Writing Gooder

Pretty soon, the New YWS won’t be new anymore.  Instead we’ll be talking about YWS and the Old YWS.  When that happens, I’ll have to update my lexicon.

But for now, it’s still the New YWS and I just finished redoing the blog index page.  Here’s how it looks currently:

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Wow, this has to be one of the most ambitious projects I have undertaken yet, and it’s still far from done.  However, I think it’s safe to now show off YWSmail:

In case you’re wondering, I blanked out the message subjects!

YWSmail is a total and complete revamp of the private messaging system.  In fact, it now functions more like e-mail than private messaging.  Here are some of the key features:

Fancy Ajax

Browsing your inbox, outbox, sent box, and starred messages box is done using ajax.  This means the page never refreshes, allowing for a seamless user experience.  Everything is fast, and you can even scroll through pages without refreshing the page.

Starred Messages

You can now star messages.  So if a particular message is something you want to save for easy reference, just star it.  Then you can go to your starred messages box to retrieve it later.

Mail Search

This isn’t fully implemented yet, but eventually, you’ll be able to search all your mail in three ways: by sender, by subject, and by message.  So lets say you want to retrieve all your mail from Snoink.  Then you just type “Snoink” into the box, then click “Search by Sender,” and presto!  All you see is Snoink.  Or lets say you want to find all messages with the phrase “pink elephants.”  Just type it in, then click “Search Messages,” and presto!

The mail search option is also something few (if any) other Web sites have.  Not even some e-mail clients allow you to search so easily.

Cool, no?  YWSmail is just one of many awesome features coming with the new YWS.

For many of you YWS’ers, the name Bobo strikes awe, admiration, and even aspiration.  To most of you, however, it probably just strikes you as odd and unfamiliar. I invite you, however, you cast your eyes upon the top of the YWS home page, where you will see a logo much like this one:

Now, you have identified the truth that lies behind the name of Bobo.  You see, in the year 2005, Nate opened the YWS store on Cafepress.com, and needed logos for the Young Writers Society so he could make money off of it (he claims it all went to keeping YWS alive, but we all know that in 2006, the site went down anyways, probably because he was keeping the money for himself… just kidding, Nate!).  Anyways, to make a long, boring story a short, boring story, I designed the above logo (as well as another one that is found in the store), and since then it has become the standard logo for the Young Writers Society.  I also created several templates for the site, although the only one remaining now is the “Chimped Out” skin—the only template, ironically, that I never fully completed.  Hence the lack of chimps on the Chimped Out skin! (more…)

If you’re new to this blog, you may not know that it’s a project of the Young Writers Society, a writing community for ages 13 to 25.  We’ve been around now for almost five years, and the site is going to get an upgrade quite soon.

So if you’re not new to this blog and have been following the updates on the new YWS, you might be wondering: When?  I’ve been talking about it for a long time, but the pieces are finally falling into place.

However, much like writing a book, writing a site is unpredictable.  For example, a couple of weeks ago, I started coding the Staff Picks area on the front page.  I thought it would be a cinch (4 hours at most), and yet it proved to be the most difficult element for me to code ever.  Even harder than coding the Poetry and Short Story databases.  Sometimes, one or two key pages can bog you down more than an entire chapter.

I impart this to you just to share how any date I give you may change.  Yet, I am pretty confident with the below schedule for rolling out:

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For those who were members of The Writers Society (returning soon!), you might remember the Poetry Database.  This was a section of the site where you could read poems by published poets, provided that the copyright on the poem had expired.  The section included poems like “The Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll and “Churchill’s Grave” by Lord Byron.

The Poetry Database was a magnificent piece of work, and looking over it, I have no idea how I managed to pull it off.  It’s utterly complex, yet elegantly simple.  I also always intended to bring it to YWS, but never got around to doing so.  However, it is now fully a part of the new YWS, as is a brand new Short Story Database (which Snoink suggested).  Lets take a look:

YWS Poetry Database Homepage

This is the starting page for the Poetry DB, which is exactly alike the Short Story DB (just replace ‘Poetry’ with ‘Short Story’).  What’s really cool is that while searching the database, you never leave the front page.  It never refreshes or redirects you somewhere else; it’s completely seamless.

For poems and short stories, you can search in three ways: (1) by author, (2) by title, or (3) by first line.  Alternatively, you can also browse in any of those ways.  If you don’t know what you want to read, there’s a “Read Random” button.

You can also see in this screenshot that the sidebar has been changed to display your favorite poems.  Whenever you view a poem, you’ll see a link to add it to your favorites list.  Once enough people do this, you’ll eventually be able to compare your list with others.  That way you can see who has similar taste in poetry, and perhaps even find a new favorite poem.

Hit the jump to keep reading.

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I decided to take a screenshot of the old YWS and compare it with that of the new YWS .  The difference is striking.  Hit the jump to see.

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If you’re not sure what the new YWS is, click here to read the first update.

