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[Motd] Counters and CommentsANN.lu
Posted on 31-May-2002 18:54 GMT by Christian Kemp36 comments
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Despite being wildly inaccurate and not representative of actual pageviews, it's still worthwhile noting that ANN's graphical counter recently crossed the 3-million mark. Meanwhile, my server logs indicate that about 12,500 pages are displayed every day, to over 40,000 distinct hosts this month. Since ANN went dynamic in 1998, over 4500 items and over 58,000 comments have been posted.

In mostly unrelated news, I had to adopt the flat view of the comments script to only serve ten pages at a time. With individual items getting up to 500 comments at times, this was a necessary step to maintain tolerable loading times.

Counters and Comments : Comment 1 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Ole-Egil Hvitmyren on 31-May-2002 16:59 GMT
I'm still saying it would help to put the most violent bunch of whiners and yellers on a mailinglist and swallow the password. Or something :)
Anyway, gratz on the stats, too bad people are firing away at each other that way, but at least you're generating some hits ;)
Counters and Comments : Comment 2 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Don Cox on 31-May-2002 17:02 GMT
That limit to display only ten posts at a time is extremely
inconvenient when you want to read a long topic.
After reading each little bite, you have to scroll back up to the top
of the page to get the next little bite. Infuriating.
Please put it back how it was, or at least display 100 at a time, and
have the links to the next batch at the bottom as well as the top.
Counters and Comments : Comment 3 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by José on 31-May-2002 17:09 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Don Cox):
Yeah. Agree. 10 is too few.
Great stats by the way.
Counters and Comments : Comment 4 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Christian Kemp on 31-May-2002 17:13 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Don Cox):
> After reading each little bite, you have to scroll back up to the top
> of the page to get the next little bite. Infuriating.
On the other hand, if you're in a 500+ comment thread, and you have read the first 490 comments already, it's tedious to wait for them all to display before you can continue...
> Please put it back how it was, or at least display 100 at a time, and
> have the links to the next batch at the bottom as well as the top.
There are plans to allow visitors to customize this, and other aspects of the site, to better suit their specific preferences. However, such a system would probably be bound to some login system, which in turn would probably be based upon PayPal contributions...
Counters and Comments : Comment 5 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by guido on 31-May-2002 17:13 GMT
In reply to Comment 2 (Don Cox):
> Please put it back how it was, or at least display 100 at a time, and
> have the links to the next batch at the bottom as well as the top.
Why not let the user decide ? Just like on the main page ? Personally, depending on the post, I would prefer to load 10 comments, or maybe 25.. And if there are "just" 100 comments I would like to display 50 or perhaps all..
Counters and Comments : Comment 6 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by DaveW on 31-May-2002 17:18 GMT
In reply to Comment 5 (guido):
Oh and Christian whilst you are there putting in the Kitchen Sink for Mr Meldrew here can you redecorate my bathroom.
Counters and Comments : Comment 7 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Ingo^AZ on 31-May-2002 17:21 GMT
That`s fine but why the heck are the links on top of
the page and not on the bottom? I`m scrolling up and down
the whole day.. doh!
ingo
Counters and Comments : Comment 8 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Christian Kemp on 31-May-2002 17:25 GMT
In reply to Comment 7 (Ingo^AZ):
I now added [Previous] and [Next] links at the bottom.
Counters and Comments : Comment 9 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Darrin on 31-May-2002 17:31 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Christian Kemp):
Ah, that's better :)
Thanks.
Counters and Comments : Comment 10 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Raffaele on 31-May-2002 17:41 GMT
Well, to have a link to the whole bunch of messages, just a little link, just a tiny tiny link....
will made happy those people who have a quick connection...
...and those like me who are a little "schizo" and save all whole thread comment scroll in which they wrote...
Thanks in anticipation if you decide to add the WHOLE thread link to the pages...
Bye,
Raffaele
Counters and Comments : Comment 11 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by lakeside on 31-May-2002 18:10 GMT
Would it be possible to start the comment listing with the newest one first? I hate having to scroll (now click) to where the latest comments are. Maybe you could make this a page setting?
Counters and Comments : Comment 12 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by lakeside on 31-May-2002 18:14 GMT
Could you reverse the comment list? -Newest to oldest? I hate having to scroll (now click) to the where the new ones are. Or how about making this listing order an option?
