Since our beta launch last week, our development staff has been trying to keep up with bugfixes and feature requests as quickly as possible. We’ve squashed a lot of bugs and added a number of new things, but there are still quite a few projects in process. Let me catch you up on what we’re working on - hopefully your feature request is already on this list!
A columnists page. We have our full staff list, but many readers have also asked about an easier way to find our columnists, and we can do that. I’m working on it right now, in fact. A page that lists just the stories from the print edition, organized by section. We’ve also heard from a number of readers who liked browsing the online stories in the order they appeared in the print newspaper. We can do that too. You can give the print-edition-only list a try right here. There are links on all the daily news pages (i.e. Today), as well as in the navigation.- Timestamp and print page number listed on each story page.
- The infamous SportsLink filters. On the old SportsLink blog, you could include/exclude certain types of posts based on your interests. This was a more popular feature than I thought! We’ll be working it into the new SportsLink too.
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The “Latest Comments” list in our blog sidebars should list commenters by first/last name instead of just username.
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The “Latest Comments” pages for each blog should list the title of the post each comment is from. That helps provide context when you’re looking at a lot of comments at once.
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Also on our blogs, we’re nearly ready to enable customized sidebars, with blogrolls, link lists, and so on. Increase character limit on comments to 4000, from 3000.-
Provide an RSS feed of all comments on a blog, instead of just per-post comment feeds.
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Provide an RSS feed of all stories, instead of just feeds by section. - Allow at least some HTML in comments, for bolding, italicizing, and so on. This is a security issue, but we’ll be looking into something that can work.
- Bypass the premium filter when our own bloggers link to Spokesman.com stories. This was something we provided on the old website, and should be something we can put into this one too.
- Move our Gonzaga Basketball and Cougar Basketball section pages from the old site into the new framework.
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Profile pages are caching comment feeds, which means you sometimes see another user’s recent comments list on your profile page.
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CSS styling for blockquotes. How did I miss that?!
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Link to our photo reprints site from our photo cover.
- Revise the Letters to the Editor cover page. Readers are asking for just a simple list of letters from today, with calendar navigation to any day.
- Easier entry into our story archives, with calendar navigation.
This isn’t a comprehensive list, by any means. But I think it covers most of the things we know we still need to fix, and a number of suggestions that have come in from readers in the past several days that we haven’t gotten to yet.
Update: I’ll cross out the items we finish like this, and update you on progress on other projects.
Spokane7
30°
cwoolum on December 23 at 9:23 a.m.
Hi Ryan,
I just noticed over at HBO my user name posted with my comment instead of the name I filled on which is my blogger name. I see you have listed that here. It does it one way sometimes and the other name other times. Is there anything I can do or is it just a bug that needs to be worked out?
Ryan Pitts on December 23 at 10:37 a.m.
@inlandempiregirl - The way names *should* show up with comments is:
1) If you have filled in first name and/or last name with your site account, it will show that
2) In the absence of first name/last name, it will default back to your account username
There are a couple places where this isn’t working properly; that’s what I need to fix.
cwoolum on December 23 at 11:03 a.m.
Thanks for your quick response. I had entered inlandempiregirl as a first name. The user name is cwoolum. The inlandempiregirl shows up correctly everywhere else except comments. You can see over to the right the cwoolum showed up. My log in even says inlandempiregirl. Does it matter that I only used first name?
This just starting happening. When I first switched over on HBO it always showed my blog name.
Oh well… I hope we can get the bug worked out, but most people on HBO probably know my real name anyway!
Thanks again. Happy Holidays!
Ravenlady on December 23 at 12:33 p.m.
How do I get a picture on my username? Thanks
Ryan Pitts on December 23 at 2:49 p.m.
@Ravenlady - If you’re logged into Spokesman.com, you can click on your name at the upper left of any page to see your profile. Once there, just chose “Edit your profile,” and you can add any information you like, including uploading an image from your computer to show with your username.
Don_Sausser on December 23 at 9:12 p.m.
Ryan, I have two IP locations at which I view HBO. I had signed up with my real name, Don Sausser, on my main site. At the second site I went to HBO and it asked me to register again. I did but “Don Sausser” (obviously) had been taken. So I grabbed “dwsausss” just to get going. But now, at my main IP “Don Sausser” is gone and only “dwsauss appears”.
I wish: I could delete “dwsausss” and use “Don Sauser” at both IP locations.
Possible?
Thanks,
Don Sausser
iamdons@roadrunner.com
cryssT on December 23 at 9:23 p.m.
how about a calendar so i can click on a day and review what went on that day. i read earlier today about the state employees union suing because COLA’s aren’t in the budget. now i can’t find the article. it shouldn’t be this time consuming to read the news on line.
vitalyb on December 24 at 8:24 a.m.
@ cryss T - On the top of the page, there is a navigation menu. Under Times, there is a link for “Today” which list all stories, photos, and audio for today. Also, there are links for the individual days of the week to see all stories, photos, and audio for those days over the last week.
The piece about the State employees’ union filing suit over the budget was not a news story, but a blog post on the Eye on Olympia blog. That’s probably why you had a difficult time finding it. You may find that blog post here:
http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/olympia/2008/dec/23/state-employees-union-files-suit-over-gregoires-refusal-include-raises-her-budget/
Ryan Pitts on December 24 at 11:03 a.m.
@cryss T - You can also click on the calendar icon from any day’s headline list, and use it to select any day in our archives. Like on this page:
http://www.spokesman.com/today/
I’ll see if I can find a more prominent way to link to that calendar function.
Ryan Pitts on December 24 at 11:04 a.m.
@dwsausss - You bet. Logging in to this site is not based on IP address, so you can use the same username and credentials anywhere you are. If you visit from a new computer, just go up to the top left and select “Log in.” I’ll send you an email and we’ll get you down to just one account ;)
vericgar on December 24 at 8:17 p.m.
Can you make URLs in stories autolink? There was a story I was reading yesterday that had a URL, and I had to copy and paste the link. (Example: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2008/dec/21/walking-away/, search the page for .com)
Also, in many stories, there is a space between the www. and the rest of the domain (example: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2008/dec/04/no-no-nanette-auditions-coming-up/) I don’t know if there’s anything you can do about this - I suspect it’s about making it wrap to fit the column width in the print edition.
IdahoAmerican on December 24 at 8:45 p.m.
+ Fix bug that allows user to read entire article for free, bypassing the premium content system, by clicking on the “Print” icon at the top of any story.
Ryan Pitts on December 29 at 2:59 p.m.
@Michael Stewart - You’re right, the space that’s sometimes added in those URLs is to make the print edition version wrap columns appropriately. Most URLs in story bodies are autoconverted into links when we import them, but there are still a few holes in the system, as shown in your examples. Will see what we can do.
vericgar on April 25 at 4:38 a.m.
I keep getting the message about needing to be a print subscriber or have a premium account to view articles.
For example on this article, I can’t read the full article online:
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/apr/25/fire-at-scrap-metal-site-slows-traffic/
I am logged in, and my profile verifies that I am a premium subscriber, so why am I unable to read these articles?