New Home Page/News Feed for USUFans.com

All completed suggestions are put here.
User avatar
ProvoAggie
Site Admin
Posts: 14936
Joined: June 14th, 2010, 1:00 am
Location: Provo, Utah
Has thanked: 1464 times
Been thanked: 2840 times
Contact:

New Home Page/News Feed for USUFans.com

Post by ProvoAggie » June 20th, 2014, 8:13 pm

After a lot of work, the News/Home page of USUFans has undergone a major redesign. The layout has been changed to look more modern while also including some new member feedback functionality. Here is a quick runthrough of some of the new stuff we have.

Refined News Feed
I've implemented some changes to the way we pull news articles that will hopefully eliminate a lot of the articles that aren't related to USU.

Article Promotion/Demotion
When logged in, you will see an up and down arrow attached to each article. You can upvote articles that you find especially interesting and downvote articles that are not relevant or are very poorly written (very similar to sites like Reddit and Digg). Once an article reaches a certain negative threshold it will be removed from the feed. Articles that have at least 3 positive votes become eligible for the Top Stories section. If Moderator/Administrator downvotes a story it will be immediately removed (Mods/Admins please only use downvote for irrelevant articles.

Top Stories
Now that we have voting on articles, we can figure out which news stories are currently at the top. Articles that receive the most votes will float to the top where they will stay until newer popular articles appear to replace them. I will probably watch the algorithm over time and make tweaks to it in hopes to improve upon it. At this time only news articles (no Podcasts) are eligible for Top Stories (Sorry Front Row Show). I will continue to study this to find a good way to implement a top Podcast as well in the future.

Articles Open in New Tab/Window
With the old news feed articles were opened in the current tab but also included a Top Bar allowing easy return to USUFans. Unfortunately, many sites have since broken the top bar and a few sites have been unusable from within the framed window. Because of this, the Blue Bar is no more and all news articles open in a New Tab (older browsers will open in a new window).

View By Source
If you click on a Source Logo in an Article it will filter and only show you news articles from that specific source.

Please comment with any problems that you encounter with this new functionality.



User avatar
QuackAttackAggie
Pick'em Champ - '12, '22 Bowl; '15, '17 Weekly; '18 BB Predict the Score; '22 Kickoff
Posts: 18146
Joined: November 3rd, 2010, 12:08 pm
Location: Sonora, MX
Has thanked: 308 times
Been thanked: 2831 times

Re: New Home Page/News Feed for USUFans.com

Post by QuackAttackAggie » June 20th, 2014, 8:20 pm

Thanks for your work


iPhone



User avatar
treesap32
Moderator
Posts: 16777
Joined: July 28th, 2005, 1:00 am
Location: Washington D.C.
Has thanked: 1112 times
Been thanked: 2655 times
Contact:

Re: New Home Page/News Feed for USUFans.com

Post by treesap32 » June 20th, 2014, 8:22 pm

Thanks ProvoAggie!

Sent from blue colored Google Glass



NVAggie
SJSU Ultimate Loser Award Winner - Given to someone that should probably give up but won't.
Posts: 23316
Joined: November 3rd, 2010, 8:09 am
Location: Where the sagebrush grows!
Has thanked: 1397 times
Been thanked: 3125 times

Re: New Home Page/News Feed for USUFans.com

Post by NVAggie » June 20th, 2014, 8:51 pm

Hip hip hooray.



User avatar
AndroidAggie
Posts: 4402
Joined: November 3rd, 2010, 7:47 am
Location: fairfax, va
Has thanked: 202 times
Been thanked: 346 times

Re: New Home Page/News Feed for USUFans.com

Post by AndroidAggie » June 20th, 2014, 9:27 pm

Thanks, it's fantastic.



User avatar
Gretsch
Posts: 1326
Joined: October 6th, 2011, 12:54 am
Location: Heber, Ut
Has thanked: 17 times
Been thanked: 55 times

Re: New Home Page/News Feed for USUFans.com

Post by Gretsch » June 20th, 2014, 9:30 pm

ProvoAggie wrote: At this time only news articles (no Podcasts) are eligible for Top Stories (Sorry Front Row Show). I will continue to study this to find a good way to implement a top Podcast as well in the future.
.
I think all the guys will understand, thanks for all your hard work.


Sent from my One S using Tapatalk



User avatar
ProvoAggie
Site Admin
Posts: 14936
Joined: June 14th, 2010, 1:00 am
Location: Provo, Utah
Has thanked: 1464 times
Been thanked: 2840 times
Contact:

Re: New Home Page/News Feed for USUFans.com

Post by ProvoAggie » June 20th, 2014, 9:54 pm

Gretsch wrote:
ProvoAggie wrote: At this time only news articles (no Podcasts) are eligible for Top Stories (Sorry Front Row Show). I will continue to study this to find a good way to implement a top Podcast as well in the future.
.
I think all the guys will understand, thanks for all your hard work.


Sent from my One S using Tapatalk
I'm still working on some things that will hopefully help them be promoted in someway The biggest problem right now is that the audio player doesn't fit into the 1/3 width boxes that I am using for Top Stories.



User avatar
hipsterdoofus21
Mr. Buttface
Posts: 17983
Joined: November 3rd, 2010, 9:39 pm
Has thanked: 2992 times
Been thanked: 3019 times

Re: New Home Page/News Feed for USUFans.com

Post by hipsterdoofus21 » June 20th, 2014, 9:57 pm

You‘re really good at this computer stuff ProvoAggie. Maybe you could design a website for the FRN.



User avatar
treesap32
Moderator
Posts: 16777
Joined: July 28th, 2005, 1:00 am
Location: Washington D.C.
Has thanked: 1112 times
Been thanked: 2655 times
Contact:

Re: New Home Page/News Feed for USUFans.com

Post by treesap32 » June 20th, 2014, 10:12 pm

ProvoAggie wrote:
Gretsch wrote:
ProvoAggie wrote: At this time only news articles (no Podcasts) are eligible for Top Stories (Sorry Front Row Show). I will continue to study this to find a good way to implement a top Podcast as well in the future.
.
I think all the guys will understand, thanks for all your hard work.


Sent from my One S using Tapatalk
I'm still working on some things that will hopefully help them be promoted in someway The biggest problem right now is that the audio player doesn't fit into the 1/3 width boxes that I am using for Top Stories.
The fact that we can now filter on the front row show is a huge help for me in listening to all of the podcasts I've missed.



User avatar
aceofspadeskb
Posts: 4485
Joined: September 10th, 2012, 12:50 pm
Has thanked: 313 times
Been thanked: 296 times

Re: New Home Page/News Feed for USUFans.com

Post by aceofspadeskb » June 23rd, 2014, 9:35 am

Excellent work. Thanks!



User avatar
ProvoAggie
Site Admin
Posts: 14936
Joined: June 14th, 2010, 1:00 am
Location: Provo, Utah
Has thanked: 1464 times
Been thanked: 2840 times
Contact:

Re: New Home Page/News Feed for USUFans.com

Post by ProvoAggie » June 30th, 2014, 11:12 pm

I've added a couple of new features with this. Articles that you've read will now have a Blue tag next to them that signifies that you've read the article. This will appear whenever you click an article from USUFans, along with our Facebook and Twitter feeds (as long as you're logged in to USUFans). Articles that you down vote will also appear faded so that they are easy to skip over.



Post Reply Previous topicNext topic