Channels & beyond

Immediate tasks for channels pages.

Channels pages

  • There shouldn't be a warning message "No public posts in this group. You must be registered or logged in ... etc." atop any channel when a user who's not logged in comes to the page. We should add a small notice to the left nav beneath the log-in field saying, You must be logged in to create a channel or add a video or media file to this channel.
  • To get conversations going again on Ourmedia, we need a very simple way for users to post comments. I added .entry to style.css and a line (Join the conversation - Post an entry) to staging, though it's not showing up with the correct point size and spacing, and I left the href link blank. (Markus: copied the .entry css definition to production and filled in the href on staging - will deploy in next batch)

I'm thinking the best approach would be:

- For logged-in members, clicking the link would take them to a simple form (probably the same as our current Comment form), with the following info:
Name field (with their ourmedia ID filled out)
Home page
Subject/headline (instead of Subject)
Body
and a preview and submit button.
I don't see a need for email, do you?

- For non-logged-in members, clicking the link would take them to the same exact, with 2 exceptions marked with +:

+ Name or nickname (not filled out with "Anonymous")

Home page
Subject/headline
Body
and a +Captcha

This would be our template for all channel entries/posts. Comments could be the same, except use "Comment" instead of "Body".

  • The text in the Body field should not display immediately below the video. See any video on the Remix Politics channel (the type is obscured). We need a separate window/field to enter revlog info to appear below the video window and above the play bar.
  • When you're not logged in on an add channel or channel item page ...

http://channels.ourmedia.org/node/add ... it says:
Create content.
No content types available.

Need to change it to non-techie speak. Maybe:
Please sign up and join the conversation! (with sign up linking to the registration page)

  • We should remove the "(About 'Mashup madness')" links in the middle section of all channels. They go to a page saying You are not authorized to view this.
  • For new mp3 files posted to the site, they start playing automatically when the page is called up, and there's no player on the page:

http://www.ourmedia.org/node/323599

  • I'll create screencasts for how to create a channel and how to add video to a channel, for adding to the left nav of channel pages.
  • On channels pages, the "Home" in the breadcrumb trail should be the site's home page, not the front page of Channels.
  • When I revlog a video, I sometimes have to make sure it's not the lead video because clicking on the video doesn't play it. (This is when the object coding appears in the Body field.) In addition, in some cases there is no player button, as with this one:

http://channels.ourmedia.org/sue-teller-mashes-it

  • Huge improvement would be to move the Attach and Submit buttons for uploading images to the top area of Channel items pages, in the Images box. If so, then the other image upload areas below could be eliminated. (By the way, I'm finding "File Attachments," with a Browse button and Attach button, much more useful than "Attached Images," where there is no Attach button.)
  • Noticed that the audio gif i sent you for the 320x240px screen image is appearing as a 60x45px thumbnail as the 4th thumbnail image atop the Channels pages. It should instead be displaying the audio thumbnail that's properly displaying on the Ourmedia home page (and elsewhere on the Channels pages).
  • Sidebar description (logo, etc.) for a Channel should appear in the sidebar of all channel items in that channel.

LEFT NAV:

  • There should be a line of space (12-14px) immediately beneath the About this channel title bar, and immediately beneath the end of the About this channel section (to separate it from the "Remix Politics" title bar).
  • Under Remix Politics, let's get rid of Create Story because Create Page does exactly the same thing (unless I'm missing something)
  • Add: Create new channel to left nav
  • The thumbnail field in the create channel items form doesn't seem to be working. When i add the url for a thumbnail (of Bill clinton or teddy roosevelt), it just takes the large screenshot and scales it down, distorting it.
  • what does the Search field in this area search? tags on this channel? I'm not coming up with any results.

Also, we shouldn't have two search areas, so what are your thoughts on losing this and just retaining the Search module located lower down?

  • under Group notifications (Channel notifications), I'm not clear on what these are (and clicking on them doesn't help), so are these a candidate for a Javascript mouseover that'll provide a one-sentence explanation? If so, let's work on some brief wording:

my unread: feed | page
my channel: feed | page

Also, let's add a divider | since it now looks like "feed page" is a single link.

  • Tags: when I add tags to my channel page or to a channel item, are these tags treated the same as any other tags sitewide (chiefly tags from media pages), or are you envisioning a sort of "channels tags results page"?

