New Listology Update
Hi everyone! I just wanted to give an update on how things are doing with the Listology transfer.
In case anyone hasn't heard, I am rebuilding the site up from scratch using an open-source content management system called Drupal. I've already got the main parts of the site prototyped and I'm hard at work on importing all the old users and lists. So far it looks like everything will be able to come over unscathed. I've been involved in a work project for the last few weeks that has kept me from really cranking on this, but it just launched recently and I hope to be able to start this moving more quickly soon. However, with updates come change, and there will be a few changes along the way.
The site will have a new look, although it will still remain green and have approximately the same layout and options. Out of the box I will probably start with a freely available design and munge it from there. I don't imagine this will be overly bothersome to people.
Another change that will happen is that a lot of HTML is going to be disallowed from lists. This will probably be bothersome to some people, but there are a variety of nasty security implications that come along with allowing full HTML in postings. I'm still nailing this down but if anyone has any comments or concerns please let me know!
On the up side, there will be lots of great new features. RSS feeds will be everywhere, based on user/category/etc. We'll have free tagging to further categorize your postings. There will be nice clean urls (http://listology.com/heyrocker/films_seen_2005) but the old URLs will still work. It is possible we'll see some integration with outside services (IE a post to your twitter/facebook/etc when you create a new list) although its doubtful this will be a launch feature. There's more I'm forgetting I'm sure.
This brings me to you! What do you want to see? What do you NOT want to see? I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts. Sometimes the the things that seem difficult are the easiest so feel free to let fly with whatever you want.
Thanks and I look forward to an easy, smooth transition!
Thanks for putting so much effort into this. I was wondering, if you want to do away with HTML, then is it possible to implement BBCode as a replacement?
Just to make it clear, I'm not doing away with HTML, I'm just limiting it to a minimal subset of what was previously allowed.
Sorry for the ambiguity, I was concerned about the image tag, so if the image tag is removed, could it be retained in the form of BBCode.
Just a repost -
- quote function and multi quote function
- simple formatting tools like italics, bold etc. without needing to type in html, ie graphic tabs for formatting (but I guess this is out of the picture now)
- tags for lists
More suggestions I'm just throwing about :
- embedding multimedia like pictures maybe? (from flickr/imageshack only maybe?)
- I think some kind of user rating would be good. Maybe based on a mix of number of endorsements and post count?
- and finally, I think it would be cool to have a new category of content : reviews
heyrocker already ,replied to these suggestions, but for the sake of discussion -
- permalinks to individual posts
- a mobile version of the site maybe? If you're migrating to wordpress, something like the wordpress mobile edition CSS available at alexking.org might give you a general idea.
- a more detailed profile for users, maybe?
- a more intuitive user rating system
Some things this site doesn't
need, imo :
- avatars, signatures and other bloaty GUI
- reputation system or post count system. The current system is more or less good enough I think. The post count is visible only if you muddle through the profile
Just one request... is there anyway to increase the default font size. I do believe in my earliest years on this site it was a little larger. At it's current size you (I) sometimes get lost reading across a 1280 screen. Good enough for simple 3-4 words lists, but not reviews or extended conversations.
Just my two-cents.
This is like magic. "Thanks" just doesn't say it...
I must admit it would be a shame to lose pictures in lists but I'm just happy that listology is staying and i can still have great conversations with the listology community, so again cheers and good luck with the rest of the work.
I know we're all asking a lot of questions, and I'm curious about all the changes too, but I just wanted to thank you for the work and thought you're obviously putting in to this.
Johnny Waco
What about the <span class="new/grey"> </span> tags?
All of the existing classes are going to change / go away as part of the re-design, so any existing span tags are going to be pretty much moot.
So you're saying there will still be span tags, but we'll be using different classes?
I really hadn't considered span. Do you find it useful? I had really been more thinking of just allowing font, but i could probably enable span too if you think it would be useful.
Excuse me for being retarded, but what exactly is "span"? I had seen the term before in that Godfather example, but I never used it and couldnt figure it out...
Its just an HTML way to say "this batch of text has certain attributes".
Span is useful, at least for me. It would be great to see it.
As long as there would be a way to do bold and italics I would be okay, though the loss of images would be kind of sad.
What are the dangers that come with allowing a lot of HTML? I'm just asking because I honestly don't know.
The biggest issue is called cross-site scripting, and its difficult to explain without getting too technical, but it has to do with allowing people to embed script into pages such that bad guys can do things like steal your login information. Anytime you've heard stuff in the news about GMail/Myspace/Facebook having security issues it is because of this. It can also allow people to do things like embed viruses or spyware into pages. It's very tricky to avoid, and the people implementing it are very clever.
There are other issues but that is definitely the biggest.
Personally I dont ever use images and I kinda like that the site is pretty much text-only. Of course, Im not sure how many people there are on here who are going to care if images are disallowed.
I just want my color! Speaking of that, I dont even recall what the code is for color. I just copy-pasted someone elses and never bothered to learn it myself...
I'm not sure how hard this would be, but I thought I'd ask...
I was wondering if it would be possible to make Listology recognize when lists are in a series? For example, I have a ton of "Movies I've Seen" lists, and I would love it if one day I decided to change the names of the headings, I could do that in one fell swoop instead of editing each list one by one. Maybe there could be like a common template that I can set for these lists? I would love to also be able to automatically create a "Movies I've Seen" master list with Listology recognizing that they're in a series and doing it automatically rather than linking to all of them myself.
By the way, with less HTML, will there be buttons to make text italic or bold?
I was going to look into adding a little HTML editor into the text boxes, there are several options and I may not have time to do it for launch.
As far as the templates, probably not anytime soon. I'll keep it in mind though!
Out of curiosity: What manner of HTML will be kept around?
At the moment it is
<a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <h1> <h2> <h3> <spoiler>
I'm torn about <img>. There are ways in which it can be used maliciously, but I also know there are many lists currently using it and my only other option is to allow users to upload images locally which is a) a pain and b) costs more money to host. I will probably add <font> to the list since font coloring has been requested.
Any worries? Anything else you'd like to see?
Can we keep the boldprint HTML as well? ?
<strong> is the current more semantic equivalent of <b> (just as <em> is the current more semantic equivalent of <i>) I should consider either converting / allowing the old ones for backwards compatibility though.
I was juuuuust beginning to wonder what was going on behind the scenes. Thanks for the update. I only have one really BIG request, and I think Jim might have already mentioned this to you: I dont care about most html coding thats being used, but I really have a system going with the use of color. Actually just the color red (but other colors are good too). I dont see how just allowing colors would be harmful. I really miss my red color-coding as it would allow me to know exactly which books out of all my authors' bibliographies that I wanted to read next without going through over 1,000 books to make a decision.
As for suggestions, I would like to see maybe like a checkbox option for your lists (or others maybe) where you can easily check off what youve seen/heard/listened to, etc. This would be quicker and neater than going in and editing the little plus signs.
Overall though, I really like the simplicity of the site and I wouldnt want it to deviate much from what its always been
Just wanted to chime in with some support for heyrocker's decision to disallow most HTML. I know this will probably upset some folks, but it really is unsafe to allow as much HTML as Listology has allowed to date, and it's just lucky that we haven't been burned by that already.
Can't wait for RSS everywhere!
I'm just happy for the new look. This site is a tad dated lol. Just don't change it too much!
:-) No arguments here!