Re-arranging the catalog

FAQ, comments and suggestions
Post Reply
Hokuspokus
Posts: 762
Joined: Mon 11. Aug 2008, 11:40
Location: Germany

Re-arranging the catalog

Post by Hokuspokus »

Our catalog is only an improvisation but even for an improvisation it doesn't look that good. http://legamus.eu/blog/
How can we improve it?

First of all, the tag cloud looks crowded and it's too big already.
As Viktor suggested in another thread, we could take the languages out of the tags and make them categories instead. I like this idea very much.
We could tag each project with the author and 1 (and only 1) genre. Therefore we need to discuss a list of genres we want to use that cover as many text as possible. Like:
General fiction
Mystery and crime
Sci-Fi
Fantasy
History/historical fiction
Adventure
...

And similar for non-fiction.
Philosophy
Travel
Religion
...

We are multilingual, that's a bit of a problem. Should we use the tags in English to make the page look neat, or use the tags/genres in the language of the project? I really don't know.

How can we make entries in collections, especially in multilingual collections visible for or listeners?
There is this useful list of all recordings here: http://legamus.eu/blog/?page_id=161
I suggest to add all stories of the multilingual collection there. The list is sortable by language, author, reader, ... That should help a bit, once the multilingual collection is full.

As crowwings pointed out, you have to scroll a lot the way the catalog is now. I have seen something on other blogs that would be nice to have: Only the first paragraph or so is displayed on the frontpage and then there is a link for the rest of the post. But I have no idea how to implement this. Maybe that's not possible with the wordpress theme we use now? Any wordpress experts among us?

Unfortunately we are limited to the functions of the blog for now. We will have a much more user-friendly catalog once we have a database, but for the moment we just have to be creative with the means we have.

Any ideas?
J_N
Posts: 406
Joined: Tue 8. May 2012, 10:29
Location: Austria

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by J_N »

on my wordpress blog (located on the wordpress page itself, not on my own webspace) there is a "more"-link, which basically cuts off the entry and you have to click on the link to read the full post... in html it looks something like this:

Code: Select all

<a href="http://reisevoyagetravel.wordpress.com/2013/08/20/i-love-binder-clips/#more-24" class="more-link">Continue reading <span class="meta-nav">→</span></a>
does the proper wordpress software not have something like this?

Once the catalog gets bigger, it would probably be nice to search for more than one thing... e.g. German AND sci-fi - maybe we could have a page for each language with one of those sortable tables? don't know how much work that is :?

and maybe a sticky post at the top of the homepage with a quick message like "Hello we are legamus, here is what we do... looking for XYZ language? click here" I have to admit it took me quite a lot of visits to notice the extra page with the catalog overview :oops:

For the genres, I think 2 genres per book should be allowed, e.g. children & adventure; or fantasy & crime; or whatever... one seems a bit limited, no?

and as far as I know, wordpress (at least those on their webspace) allows categories to be listed as a drop-down menu - can that be done for tags, too?
Julia
Hokuspokus
Posts: 762
Joined: Mon 11. Aug 2008, 11:40
Location: Germany

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by Hokuspokus »

Thank you, Julia!
I've found the More-thing and added it to the latest two entries, right behind the description. Better? What do you (all) think?

A separate table for each language should be possible, and not too much work, since it is already there and all it needs is to split it up and copy and past it on different pages link in some menu.
J_N
Posts: 406
Joined: Tue 8. May 2012, 10:29
Location: Austria

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by J_N »

I like it :)

However, how about putting the license & PD warning not on the main page, but under the cut? It would make the page cleaner looking, but that's just my personal opinion :)

e.g.:
Borgia
Posted on 26 August 2013
(first published / zuerst veröffentlicht 1928)

Klabund - Alfred Henschke (1890 – 1928)
Language: German

In kleinen Episödchen schildert Klabund Aufstieg und Fall der berühmten Dynastie. Machtspiele, Intrigen, Korruption, Vetternwirtschaft, Doppelmoral und Orgien … ein Lehrstück über Machtgier, Machtmißbrauch, Aufstieg und Fall … zeitlose Themen auch in der heutigen Gesellschaft. (Zusammenfassung v. crowwings) Continue reading →
Sweet dreams!
Julia
Hokuspokus
Posts: 762
Joined: Mon 11. Aug 2008, 11:40
Location: Germany

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by Hokuspokus »

Yes, was thinking about that, too.
Kalif Storch
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu 29. Aug 2013, 18:28
Location: Germany

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by Kalif Storch »

Hi I'm new here, and most likely I'm not in the right position to give you advice.

But i'm IT-Student, and if I have more than basic knowledge in something, it's IT stuff. So the wordpress solution works quite fine right now, but for assurence of a good future, there is only one answer. Especially in the matter of extensibility and maintainability. And this answer is a custom made software, which covers exactly the features you need.

