Listology
The Pop-Culture Audit
Submitted by dgeiser13 on Sat, 08/22/2009 - 08:19The NPR blog Monkey See has an interesting survey called The Pop-Culture Audit: "So this is where I invite you to audit the culture around you -- both the good and the bad -- and consider a few questions in the areas of movies, TV, books, games, digital culture...whatever "popular culture" means to you."
New ads
Submitted by heyrocker on Sat, 06/27/2009 - 20:11As everyone knows, the site costs money to run. Currently this is in the neighborhood of $90 a month. I am trying to make sure the site breaks even, and I've very slowly been adding ads here and there to see what works, and trying to do so in the least invasive way possible. So far that is bringing in a chunk of the costs, but not enough to cover it.
Today I added a new ad above the title of content pages. I have always hated ads in this position. They tell your users that your ads are more important than your content, and this is a terrible message to be sending. However, there is absolutely no doubt that these ads bring in more money by quite a significant amount. So, in order to reach a compromise between my distaste for these ads, the need to break even, and the needs of my users (especially the ones on the site creating content and leaving comments) I came up with a twist - if you are logged in you will not get this ad. You see, an interesting aspect of Listology's traffic is that around 93% of the traffic is from users who are not logged in - they come in from Google searches or referrals from sites like StumbleUpon, view a page or two, and then move on. For these users, well, they get the ad. However regular users, the ones making the content that keeps this site going and makes it special, you are spared!
So if you ever encounter this ad, just log back in and it will go away. I will probably continue messing with different ads, but I will always try to keep it as light as possible for the users who make this site go. As always, if you have any comments, please let me know.
Comment Notifications
Submitted by heyrocker on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 20:59I have finally gotten comment notifications running. It works slightly differently than the old site, so jump through for the details.
The First Week
Submitted by heyrocker on Sun, 05/17/2009 - 20:27So it's one week in, and things seem to be going pretty well. There have been a couple of downtime blips, but overall I'm please with how the site has been holding up. After a week of listmaking, how do you guys think things are going?
Welcome!
Submitted by heyrocker on Sun, 05/10/2009 - 19:22If you're reading this, then it means that everything went according to plan and you are now at Listology's permanent home! Good news all around, I hope everyone enjoys the new digs. If you encounter any problems, let me know. One note - I put in a script which automatically maps old urls to new urls, however I seem to have missed the urls that have their genre appended to them. I will try and get a fix in for this later, but for the time being these links will return a page not found error. If this is the worst problem that we encounter I'll be pretty pleased.
So some things are different in the new site from the old, here are some of the highlights.
Launch plan
Submitted by heyrocker on Thu, 05/07/2009 - 09:36So after a long wait the big day is finally coming. Sunday, May 10 will be the launch of the new website! Unfortunately this will involve taking the site down for about a day while the data transfer takes place.
Listology 2.0 Sneak Preview
Submitted by heyrocker on Thu, 04/30/2009 - 09:55Hey all. For the last several months I have been hard at work on the new Listology site, and I finally have something to show for it. After a couple rounds of beta testing with a small number of users, I am ready to open the site for public preview. All you have to do is Click This Link! All existing logins should work, and the content is from an import that is about a week old now, so it is not 100% up to date. Functionally it should be very similar to the existing site.
Status Update
Submitted by heyrocker on Mon, 01/12/2009 - 04:41It's been a while since I've made a status update so I figured I would let everyone know what is going on with the transfer of the site.
Over the last couple months I have been building up the new site and working on the data transfer code. This is in testing now, I ran the first full imports for users and lists last night. Some good news - all the data is coming over. All the content, comments, user accounts, endorsements, and favorites.
New Listology Update
Submitted by heyrocker on Mon, 10/27/2008 - 09:04Hi 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.
It's Time III: The Hero Edition
Submitted by jim on Wed, 09/24/2008 - 11:24Great news, folks, our very own heyrocker volunteered run Listology just as soon as we can manage a graceful passing of the reins! I am so relieved and happy (and grateful!) that the site will live on. I hope you'll join me in thanking him for taking on the job. I can say first hand that it's very rewarding, but also a lot of work, and as I made clear in my initial resignation post, there's some significant labor ahead.