Counters and Comments : Comment 13 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by anonymous on 31-May-2002 18:23 GMT
I'd also like a pony for Christmas. ;)
All kidding aside, thanks for providing such an invaluable service.
Counters and Comments : Comment 14 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Mike Veroukis on 31-May-2002 18:28 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Christian Kemp):
That's a nice feature, but 10 is far too small. 30 might be a better figure.
One of the nice things about the old method was that when someone replied to a post early on in the thread you could easily scroll back up to re-read it and see what they were replying too. The lack of any real quoting mechanism doesn't help here. I've seen many replies that made no sense until you scroll back to the original post. That's something you need to take into consideration.
- Mike
Counters and Comments : Comment 15 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Mike Veroukis on 31-May-2002 18:35 GMT
One other idea.... Since we're at it. :)
From the main news page you should be able to select the page you want to go to directly. So, assuming 10 posts per page and there are 33 posts and you want to go view those last 3 posts only, you should have an option to go there. So, you could have the link to view the thread, followed with three more links for pages "1,2,3". I've seen this in other forums (eg http://www.hometheaterforum.com) and it's quite useful.
- Mike
Counters and Comments : Comment 16 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Ryu on 31-May-2002 18:47 GMT
In reply to Comment 14 (Mike Veroukis):
I too think 100 posts at a time is a reasonable figure to use :)
Counters and Comments : Comment 17 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Joe "Floid" Kanowitz on 31-May-2002 19:17 GMT
Aww, and I just got DSL so the long threads would load really, really fast... :)
I did stumble across Dreamhost's fees page the other day- is ANN getting close to/passing any transfer limits?
(I'll hold off on any big UI dreams unless I come up with something good- in the meantime, could you consider a few <<<<s / >>>>>s on the bottom links to make them more visible targets?)
Counters and Comments : Comment 18 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by smithy on 31-May-2002 19:55 GMT
I like this new paging system, and I think 10 comments is ok. And scrolling isn't an issue. You just press the HOME key to get to the top of the page in IE, and END to get to the bottom. I suppose you to-be-AmigaOne users may have a problem with that part ;)
Counters and Comments : Comment 19 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by ToDi on 31-May-2002 19:57 GMT
In reply to Comment 8 (Christian Kemp):
Christian, great work but you forgot one thing:
if one replies to a post from a previous page (like my post now) the link doesn't work as it is linked to the current page ...
Counters and Comments : Comment 20 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by ehaines on 31-May-2002 21:31 GMT
In reply to Comment 18 (smithy):
The HOME and END thing works with Voyager too...and AWeb...probably
IBrowse as well....
Counters and Comments : Comment 21 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Firebird^ on 01-Jun-2002 00:17 GMT
I noticed that in a search on Yahoo! for the word AMIGA that amiga.com came up first, and ann.lu came up second to that. Good placement, no? ;)
Counters and Comments : Comment 22 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Rimmerz on 01-Jun-2002 01:18 GMT
Nooo!! Change it back! This is REALLY annoying!!! Esp. when there are alot of stupid trolls and u just want to quickly skim forward....
Counters and Comments : Comment 23 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by AmiTroll on 01-Jun-2002 03:55 GMT
In reply to Comment 20 (ehaines):
>The HOME and END thing works with Voyager too...and AWeb...probably
>IBrowse as well....
In Aweb you can use Alt+arrow Up/Down. Or Shift+arrow for page by page scrolling. Not too sure about IBrowse as i dont use it very often but i'm pretty sure they are the same. Just checked, it works. :) Definable in MUI prefs/Navigation.
GRUNT
Counters and Comments : Comment 24 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by AmiTroll on 01-Jun-2002 04:09 GMT
Oh yeah, i completely forgot, Nice work. :) The pages are snapping open instantly now. But the "In response to Comment: #" link is a bit messed up if it points to a previous page. Maybe a link to just that message would work better than "HREF #message5". One SMALL suggestion, copy the quicklinks bit at the top to the bottom as well. So if your comment from last night was say #5 you can read the rest the next day and hop back up to a specific one or select the next 10 to keep reading without having to scroll all the way back to the top. Lazy aint i? :)
GRUNT
Counters and Comments : Comment 25 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Don Cox on 01-Jun-2002 04:10 GMT
In reply to Comment 10 (Raffaele):
There was no problem here with loading times on the long threads, so
they don't seem to be stressing the server much.