So I have no clue when it comes to wordpress, but if you ever need help with building something custom made, I'm absolutely ready to support you ;)

Ciao
Hokuspokus
Posts: 762
Joined: Mon 11. Aug 2008, 11:40
Location: Germany

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by Hokuspokus »

Mutabor and welcome, Kalif Storch :)

Yes that's exactly what we think. Viktor is our Sys-Admin and working on some background tools. Maybe best, you contact him and you see how you can work together.
User avatar
Viktor
Posts: 602
Joined: Mon 4. Jul 2005, 01:24
Location: France

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by Viktor »

The idea of putting languages into categories seems to be not controversial. So I will do that in one of the next evenings.

Kalif Storch, thanks for the offer! At the moment, I'm working on some metadata tools. Once that is ready, there is a database schema which we can build upon for a real catalog. I agree that in the long run, only a custom catalog is feasible. It could be a heavily modified Wordpress or Drupal, but there's only one language I really try to avoid, and that's PHP ;)

I will write a forum post about the roadmap, so interested people can take a look. For the existing tools, the code is already out there.
crowwings
Posts: 453
Joined: Mon 9. Jul 2012, 07:42
Location: Germany
Contact:

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by crowwings »

Ah, too bad, vik, php is my favorite and as soon as i will have a stabile new provider I wanted to offer help with php developing .... :|
"They are all dead, they just don't know it yet."
- Eric Draven

Crowwing's word counting tool
User avatar
Viktor
Posts: 602
Joined: Mon 4. Jul 2005, 01:24
Location: France

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by Viktor »

There is still the forum where you can go crazy to your heart's content! ;)
User avatar
Viktor
Posts: 602
Joined: Mon 4. Jul 2005, 01:24
Location: France

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by Viktor »

Language categories are done. I'll see how we can have the word "Languages" instead of "Categories".

Now, about tags:
J_N wrote:For the genres, I think 2 genres per book should be allowed, e.g. children & adventure; or fantasy & crime; or whatever... one seems a bit limited, no?
I agree that more than one tag would be useful, but not too many. Before deciding whether there should be a hard limit, I'd like to say what I do not see as useful tags:
  • The name of the author. You can see that on the "All Recordings" page(s), or search for it.
  • Very general tags, like "fiction" or "literature". The tag should not design something that describes a vast majority of the books. The ideal tag marks a limited subset of works, but not just one.
  • I'm not sure whether tags should only be in English, or not.
J_N wrote:and as far as I know, wordpress (at least those on their webspace) allows categories to be listed as a drop-down menu - can that be done for tags, too?
When one says that the tag cloud is messy, I have to admit that I'm not a big fan of tag clouds in general - to me they are always messy. They can also never be exhaustive, when the number of tags grow, or they get even more messy then they were before. A drop-down list to have a complete overview of tags is certainly desirable.
Hokuspokus
Posts: 762
Joined: Mon 11. Aug 2008, 11:40
Location: Germany

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by Hokuspokus »

I've added the more-tag to the entries on the first page. Looks better, but now I miss the red color ;)

You are right, 1 genre is not enough. 2 would be good. Not more that 3. Can we agree on that?
Th

re: language of tags
The strongest + for tags in English only would be the better look of the cloud, which doesn't look good anyway.
But I think it's more important to reflect the multilinguality (is that a word?) of Europe/the World.

I looked around, but there is only one way to display the tags - in a tag cloud. I think we must live with the messy look for now. We will find something better for our own catalog.
J_N
Posts: 406
Joined: Tue 8. May 2012, 10:29
Location: Austria

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by J_N »

While cataloguing a project I realized that people cannot search by reader or am I missing something? should we add the reader as a tag? obviously, we don't have that many projects yet, but in the future they will increase and I know from Librivox that ppl have favourite readers and stuff :)
Julia
Hokuspokus
Posts: 762
Joined: Mon 11. Aug 2008, 11:40
Location: Germany

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by Hokuspokus »

People can search for reader names but not for readers specifically. The search will return the results for the readers in other roles BC, DPL, too.
Adding the reader as a tag makes the tag cloud even cloudier. So this is a choice between Teufel and Belzebub. I'd rather leave it as it is. One day there will be a real catalog and search for readers should be one of the features, you are absolutely right with that. And there is the list, sortable by readers http://legamus.eu/blog/?page_id=161
Only my 2 cents.
J_N
Posts: 406
Joined: Tue 8. May 2012, 10:29
Location: Austria

Re: Re-arranging the catalog

Post by J_N »

ah, of course... I forgot about the all recordings page... that's fine than... never mind... forget I asked (and thanks for the quick reply) :)
Image
Julia
Post Reply