RESPONSE: media and channel tags are separate. I envision one place to search or list tags from either type.

RESPONSE to Response: OK. Then we should change "Tags" to "Channel tags" in the title bar of all channels, and add a "About Channel tags" link below. I will write.

MIDDLE AREA OF PAGE:

  • The type should be adjusted to reflected the type style elsewhere on site (line-height: 150%?, etc.)
  • Immediately beneath the body" text (generally an intro), have a prominent link for "Add a comment"
  • Adjust media and text posts per our conversation last week, with headings the same as the front page posts, date and permalink below the post, etc. Maybe play with it on staging and ping me when it's about ready?

Elsewhere on site

  • WORKING ON THIS - profiles being consolidated too - Is it possible to consolidate sign-ins before Saturday so that members who are already logged into ourmedia don't have to log into channels as well?
  • Make it easier for members to participate in Community talk. Perhaps just a matter of letting members post to the group blog again and it adds to this channel?

RESPONSE: currently anyone can subscribe and post. I will look into removing the subscription requirement for this channel.

  • The hide and display title bars should go sitewide.
  • Add in the Audio 320x240 gif as the background for the audio player in Media showcase. (done, no?)

<p>

Edits to Form for Submitting a channel

Title - fine

Description - change to: Short description

Tags - Beneath it, we should change to:

Use commas between each keyword or phrase

Sidebar channel description - let's change to:
Describe your channel & customize your sidebar

This should be much deeper - as deep as Body currently is.

Change wording below to:

Enter the text, images or HTML that you want displayed in the sidebar. Use <h2>for headings</h2>.

and below that, add first line, plus <b> in 3rd bulleted point:

  • Click this icon to add images.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <b> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <img> <object> <param> <embed> <center> <div> <span> <style> <script>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

eliminate: * Images can be added to this post.

Body: Let's make this a bit shorter.

Also, let's lose the second Image upload and second set of bullet points (Web page addresses and e-mail add, etc.)

Attached images: Hoo boy. Where does this dropdown list of 18 images (Existing Image) draw from?

Subscription requests:
change this to:
Channel membership options

Change wording to:
open - anyone can join and post content or comments

moderated - channel owner approves each request for membership

invite only - channel owners invite members to join. [How is this done?]

Lose this (i signed in as an authenticated user and still saw this):
closed - subscriptions are fully administered by an administrator.

and lose this:
How should subscription requests be handled in this channel? When you select closed, users will not be able to subscribe or unsubscribe.

add this:
Note: Channel owners can ban unruly members from your channel. [Is this true?]

new heading:

Publicize your channel

registration form:

change wording to:

When new members join Ourmedia, should they be given the option to join your channel by selecting a checkbox?

list in channels directory - this is fine

Player

This shouldn't have a red asterisk.

Also, doesn't the Flash Media Player appear at the top of new channels even if "None" is chosen??

And, is this really a Flash Media Player or is it the Ourmedia Media Player??

Wording below this is currently:
Select player to be used for channel homepage at channels.ourmedia.org

The wording should change. This is the player to be used at the top of the new channel, not the player to be used on the channel home page, isn't it?

URL path settings

Can we change this to say:
Friendly url

Question: do channels now get a friendly url by default? If so, then perhaps change wording from this:

Optionally specify an alternative URL by which this node can be accessed. For example, type "about" when writing an about page. Use a relative path and don't add a trailing slash or the URL alias won't work.

to this:
If you'd like an additional URL where people can find your channel, type it here. Eg: ratbag-radio (don't add a trailing slash)

<p>

Edits to Form for Creating a channel item

I'm not 100% clear on whether someone needs to fill out a channel item form to post a comment.

Title - fine

I would put the large image first:
Screen Shot URL:

Thumbnail URL:

and, wording below:
Link to large image used by player (optional)

(if no image is attached, do we have a default gif, like just a black or gray rectangle)?

Media URL - change wording below to:
Link to media file (.wmv, .mov, .flv, .mp3, etc.)

Media Page URL: fine

License - ok, but i would move down, see below.

