\rCheers!\rKirupa
its me. BOOO!
You drunk again, if so, lucky you, i used to get my best ideas & writte my best stuff half (or more) drunk…\rWelcome anyway 
Kirupa:\rGood!\rHow is this done?\r\rcheck flash mx tut’s/advanced/icon: missing or not?
Nope, nothing works with Netscape. Yipee !!\r\rpom 0]
Ok, I added categories to the links, and I added the search form like you mentioned Pom. When you see, “Nothing works”, are you able to, at least, see the bulleted lists with text in them?\r\rCheers!\rKirupa
OK, this is my last message !! I can see a list of links, and that’s all. I’m on Netscape 6.\r\rpom 0] \r\rAnd SImon, we’re NOT going home !! (at least not before tuesday)