Boyink! - Spring Forward on the Web

A while back I posted about some frustration over the apparent performance of my pet project, StoriesAboutGod.

I was considering some major revamping to make the site function more like Digg.  After following Digg for a while, however, I decided that while Digg has a great amount of traffic and quantity of posts/comments the overall quality of the community was pretty poor and not something I wanted to emulate.  I’d rather the site be a source for original content rather than just another collection of links with some added comments.

From a design perspective - there’s just something about the look/feel/content of the Stories site that still appeals to me.  Somehow it came out feeling elegant, quiet, and reflective— very different from other sites that I visit on a daily basis. 

From a traffic perspective, the site is ranking quite highly for some pretty generic search terms - like “god’s provision” at #4 (!).  It was the search ranking that sold me sticking to the current implementation, making some small changes, and then do more from a “marketing” perspective to drive traffic up. 

And people keep finding it.  Stories are still coming in here and there.

So - I decided to try some incremental changes this weekend - most of them being suggested in the comments of the “failure” thread. 

Here’s what I got done:

• Upgraded to ExpressionEngine 1.4.2
• Deleted the ability to phone stories in - no one had used it and it was costing me $5/mo.
• Reimplemented the navigation tabs to be bigger and centered
• Pulled the first 100 words or so of the latest story to the home page.
• Pulled recent comments to the home page and other “non-story pages”
• Changed most of the list icons, and added other icons from the Silk Icons set
• Added a “social bookmark this story” link that allows people to submit the story to different social bookmarking sites.

Still to do yet:

• FAQ/Help Section with guidance on what to write, how to write, etc
• Author “badge” - a graphic for story authors to post on their own site (since most seem to be bloggers as well).
• Print style sheet

But I’ve had too many hours in the chair today…so will get those done another day….;)  Take a look, and see what you think.

Oh - I did also come across this site today: http://www.shareyourstorynow.org/

Makes you wonder…;)

Comments are closed, but you can read the comments other people left.

1. salguod on July 16, 2006

   I like the tweaks.  I agree about the look - elegant, quiet, and reflective - are good desciptions of it.  I’m glad you stuck with it.

   A couple of teeny things.

   - Make the story title on that main page a link, even if it doesn’t look like one.  I found myself clicking on it.

   - Put the latest story in the list as well as the 100 word snippet.

   Minor things, but they struck me, so I thought I’d let you know.

2. salguod on July 16, 2006

   Oh, and I’m glad you didn’t go with a Digg style site too.  I don’t quite understand Digg, but it didn’t seem like th right kind of look.

3. Michael Boyink (Author) on July 17, 2006

   Good idea on the story title.  Never even thought about it…:)

   “- Put the latest story in the list as well as the 100 word snippet.”

   Do you mean on the home page, the lower left “latest stories” list should include the story that’s appearing front and center?

   On the snippet - I’m concerned with making that list to tall, but maybe cutting it to the latest 5 stories but including the snippets would be better.  I’ll play with that…after I get the FAQ live.

4. salguod on July 17, 2006

   Sorry, badly composed sentence.  :-P

   I didn’t mean that the snippet should be in the list, just that the last story posted (the one with the 100 word snippet displayed) doesn’t appear in the list. It seems like it should, that’s all.  Made me wonder for a second.

   Having a snippet in the list might not be bad, though, if it was shorter.  Maybe that short, highlighted quote that’s on every entry could be in the list.

5. Michael Boyink (Author) on July 17, 2006

   I gotcha.  I actually worked to take the top/latest story out of the page-bottom list - on the home page only - because it seemed redundant to see it again after just scrolling past it.  On other pages (like the about page} it does appear there.

6. Michael Boyink (Author) on July 17, 2006

   OK - the FAQ is up, and the main story title on the homepage is now a link.

   Gotta move on to billable work for awhile again…;)

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