A Few Small Improvements for WildSnow

Oh yeah Wildsnowers, a bit of refurbishing still goin’ down.

First, I got the top menu bar and overall layout working in Internet Exploder 6, which my stats show quite a few of you guys still use. So enjoy. I’ll now (gladly) get back to working with latest versions of browsers, and will pray two times a day that I never have to look at IE6 again.

Also, I realized my RSS feed needed a refurb, so that’s done.

Speaking of feeds, I’ll have to stick to a summary feed as too many people were stealing our content (via the feed) and filling their own websites with it. Sorry about that, but please realize that when you put as much effort as we do in creating quality content, it’s like dropping money on the street for “scrapers,” (guys who steal website content.) We still get our stuff stolen, but not near as much if we use a summary feed.

Improvements never end, but that be all for now.

12 Responses to “A Few Small Improvements for WildSnow”

1. Bill Bollinger October 29th, 2008 10:06 am

   whoa
   A lot better on IE7

2. samh October 29th, 2008 10:17 am

   > I’ll have to stick to a summary feed as too many
   > people were stealing our content

   I’ve often wondered why you did the summary bit. I like to read my blogs in a reader and honestly if the post is summarized I’ll only ‘pop-out’ to the Web site and read the whole thing if I’m very, very interested. But if people are scamming your content and this is a viable solution I respect the decision.

3. Lou October 29th, 2008 10:21 am

   samh, I might be able to do a private full feed, I’ll keep looking into that. I’d just give the URL to folks who request it.

   Another problem with full feed is to be fair I really need to have the advertisers showing in it, and getting that to happen is yet more work. I need to write more blogs!

4. Carver October 29th, 2008 11:06 am

   Hi Lou,

   I’ve got a question for you since you are “under the hood” adding features.

   I don’t see the link to previous posts that I used to use to see the blog entries you added while I was out of town. I think they were on the bottom right of each entry. I’d push them and read up what had been added while I was away.

   Thanks,

   Carver

5. Lou October 29th, 2008 12:14 pm

   Carver, they’re on the individual post pages, such as the page when you’re adding comments, right there at the bottom of the post.

   Having multiple posts on the homepage changes what you see there. The “Previous Posts” link is down at the bottom.

   Let me know if you still can’t find them, and in that case what browser you’re in.

   Thanks for the help, Lou

6. Matt Kinney October 29th, 2008 8:38 pm

   I really like the “Backcountry Skiing News” rotating thing-a-ma-jig and today was no exception. I gotta a big laugh reading “A French View of Whistlers BC”, That was a good one with some pretty negative and serious comments about Whistlers. Touche!

7. Lou October 29th, 2008 8:47 pm

   Thanks Matt, the idea with that is to have an actual human selected news source specific to our readership, with a bit of puckish humor in the titles now and then. It seems to be working. If you or anyone ever ever have any suggestions for links, email ’em to me.

8. Arne October 30th, 2008 8:35 am

   One suggestion: implement a discussion forum. A lot of backcountry oriented people visit Wildsnow, and it could be the basis for a good backcountry discussion forum, I think.

9. Lou October 30th, 2008 9:48 am

   Arne, there were so many backcountry skiing forums going when I started WildSnow, I just felt like it was a “me too” thing to start yet another one. I wanted to do something original, and did so by having the first backcountry skiing blog on the net. That was fun, and folks seemed to appreciate it which I was and still am grateful for.

   I’ve considered doing a forum, but it still feels “me too,” perhaps even more so.

   Also, you’d be surprised how much work is involved in managing a quality forum (I’ve managed a few over the years). The spam defense alone sometimes takes a good chunk out of your week. Then you’ve got the forum bullies. Sometimes you’ll spend hours just dealing with one person who’s hobby is mucking things up. My favorite of those was a guy who really messed us around on the Couloir Forums. After doing research on the guy, I found out he’d faked his own death on another forum and completely dominated the place for weeks, then got outed and thus dominated even more! Crazy, (and time consuming.)

   But you guys could convince me is a few of you pushed, and promised to use it!

   Leave comments or email me (and volunteer to help moderate).

10. Carver October 30th, 2008 3:42 pm

    Hi Lou,

    Yup, they are there in bright red now. And I see both previous and next. Good on ya!

    carver

11. Arne October 31st, 2008 3:45 am

    Lou,

    I see your point, and I realize forums can be al lot of work. Fortunately, the forums I visit are mostly nice and polite. Perhaps I am spoilt. 😉

12. Lou October 31st, 2008 7:08 am

    Arne, they are indeed mostly nice and polite, but the occasional departure from that can make for a lot of behind the scene work for the owners and administrators. Another method is to let just about anything go, but then the forum becomes dominated by one demographic, one which still has rules but likes to pretend they don’t.

    In any case, I’m still thinking about doing it. I did install forums at hutski.com but the plan was to keep those pretty limited in scope, and they’re not getting used much at this time.