So today I’m going over the logging in stuff for the new YWS.  This is a fairly simple thing, but encapsulates pretty well how much simpler (and more purdier) everything is going to be.  Plus, what everyone tends to forget is that logging in or registering is perhaps the most important part of a Web site.  If you screw it up, people won’t visit.  So first, lets take a look at the home page as it stands now:

The New YWS Homepage

It’s not the full length since what’s important is the new bar at top.  See it?:

Log In & Register

Clicking this will show a log-in panel that comes down pretty smoothly.  It doesn’t pop-up right away, but it takes only a second to appear.  Quite frankly, it’s kinda cool:

The login panel

Once the panel comes down, you can log-in if you’re a member, or register.  If you’re simply logging in, you just fill out the info, hit “Login” then the page refreshes.  If you’re registering, you’ll be taken to another page to finish filling out the rest (creating a password and confirming that you are indeed human).

After you log in, this is what the user menu changes to:

User Menu

Cool, no?

So that’s the logging process for the new YWS.  It’s simple, elegant, and eye-catching.  Just like the rest of it.

I was hoping to get some time in working on the new YWS before showing you the forums today, but a lot of stuff came up today (assignments for school, people moving away) and I wasn’t able to do what I wanted to do.  However, I do have a preview screenshot for you:

The forums on the new YWS.

First, I cannot stress enough that this is very preliminary.  However, it does give you a rough idea of where I plan to be going.  Also, quickly note that I’m only showing you the top 2/3 of the page.  The bottom portion isn’t shown because it’s a huge mess.

So what you ‘re seeing here is the Community tab.  Under the community tab, you see three areas: “Welcome,” “Resources/Contests,” and “Discussion.”  This is meant to correspond with the three main areas of the Community area.  Will this change?  Probably.  As currently designed, to get to just the Lounge, you have to click on “Community,” then “Discussion,” then “The Lounge.”  This is a tad much, and a new member would have no idea of how to get anywhere.  Needless to say, I’m not happy with the navigation system I have here.  Yet, I’m also very unhappy with the current navigation system on YWS.  I have a couple ideas on how to fix this, but nothing firm yet.

Moving on though, the rest is pretty set.  Right under the nav bar, you’ll see tabs for “New,” “Top,” and “Friends.”  The “New” tab shows the three latest topics for that section, the “Top” tab shows the three most popular topics over the past week for that section, and the “Friends” tab shows you the three most recent topics created by your friends.

Underneath that is a listing of all the topics for that section.  Ten topics will be shown in each column, and you’ll be able to easily scroll through these without ever refreshing the page.  For example, right now, you have page “1, 2, 3… 25, 26, 27,” and each time you click one, everything refreshes.  This can be annoying.  So instead, only the new data will refresh, which saves time.  You’ll even be able to type in what page you want to see.  By the way, this is also how topics will work as well.

Then you see the sidebar on the right hand side.  At the moment, the sidebar is identical to the one on the front page.  However, this will change.  That is, the user box (with the pencil) will stay as well as the ad, but featured member and recent posts will be replaced with something else.  To be honest, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to replace them with yet.  On topic pages, it’ll be replaced with information about the author and their recent literary works. but for forums, I don’t know.  So if you have an idea, please help me!

So there you have it!  There really isn’t much to say about the forums for now, and what you see here is preliminary.  Yet at the very least, it does show you some of the design process.  Tomorrow, I’m going to go into more detail on the user info box, and over the next few days, I’m going to be showing you some awesome features that are not available on the current YWS.

And again, if you can think of anything to put in that sidebar, I’d be grateful.  The same goes for ideas about the navigation system.

Since this is the first time I’ve done an update on the new YWS for a long time, I think it’s desirable that I go over what the heck it is again.

First, why are we doing the upgrade in the first place?  There’s a couple reasons.  One, the programming behind YWS is outdated.   The danger behind using outdated technology is that it opens you up to hacking exploits.  It also does not allow you to take advantage of the newer, better technologies out there.  Two, YWS is looking increasingly outdated.  While old and current members may not mind this much, an outdated website does not attract many new people.  If YWS does not attract new people, it will eventually disappear.  In fact, I’ve been seeing a steady decline on a number of levels over the past six months (although, the number of visits & unique visitors continues to increase).

So is the upgrade going to be worth it?  Definitely.  I imagine it will take getting used to, and I have no doubt there’ll be a number of people who say they liked the old YWS better.  We’ve experienced this in the past, but the thing is, we have to do something.  Even going backwards is better than standing still.

With that said, lets get into what’s going on:

Front Page of the New YWS

The front page of the new YWS captures pretty well everything I’m doing.  First, note how much shorter it is than the current front page.  This is done to make everything more manageable, and better looking.  The front page also makes much better use of the space available to it, whereas the current front page has a ton of white space.

However, the featured works are still there, and so is Recent Posts, Featured Member, New Literary Works.  In fact, what will be really cool is that you will be able to scroll through everything.  As an example, take a look at Recent Posts.  Right now, only five posts are shown.  But pretty soon, I’m going to add a button at the bottom that allows you to see the next five newest posts, and so on and so forth.  Without ever leaving the front page, you could check to see if you missed anything interesting.

There’s also a big blank space right above New Literary Works.  This is where “Staff Picks” will go.  Staff Picks is an area where mods (Big Brother) will be able to choose what they want to feature.  It could be an outside link, a story, an article, or a member.  Each mod will be able to make their own pick.

That’s just a brief run-down for now on what to expect.  Tomorrow, I’ll talk about how forums will function, and hopefully I’ll have some screenshots to show you as well.