I've always known the main index page to the Notebook (I still dislike the word "Blog") was not very useful. All it did was display the full text of the most recent five articles that I had posted. What confirmed my belief was that most people arrived to my posts by way of the RSS feed or a Google search. This means most people rarely even see the index page, and even if they do it is not much use to them because of the sheer amount of scrolling text.
What finally motivated me to make a much needed change was reading a post over on Chris Pearson's blog, "Everything You Think You Know About Blog Architecture Is Wrong":http://www.pearsonified.com/2006/07/why_everything_you_think_you_k.php. I think Chris is dead on with his thinking that the main pages for blog-style websites should be a collection of starting points for readers, not just a chronological listing of content.
So I took about a half hour to turn the index to the MyersDS Notebook into something a bit more useful.
h2. Headlines, Headlines, and more Headlines.
As "CopyBlogger":http://www.copyblogger.com/ has drilled into my head, headlines are important, and probably what most people use in their search for content. It only made sense to make headlines the focus of the index page. Let people explore from there. So I scrapped most of the index page, which was 90% actual article content, and set out from there.
Once I had a bit of a blank slate to work with I realized the most recent post is important, but I need not make it the complete focus. So after giving myself a refresher course on the Ruby string library I only have the first paragraph of the most recent post show. It's prominent, but not overwhelming.
h2. Let The Readers Decide What Is Good
Next I wanted an easy and self maintaining way to keep the most popular posts on the index. I went with my first instinct and went with a simple ranking. The top five posts with the most views appear on the front page, simple as that. It's live updating through a simple counter on each post so it requires no manual labor on my part to keep track of what people like. I believe it will also prove valuable in choosing what to focus my choice of topics on and give readers what they want. So far this has continued to be a steady stream of tips and tutorials on all things Ruby on Rails. Which is fine by me because I'm happy to help grow the amount of helpful articles out there on the web about my favorite web app framework.
h2. The End Result
The resulting Notebook Index is something I'm fairly happy with for a first draft. It is much more concise and gives people an easy way to find what they want. I'm sure I'll continue to refine it, but for the time being it looks much better than an endless scrolling page of text.
2006-07-17T05:44:17+00:00
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<p>I’ve always known the main index page to the Notebook (I still dislike the word “Blog”) was not very useful. All it did was display the full text of the most recent five articles that I had posted. What confirmed my belief was that most people arrived to my posts by way of the <span class="caps">RSS</span> feed or a Google search. This means most people rarely even see the index page, and even if they do it is not much use to them because of the sheer amount of scrolling text.</p>
<p>What finally motivated me to make a much needed change was reading a post over on Chris Pearson’s blog, <a href="http://www.pearsonified.com/2006/07/why_everything_you_think_you_k.php">Everything You Think You Know About Blog Architecture Is Wrong</a>. I think Chris is dead on with his thinking that the main pages for blog-style websites should be a collection of starting points for readers, not just a chronological listing of content.</p>
<p>So I took about a half hour to turn the index to the MyersDS Notebook into something a bit more useful.</p>
<h2>Headlines, Headlines, and more Headlines.</h2>
<p>As <a href="http://www.copyblogger.com/">CopyBlogger</a> has drilled into my head, headlines are important, and probably what most people use in their search for content. It only made sense to make headlines the focus of the index page. Let people explore from there. So I scrapped most of the index page, which was 90% actual article content, and set out from there.</p>
<p>Once I had a bit of a blank slate to work with I realized the most recent post is important, but I need not make it the complete focus. So after giving myself a refresher course on the Ruby string library I only have the first paragraph of the most recent post show. It’s prominent, but not overwhelming.</p>
<h2>Let The Readers Decide What Is Good</h2>
<p>Next I wanted an easy and self maintaining way to keep the most popular posts on the index. I went with my first instinct and went with a simple ranking. The top five posts with the most views appear on the front page, simple as that. It’s live updating through a simple counter on each post so it requires no manual labor on my part to keep track of what people like. I believe it will also prove valuable in choosing what to focus my choice of topics on and give readers what they want. So far this has continued to be a steady stream of tips and tutorials on all things Ruby on Rails. Which is fine by me because I’m happy to help grow the amount of helpful articles out there on the web about my favorite web app framework.</p>
<h2>The End Result</h2>
<p>The resulting Notebook Index is something I’m fairly happy with for a first draft. It is much more concise and gives people an easy way to find what they want. I’m sure I’ll continue to refine it, but for the time being it looks much better than an endless scrolling page of text.</p>
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Rethinking the Notebook Index
notebook/2006/07/17/rethinking_the_notebook_index