Artist Name:
let's change to:
Producer's Name:

and wording to:
Producer's or artist's name

Artist Homepage URL:
change to:
Producer's Blog URL:

and wording to:
Link to producer's blog or home page

Media type - fine

License - I would move License dropdown to here

Tags - change wording below to:
Use commas between each keyword or phrase

Size -
If your video is a size other than 320x240 pixels, enter the pixel dimensions here:

Width
wording below:
Eg: 480 (maximum size: 580 ... or whatever it is)

Player:* - no asterisk

Body - box is fine

add this wording immediately below box:
Enter a text post to accompany your media file.

Wording below the box should match the 4 bullet points I changed above under "Edits to Form for Submitting a channel."

Attached Images, and URL path settings: Same changes as I marked above.

Logs: I don't see this when I'm logged in as an authenticated user. So, this is to post private notations to other members of the channel, right? When does it show up?

Channels / Audience:

I don't see this when I'm logged in as an authenticated user, so this is for channel owners only, or admins?? The wording is kind of confusing:

Show this post to everyone, or only to subscribers of the groups checked above. Posts without any groups are always Public.

<p>

Non-channel items needing attention

And for mpeg4 movies, shouldn't there be a player as part of the video area?
http://ourmedia.org/node/324179

And avi movies don't have a supported player yet?
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/324479

- On all media pages, user comments are still turned off by default. They should be "Read/write" rather than "Disabled."

  • Grandfather in all the old groups into channels.
  • Add other feeds to Community talk - see what works on Staging.

This would be solved by moving <object/embed> coding to another field, and keeping the Body field just for text.

  • Members are having problems signing in. Kelvin reported this last week. And now an account I created two months ago -- revlogged@ourmedia.org, pwd revlogged -- no longer works. Others not working: larrylessig@ourmedia.org, pwd placeholder8019 ... robgreenlee@ourmedia.org pwd placeholder3471 ... zadi@ourmedia.org pwd placeholder7777

more feeds >>
so:
more channels >> (with spacing below)

Also, let's eliminate the confusion in lexicon by changing group to channel even in urls like "http://channels.ourmedia.org/group/tracker" and
"http://channels.ourmedia.org/og" (change to
http://channels.ourmedia.org/channels_directory or something like that
  • Channel ownership: How does one share admin. privileges with others on a channel one creates?
  • i've been having problems thruout the day logging

into ourmedia from IE. See the attached screenshot - i'm logged in and yet there's still a sign-in button.

response:
eems to be a known drupal issue - much discussed. try clearing your cache - that may fix

i will implement a site wide change in next few days that should fix for others without having to clear cache

Fixes made

  • DONE - There's a glitch on the channels pages that's still there: Click on the Learning Center in the left nav and you get either a page not found or a You are not authorized to view this page, because of the path: http://channels.ourmedia.org/learning-center
  • DONE - note: part of this was due to quotes being used in the artist field. That's a bug and needs to be fixed ASAP. For now I removed the quotes - In IE6 on PC, the 3rd thumbnail (Jon Hammond trio) starts downloading the video when you click the thumbnail instead of streaming it (in Firefox it calls up a dialogue window asking how you want to watch it -- it didn't do that a day or two ago), and the 6th thumbnail (Internet killed the video star) gets me a Plugin not found. (No wonder everyone's turning to Flash!)
  • DONE - sidebar description for about this channel shouldn't repeat below the player.
  • DONE - The type size for all the body text in sidebar should be smaller (.9em if i recall)
  • DONE - Browse by media type: let's lose this on the channels pages
  • DONE - Subscribe to feeds: I suggest we lose this on channels pages, leave it on rest of site. We're trying to eliminate clutter and this is a good candidate to go.
  • DONE - Talk & media stream should change to: Channel talk
  • DONE - Make the thumbnail icons for Ourmedia members map to this.
  • DONE - Let's change heading on front page top center from Media showcase to Producers showcase (per dave).
  • DONE - standardize the type size for Who's online and Newest media (and change Newest Media to Newest media, to conform with our style)
  • DONE - - At the top of the Channels page, can you add Channels explained
  • DONE - - On the home page, can you change the wording and the anchor link from:

(About Media showcase) to (About Producer showcase)

  • after redirecting the profile and image from channels to ourmedia (i.e. we use the one profile and pic for both ourmedia and channels now) i realized that I had to change the profiles to list a person's channels now instead of the old groups.
Links:

Comments and discussion: