I’m working on a few new category features that will hopefully make things a bit more user-friendly with regards to browsing the directory. In a directory with nearly 200 different categories, it can be a little daunting to browse for things you are interested in (as opposed to using the search feature) so what will be coming online in the next few weeks is a way for each logged in user to “watch” categories.
What will happen is, you’ll be surfing through the categories and notice you find a given category particularily useful. You will then notice there will be a “watch me” link up near the category name. That will add a new “watch” for you, so you will then receive notifications when new links are added to that category. Of course you can remove watches, and add as many as you want, its all about relational data models here friends!
Another feature we are considering is a “suggest a category.” We can’t possibly think of everything so one feature I’d like is for users to suggest a category when they are adding a link (if they don’t find one that quite fits). We’ll then have an automatic feature that if we think you’re on to something, that category will be instantly created (much like how we approve links).
This leads me to the last bit of feature stuff. Do you have any ideas of how we can make things better, easier more snappy around here? We’d sure like to hear ‘em. Just drop me or Sol an email and tell us what your bright idea is.
me: dpalmer (at) diysearch (dot) com
Sol: editor (at) diysearch (dot) com
I’ve been noticing over the past several months that a small bit of traffic (to the tune o about 6-8%) to Diysearch comes from Crimethinc. Now, while I have nothing against their site, or their philosophy (in the abstract) I do have a problem with the extreme fallacy of their logic and idiotic (bordering on pathological) insanity that permeates the vast majority of their content.
Take for example, their “Why Fuck the Police” page. Aside from the ridiculous “workers of the world exploited by the ‘proletariat’” utter nonsense, it also condones “fucking with” the police, basically making their job impossible. Well, aside from laughing at the sheer STUPIDITY of EVERYTHING that was actually committed to “paper” I just came up with this simple conclusion: I hope these morons never get into a car accident, or have anyone break into their living spaces, or that no one abducts a loved one.
I cannot control who links to Diysearch. I only hope that those that do link to the site are as reasonable and level-headed as we are (and we really are you know) but if you aren’t, there’s very little I can and will do about it. Crimethinc, while doing an infinitesimal amount of good work (through their DIY projects) is simply just another hold-over of the ridiculous, paranoid and highly flawed philosophy that serves no one but their own egos and insecurities.
Let me put it more simply. If Crimethinc were to submit their link, it would get deleted, immediately. Why? Because they are, as I firmly believe, a hate organization. I will NOT tolerate that, not even a little. If you spread hate, fear and violence, then you have no place in our search engine.
There is a planned outage on 3 September of the entire server between 3:00 a.m. - 7:00 a.m. (EDT). The hosting provider (Serverbeach) is moving our server to their new data center. All sites, blogs and email will be unavailable during that time.
I’ll be making a backup of the entire database and all applications as normal and this should go smoothly. Once the move is complete, there should also be a noticable difference in peformance (for the better) in that this new data center has much “fatter pipes” which will increase throughput.
This entry serves as an official notice of this outage. Any questions? Post here. When the outage is complete, I will make sure to post here as well.
As the design and development progresses on DiyShare, and because I’ve quickly become a fan of the Agile-like way of doing development, I’ve released a first “version” of the home page. There’s nothing there right now but a simple message with a more descriptive, er, description of what DiyShare is going to be. The design is pretty well settled, but I’m not going to let that stop me from re-thinking things and Sol (our editor) will want to make tweaks to things here and there. This is all part of the process.
So, stop by and go look (leave your comments here)
http://www.diyshare.com
No, no, no, I didn’t just fire the entire staff, bring in an outside CEO and create an entire new layer of middle management! Actually, what we (me and Sol, the editor) did was created a bunch of new categories, deleted a bunch more, re-filed a bunch of links and are well on our way to making the categories much more robust and clear.
That has always been a problem with this site. Categories were always created in an “ad hoc” fashion, created on a whim, for the most part. Well, that time has past and now we are working on more structure employing a bit more (we hope) logic to the process.
For example, you’ll notice the HABITAT parent category. This will be for, well, I think the name says it all. And you may also notice that WEB RESOURCE is now gone. All of the links have been filed into more relevant categories and the category and all of the child categories have been deleted. SMALL BUSINESS is the next to be deleted. Everything there can be better filed into the new categories we’ve created, such as we’ve created ‘FOR SALE’ sub-categories for many of the main parent categories.
This will guide the user through the hierarchy with more clarity.
So, lots of thinking is finally being put to this particular aspect of the site, and its high-time that it has.
