A reminder that UMD has a very-underused Wam Wiki!

https://umd.net/wiki

Please help us by contributing your recipes, producer biographies, historical facts, how-to's and tricks, health and safety tips, advice for wam businesses, and whatever else. I just started a Wam World Records entry, so if you hold any records or know of any, please hit that section up. The whole thing is pretty empty right now, so maybe we can get it to be useful at some point.

Thanks to rynashe and Jason_K416 for the idea to post a sticky!
MM

Why is this under "People" and not "Forums"?

Well it's more of a communal effort that'll evolve and grow as people add to it. The Forums heading is more for the conversational stuff.

Hmm, what would you think of giving it its own heading? Given where it's located right now, I don't think it would gain any traction due to the poor visibility.

Thanks much!

I'd love to give the Wiki its own heading... same for the Hangouts and several other sections. But it's got to be organized somehow and 8 items for a primary nav is already pushing it, given the size constraints of smaller screens and the end goal of dynamically morphing the same nav items into a responsive mobile menu later. Any other ideas for organizing and visibility... I'd love to hear them.

Haha, no walls here! Ever! We have to have a Home nav, as the logo isn't always obvious. Plus, there's a whole subnav that goes with the Home button, so it's got to stay

[rubs hands together; cackles]

All right, Regis, let's get to work.

Some thoughts:

Does anyone actually use the home page? I've always thought of it as a failure state in case I accidentally forget to directly go to the forums.
Could the tabs be organized differently?
Could "Wall" go under "People"?
I've always found the distinction between "Downloads" and "Videos" to be silly, since the downloads are videos.
"Profile" could have an icon near the mail/notifications icons.
Have you ever thought about removing parts of the site that are rarely used to keep things focused and to remove clutter?

I never look at the "people" tab cause I'm not that into people

Having the wiki under the home tab seems to make more sense to me.

I also forgot we had blogs but that's probably just me and not any flaw with site design. Overall I really like the new site design now that I know where things are.

Thanks for the thoughts!

- The homepage is our most visited page. While seasoned visitors go directly wherever else they want to go, the homepage leads newer visitors into the various sections and gets them started. It's also the launch pad for search spiders to move throughout UMD. With its ads, it also directly pays for much of the UMD itself, so though you might not really use it, it's definitely not a failed state.

- Tabs could be organized differently fo sho. I ponder that every day, but given a lot of reasons, they are the way they are now. The wall does make sense under people. But the wall is a special section because it's the only place on UMD that ties all the sections together into a news stream--nowhere else do we mention that someone added a picture to their profile, for instance. That should remain a main nav I think, for now. Eventually I could personalize it and drop it directly into people's profiles.

- Downloads can be videos, and they can also be zip sets of pictures, text files, and mp3's. But the real connotation of a download is that you really do download it to your computer (permanently). While videos stream and so temporarily do "download," the traditional notion of a download to the average visitor is that it's to keep. This is exactly the sentiment that we want to express in a download store that does emphasize ownership and not the trendy streaming "rental." The Videos section is supposed to function more like a "tube" site. It's distinct from a download store and I don't want to confuse members.

- Profile is basically the most-clicked link for actual UMD members, so I wanted it to be a main one. It also has a submenu that belongs to it: I put it there when I got rid of the tiny top nav, and all those links are part of the Profile menu now. When we go responsive, the main navs and subnavs will rearrange themselves by CSS to be the mobile slide-in menu, so that structure is important. Also, on the virtual sites when you're not logged in, the Profile button is substituted by the "Login" button as there is no other place to do log in. We could rethink all this, but there is a lot to it.

- Which parts of the site do you think are rarely used and cluttering us up? I'm always trying to make things simpler and clearer, but I don't want to remove things that people are using or supporting the rest of the site.

Peace,
Messmaster

Well, you are the master () here and have all the data, so what people use or don't use is something you'd know best. For example, I had no idea that the front page was even remotely important since I never use it. My perspective is mainly limited to the parts of the site I use frequently (Messy Forum, occasionally Downloads), so anything else is irrelevant in my mind.

It seems like you're worried about removing functionality that people use. If that's the concern, why not combine functionality? For example, why not put the Wall functionality on the Home page so that both pages become more relevant and take up less space? That's the whole concept that Facebook uses to great success.

I could also see a Downloads/Videos combination since most of the videos in the Videos section end up being free previews of the downloads with a few YouTube links mixed in. I found it very confusing until I realized that and then ignored it from then on.

I think the wall on the homepage is a great idea in principle. I do have a small wall section on the homepage that I enable occasionally, though homepage visitors really use it when I do. To add the actual full wall to the homepage though would be prohibitive size-wise, as both sections are already way too large and I've got to work on that. Still I agree that ideally both pages should be combined somehow.

Facebook uses its homepage as a wall effectively because it is personalized, and you're required to sign in to your account before seeing it. UMD's wall is available to anonymous visitors, while the individual user profile walls (and notifications) assume the role of what Facebook does by collating content relevant to just that user. In other words, we have both: Our user profiles are like FB's homepages complete with their Walls, and we have the main community one which summarizes the whole site, hence its main nav status.

You're right that the Downloads and Videos sections are really the same (they even draw from the same databases and everything). The distinction is in expectations: The Videos page streams content for free as expected for a tube site--you are not asked for $$ first. That section costs a ton of bandwidth, so it makes sense that our own download trailers would be integrated there except for VIP users. By the way, there are no Youtube vids on the Downloads or Videos sections. Those are on the forum video archive because they're pulled from forum posts. Sorry if it seems confusing, but this is a lot of media to organize More suggestions welcome.

Messmaster