But 100 messages at a time would be a reasonable limit. 10 is just
ridiculous.
Counters and Comments : Comment 26 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by AmiTroll on 01-Jun-2002 04:33 GMT
In reply to Comment 25 (Don Cox):
Why is 10 at a time so bad? I find you can scroll thru them and hop around alot quicker this way. Maybe it's just me.
GRUNT
Counters and Comments : Comment 27 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by SlimJim on 01-Jun-2002 07:08 GMT
In reply to Comment 26 (AmiTroll):
My opinion on the changes to the comment section:
I find it very difficult to get an idea of what is new. The links to the later
comments don't show up as bold. This is, I'm sorry to say, extremely annoying.
I can understand that some might have problems with loading times (I never have
on my A4000/030 though...), but 10 comments is way to little. For me, it takes several times
longer to step backwards through all the pages to get to the startpage after reading a
whole thread, than any overhead time caused by loading all comments directly!
This change bogs me down far more than ever!
If a display limit must be set it should be at 100 in my opinion. And the links
should show if they contain any new comments...
.
SlimJim
Counters and Comments : Comment 28 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by SlimJim on 01-Jun-2002 07:12 GMT
In reply to Comment 27 (SlimJim):
...Oh and PLEASE don't reverse the chronological order of comments! That is a horrible way to
read a thread if you aren't following it minute by minute. I'd hate to be forced to
reverse it back every bloody time as I must do on amiga.de...!
.
SlimJim
Counters and Comments : Comment 29 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by SlimJim on 01-Jun-2002 07:18 GMT
In reply to Comment 28 (SlimJim):
Hmmm....And thanks for an excellent internet service, by the way! :-)
.
SlimJim
Counters and Comments : Comment 30 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by NIcolas Mendoza on 01-Jun-2002 07:40 GMT
You want even more hits ehh?
Counters and Comments : Comment 31 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Senex (Martin Heine) on 01-Jun-2002 08:27 GMT
PLEASE Christian, either remove that "only ten comments at once" or at least make the old way optionally available as well.
This way it is quite user-unfriendly, because instead of going on-line, downloading all comments and going off-line again, reading them later, I now would have to open several windows - which would take even longer time on-line that loading 200 comments at once. And furthermore I would either have to remember how many comments I've already read yesterday or again would have to open many, many windows, each with ten comments...
Postscriptum: Excuse me if others wrote the same before - I didn't read the other comments - because, yes, it would have been too uncomfortable.
Counters and Comments : Comment 32 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Andy Hall on 01-Jun-2002 09:24 GMT
Hey Christian,
Could you not either add a "View in blocks of 10" option to the flat and threaded options?
Or maybe a "View last 10" option.
It just makes it very hard to follow comments. I Agree that there should be something done to cope with 500+ flame fests, but please could it be an extra option, rather than imposing it on the flat view.
Keep up the good work, it's appreciated :)
Cheers,
Andy
Counters and Comments : Comment 33 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Douglas McLaughlin on 01-Jun-2002 13:09 GMT
I'd like to see a configuration option to view more than 10, say 10, 25, 50, 75, 100 or something like that. Being on cable modem, ANN has always loaded fast, even with several hundred replies.
Counters and Comments : Comment 34 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by José on 01-Jun-2002 18:51 GMT
Ok let me purpose something too:
a threading system to the comments. It's really needed, cause quoting the comment to wich each comment is directed just gets a deorganized sequence of comments.
Counters and Comments : Comment 35 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by AdmV on 01-Jun-2002 22:48 GMT
This ten posts to a page is a bit nazi innit ...
C'mon, make it 25 or something a big bigger, I don't wanna trawl through page after page and go back n forth.
To be honest, it was a plus point when all on the same page.
AdmV
Counters and Comments : Comment 36 of 36ANN.lu
Posted by Don Cox on 02-Jun-2002 08:55 GMT
In reply to Comment 34 (José):
A threaded display would have to be an option. Personally, I find them
unusable, and strongly prefer the flat display that we had on ANN
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