Last night, VizEds founder Robb Montgomery unveiled a massive rethinking of VisualEditors.com — basically, moving from the bulletin-board model that was created four years ago to something more like a social networking model.
Right now, this is really only a beta test. But less than 24 hours in, it’s looking pretty swell.
Is this a good thing or not?
I think it is. Just a couple years ago, the forums — and galleries and chatroom — at VizEds were jammed with activity. The site still has plenty of visitors — and Robb has the bills from his web host to prove it — but folks aren’t participating nearly as much as they once had.
Perhaps this is because navigation there can be a little complicated. Perhaps this is because the site loads so damn slow. Perhaps this is because folks are tired of seeing that drawing of me in the left-side rail.
Either way, I think you’ll find the new site much more flexible for the needs of VizEds members. And it loads faster, too, which won’t hurt.
Robb has set it up so you can integrate links from your new VizEds profile to your Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and NewsPageDesigner pages. I already have my blog spilling into my profile page, thanks to good ol’ RSS.
Robb assures me all our forum galleries will still be there for searching and reference purposes.
The only drawbacks? Two, that I have found, and neither is a major issue. First, you’ll have to join — even if you’ve been a VizEds member for years, you’ll have to create a new profile.
Secondly, we’ll lose our chat room. But hell, no one had used the chat room in ages. We had a ball in there. But we’ve apparently moved on.
Check it out. Take it for a test drive. See what you think.
Classes in video journalism
I disagree about the chat room. I think the chat room died because of lack of advertising, not lack of interest. It was hard to see if anyone was using it.
I think we should try to find an alternative if possible.
Ernie’s right
We’ll keep looking for a chat module for Ning . . . and until then the existing chat is not broken. Just remains poorly advertised.
The problem was fragmentation and navigation. We needed to jump to a new codebase that understands our users in 2008.
Our Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and LinkedIn-enabled users.
We have four years of forums, page galleries, blogs, zoomify redesign exhibits in our archives. None of that is going away. We will always be standing on the shoulders of our former selves - that’s how you manage growth.
If you guys end up liking the beta site then we can talk about cutting over to make it the new home page - but if we do that it won’t affect any of the existing services - the forums, blogs, et all are completely independent of this. I already have cross-posting scripts in place so you can start to keep up with things no matter what site you’re on.
We go where our members lead us. The thing is in the modern world - social network has matured rapidly and what was god enough four years ago - ain’t good no more.
Keep telling us what you want and then the VizEds community will be better positioned to roll up the next hill, too.
And this, of course, is why Robb is Robb and the rest of us are merely the rest of us.
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He’s on top of it already.
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Thanks, man…
I’m with Ernie on the chat. The chat never really died — it just smelled funny. Probably because no one opened the door to air it out.
Of course, finding the door, and being able to peer in the window first, got more difficult as more changes were made to the site. But here’s hoping Robb gets it placed more prominently — the chat was the best feature of VizEds!
This thread got me nostalgic for the ole chatbox. I went there, but it was empty.
One bug (I think): When you get a friend request, and click on it, it takes you to the yet-to-be-a-friend’s page. Nowhere can I find where to click “OK” to the request. When I go to MY page, and click on View All (Friend) Requests or whatever it says, it doesn’t take me to an “OK” button. I’m a troglodyke in things webbie, so maybe i’m doing something wrong, but Ning is nowhere near as obvious as LinkedIn, by comparison.
Otherwise, it appears okay. Somehow, Tony Majeri and I were able to link up as “friends” so we’ve obviously formalized something that’s been informal for 30 years!
Good point, Richard. There are several features for which I’m still groping around, too. Although I’ve avoided that particular one by simply offering “friend” requests to people before they offer one to me.
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This morning, I had difficulty figuring out how to read simple posts in the forums. You see the first post and then a blank for your response. You have to scroll down further to see the previous responses. I didn’t think that was very intuitive at all.
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Thanks for signing on, though. And once you get used to it, I suspect you’ll like it better than the old site.
Robb, Charles, et al — as always some great work.
I’m going to use this as my excuse to try and jump back into VizEds. I’ve been busy and just sorta picking through the RSS version of VizEds for the past month or two. One big question I have though: If I do start blogging or generally throwing out content through the ning-based site and the Beta takes a bad turn and you guys move in another direction, does that all become for naught?
If the new site jumpstarts participation, great. My only problem with the old site was the decline in participation. I wasn’t in the chatroom for the “good ole days” but I can say the number of people in there late at night like me plunged dramatically after SND Boston. I’d say posts to the overall site also dropped. With chat, I really didn’t have a problem looking through the window to see if anyone was inside: A click on Forums shows who’s on the site and who’s in chat.
I find some of the thoughts here interesting. VizEds is a lot like newspapers and Major League Baseball teams. When things are going poorly, it’s time to redesign or build a new stadium, and hopefully the content and roster improves at the same time.
One problem with the Ning site: It seems that the top menu, which you need to accept friend requests on the site, is broken in Firefox. Sigh. I had to go into Safari to say hi to all my new old friends.
Y’know, the biggest reason why I haven’t been around the (now old) site as much is that every time I went back, it had been redesigned again, so I couldn’t find what I was looking for — I’m a creature of habit, what can I say.
The new site looks snazzy, though I haven’t had much chance to monkey with it yet… the only problem I’ve seen (and as I said, haven’t had much chance to poke around yet) is that I can’t find the message boards, or whatever the equivalent there is.
Really, Ernie? Hmm. That’s strange. I’m in Firefox and I have no problem at all with it.
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If I were Robb, I’d try to troubleshoot. Asking me to troubleshoot a problem with a web site, though, is like asking Jessica Simpson for help with your calculus homework.
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I’ll let him know…
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Mindy, I hear ya. I’ve made that same complaint myself, about changing everything around. If I have to hunt for stuff every time I log on, the site loses its functionality for me.
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But Robb feels strongly that our needs are changing, we need to be more aware of multimedia and that the site itself is never a finished product: It’s always in beta. Not a bad philosophy, I think.
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Plus, Robb’s a whole lot smarter than I am. He’s flying around the world on a consulting junket while I stay here and lose my job.
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The new site should eliminate some of that.
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As far as the forums: You should be looking for “Groups.” The discussions are going on there. They don’t look the same as they did in the old forums. It’ll take you a little while to get the hang of it.
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I hope this helps…