Site Design Comment and Critique

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Book Garden Publishing on November 19, 2009 at 6:08pm

Hi Span,
I'm Jan Amenta though I write under the name JD Holiday. My publishing company is Book Garden Publishing. I'm a member of Span and I belong to many writing ning sites. I was leaving you a note about adding a Chat Room BUT after I typed this, I saw your Chat room! Sorry. :D
Sincerely
Jan

Permalink Reply by Bradley Flora on November 19, 2009 at 6:41pm

Jan,

No problem. As you noticed, the chat function is integrated into the site on the bottom of every page. You can use it to participate in any discussion going on in the "lobby," or use it to send private messages to another member.

Thanks for sharing, and if you have any other questions or comments please don't hesitate to post them here.

Sincerely,

bradley flora

Permalink Reply by Book Garden Publishing on November 19, 2009 at 7:03pm

Hi Bradley,
Thank you. I want to thanks Span for starting this network. For years span information has been a great help to me. I would never have gotten my book in print and company started without Span. And the yahoo group has been awesome as well.

Sincerely

Permalink Reply by Hippoville Publishing on November 21, 2009 at 11:00am

Why is there a photo of the Sydney Harbor Bridge being associated with the Small Publishers of North America? The two have nothing to do with each other. :) Even if you chose a bridge as a metaphor for SPAN, how does SPAN act as a bridge and where are you bridging from and to?

The Members link is anemic. Even after you've joined the network, you still have a join link. Perhaps a listing of members could go here?

I'd challenge you to make this site bolder. I took a look at one of the Featured Ning sites (www.servethecity.eu) and while this particular site has a strong urban vibe to it, it is not unforeseeable for SPAN to have a similar look. Bold graphics are a necessity in web design; you have 10-30 seconds to hook a person else they leave. I do need to point out that having the About Us in a text box rather than a Flash file helps out those who use higher security browsing habits, mobile users, and search engines (search engines love text).

Will you have a domain name such as spanconnect.org to host just this social site? Or will it be hosted on spannet.org and the existing static content on that site gets infused into this new one?

There's generally too much clicking to get to the meat of the site. For example, the IndyPub blog is a bunch of links -- going back to Serve the City, they have their blog right on the front page. Also, when you click on, for example, Resources, you get directed to a page that is unnecessary because you already have a menu under Resources to those things. Again, look at Serve the City -- you can't click on any of the top menu options; you can only click on the menu lists that appear when you mouse over that top menu.

Why do you have twitter, linked in and facebook links on the menu? Are they there to link to SPAN feeds/profiles/pages? Or, are they there for SPAN members to share what is on this site to their retrospective social sites?

Finally, it was confusing to read about how Network Members and Professional Members join SPANconnect. As I'm a Professional Member, do I keep this profile when the site goes live? Also, I've noticed that most people sign up as individuals, and others sign up as publishing/design companies. I chose the latter because of Professional Member status, but it felt a bit odd to sign up as a company. How will you make the distinction on the site between membership groups?

Cheers,
Jeremi

Permalink Reply by Bradley Flora on November 25, 2009 at 1:12am

Jermei,

Yes, the photograph is a visual metaphor. Temporally speaking, SPAN helps our members bridge the present they have with the future they want.

While we are a North American based company, we feel that knowledge and the sharing of knowledge are universal concepts, especially to be honored in this global age.

The look of the site will continue to evolve over the next week. I appreciate your challenge, however we're working to walk a fine line between an attention grabbing theme and minimal visual intrusion . This doesn't mean we want SPANnet to look boring, so if You feel that is the case, we would happy to hear more of what you think, with suggestions or additional example sites.

The join link in the member sub-menu is certainly not contextually applicable to anyone who is currently a member. We are developing solutions to fix this.

When this site goes live, it will be on SPANnet.org. You can keep the same profile that you have right now. The Pro site will be a separate domain, for content management purposes, and will require a separate log in, for database purposes.

Thank you for letting us know that you found our copy confusing, although we're sorry that this is the case. We are making revisions to to it and appreciate the fact that you shared your perspective on the matter.

The Twitter, Facebook, and Linked-In links are just placeholder graphics at this time. Right now we are planning to go with a "add-this" button that will allow members and non-members to share across a wide-variety of the 2.0 Web.

In regard to your final question, the distinction between (the online communities) membership groups, at this time it's not an issue that we've seriously considered. To help us further consideration of it, could you please elaborate on your question, or on what you might be interested in seeing in this capacity?

Once again, thank you for your comments. We do appreciate them and are certainly taking them into consideration as we continue forward with the development of the site.

Sincerely,

Brad Flora
Technical Director
SPAN

Permalink Reply by Hippoville Publishing on December 29, 2009 at 5:19pm

Hi Brad,

The site is looking much more fluid since I last logged-in. The comment regarding distinction between the online communities may have been in part answered by the new SpanPRO link above, but I was thinking back then about how do you expect people to interface with SPAN? Am I signing up/using the site as an private individual (i.e., an author), as an individual representing a company (i.e, a publisher at a house) or as a company (the house itself)?

The sole concern I have of signing up as the latter two is a question over representation. How can one actively participate while being sensitive to commercial agendas? Intrusive advertising on facebook fan pages have become commonplace and I worry about any repercussions this may have here (such as on profile pages or forums). Perhaps it is a question of moderation and that there is no simple answer for it.

Cheers,
Jeremi

PS As a reference:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/12/business/smallbusiness/12guide.ht...

Permalink Reply by Bradley Flora on January 4, 2010 at 7:27pm

Jeremi,

At this point we don't have an official recommendation as to whether someone should sign up as in individual, a representative, or as the company itself. There are number of facets to this issue and at this point we are open to our members signing up as the most appropriate for them of the three options, and are also open to exploring the conceptual ramifications of these decisions through dialogue.


For additional clarification, I do have a question for you.

Whose commercial agendas are you referring to?


If it’s 3rd party agendas, and you are at all concerned about the site becoming clogged with SPAM:

Then yes, we will, and are moderating and removing all posts and content that do not comply with our promotional guidelines.

Or was your primary concern regarding how you and your, or really any members, company is perceived, while participating in the online community?

In regard to potential consumer, or peer disenfranchisement, this site is primarily going to be a community of industry contemporaries and is designed for education, learning, and to increase our members ability to promote on the Internet.

On the promotion side of things, we are trying to create a fine line between allowing to much promotional noise and something that is a useful promotional tool for our members.

The basic model for the new SPANnet will be that members can use the social media features: comments, forums, the groups, photos, videos, etc. to funnel traffic to their profile page, where they can have a link to there website or more extensive promotional content in their SPAN, or otherwise, hosted blog.

The key here is that we want the majority of promotional noise to be minimized or productively channeled in the public space of discourse so as to maximize the potential for discussion and learning.

We plan to facilitate and direct promotional efforts through our promotional guidelines, and will continue to evolve and modify these rules as we learn more about what works best for the community.


Sincerely,

Brad Flora
Technical Director
SPAN