Dashboard

Scott Hardie | May 19, 2008
I'm pleased to introduce a new feature on the site, the Dashboard. For five years now, I have tried to incorporate announcements of new content into the site homepage, but the site homepage also had to introduce the site to new visitors. By trying to do both jobs, it didn't do either terribly well. Instead, let the Dashboard be your starting point for the site when you're logged in, and let the homepage only appear to site visitors.

Right now, the Dashboard only offers updates on a handful of items around the site, the core elements of each section. It will grow to include birthdays, anniversaries, polls, updates on miscellaneous content (like Oddities), reminders to check the Card Exchange, announcements about new site features, and more. I'm launching it prematurely because I believe it's of use already, and because I don't want to delay it further while it takes me who-knows-how-long to add those other items.

Other forms of navigation, like the Current Discussions page or the Individual Blogs page, will slowly disappear. I intend to focus on filling in the remaining subscribe options on the Dashboard first.

Please share your comments about it, and let me know if it doesn't work for you or could work better. Requests for new subscriptions are welcome, since this is a work in progress.

My thanks to Kelly for suggesting icons to make the page pretty. She was right; a long list of text links wouldn't be much fun to use.

Amy Austin | May 19, 2008
Sweet! Definitely a good suggestion on Kelly's part, too... I look forward to seeing this feature evolve -- great job, as always, Scott!

Erik Bates | May 19, 2008
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Amy Austin | May 19, 2008
Well... thank you. Or you're welcome. Or something.

Erik Bates | May 19, 2008
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Amy Austin | May 20, 2008
First suggestion (I know there was no doubt at least one would be forthcoming! ;-D)...

Link "Who's Online Now" to play RB!

Scott Hardie | May 25, 2008
Done. More to come.

Scott Hardie | June 1, 2008
Added for RB players: A reminder to check the Card Exchange daily, and notices of user comments in concert. To activate these and other items, click "manage subscriptions" at the top of the Dashboard.

Amy Austin | June 1, 2008
Sweet.

Steve Dunn | June 2, 2008
Can I disable the dashboard? I appreciate the programming effort, but I like to navigate the site the old-school way.

Scott Hardie | June 3, 2008
Sort of. If by "old-fashioned way" you mean the top nav and such pages as Current Discussions in TC and Individual Blogs in XQC, then yes; all of those are still there. If you mean the homepage, then no; that's been converted for use by unregistered visitors only, the way it should have been all along. If there's sufficient demand, I can come up with a version of the homepage like it was for users, that unregistered visitors wouldn't see.

Scott Hardie | June 9, 2008
TMR review replies, XQC blog replies, and XQC oddities have been added.

You didn't answer, Steve – is Dashboard sufficient for surfing the site the way you want? Is there some way I could improve it?

Scott Hardie | June 22, 2008
New for RB players, a "continuous play" option. Choose which opponents you want to play at all times. If they say the same about you, Dashboard will remind you to challenge this opponent when you're not in concert together. It's an unobtrusive reminder, so it's easy to ignore when you feel like a break. As with all other subscriptions, click "manage subscriptions" at the top of Dashboard to activate it.

Scott Hardie | June 28, 2008
Did I seriously overestimate interest in that new feature? Barely anyone is using it. I thought players would be all over it. I guess a third of the RB regulars don't read TC, but still.

Jackie Mason | June 28, 2008
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Aaron Shurtleff | June 29, 2008
I haven't used it yet, because I feel pressure to challenge people if it's there. I've already read too many new comments (because I see them there, I have to read people's Rock Block comments, even though most of them are not for me or interesting to me). So I turned that off. Then I check every finished concert, just in case a new card I haven't seen is getting played. If I saw faces of people I need to challenge, it would put pressure on me to challenge them, when I am comfortable with the level of playing I currently do. I think it's a great feature, just maybe not for me, you know?

Amy Austin | June 29, 2008
There's no faces, Aaron, just a small reminder... but yeah, I'm really only giving it a trial run on one person and doubt that I'll really give it the use that you might have wanted, Scott... sorry. ;-(

One (really minor) thing I would like to see added to RB is a time stamp on challenges on the individual concert page... just like every other play has. Currently, the only place you can see when a challenge was issued is on the Current Concerts page... and I always feel *compelled* to go there when I see that a challenge has been awaiting me. I know that the page for accepting the challenge isn't really formatted for this, but once the challenge is accepted, then there could be a first line of play stating that the challenge was made at whatever time... thus relieving the need to refer to the Current Concerts page to see this info, which disappears forever once the challenge is accepted. (I said it was minor... but not so much for us OCD types. ;-p)

Steve West | June 29, 2008
I too use it for just a few people mainly to give it a trial run but I was already pretty clear on which concerts and with whom I was playing. Not a bad feature but I was okay without it. Although I'll keep it turned on for as long as it's there.

Scott Hardie | June 29, 2008
RB players: The two polls (new band poll and promotion poll) have been moved from the Collection Guide to Dashboard.

Thanks for the feedback, everybody. It looks like usage has picked up a little since I asked, and I look forward to seeing the feature grow in usefulness as more people activate it.

Amy, your request is granted. Apparently I've been storing the timestamp of every concert's challenge all this time for one extremely limited purpose, so that December 31st concerts overlapping two calendar years would correclty show up in a Concert Archive search for the first year. Pfft. I'm glad to put that data to a more useful purpose now. I forgot I even stored it. (Does anybody even use the Concert Archive?)

Lori Lancaster | June 29, 2008
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Steve West | June 29, 2008
I used it recently. Today, in fact.

Justin Woods | June 29, 2008
Scott where is all the recent promotions located? showing us what has been promoted...

Amy Austin | June 30, 2008
Sweet! Thanks, and I use the concert archive, too.

Amy Austin | June 30, 2008
I think the best thing about the Continuous Play feature is that it provides a shortcut to starting a concert with the intended opponent without going through the first steps. Kind of like when someone is available to play -- this is nice.

Steve West | June 30, 2008
That part I like too. Now I'll have to add more people.

Amy Austin | June 30, 2008
Yes, this is my reason for adding more people, too...

Scott Hardie | June 30, 2008
Justin, I didn't know whether anyone still wanted the list. I'll add it as a subscription in Dashboard soon. If anybody wants today's promotions sent to them by private message, just ask.

Amy, why do you like to see the challenge time so much that you'd go to another page to look it up? I'm merely curious.

Amy Austin | June 30, 2008
I don't know... like I said, just an OCD thing... wondering how long I've kept somebody "waiting", I guess... I don't know.

Scott Hardie | October 4, 2008
Band promotions in RB can now be tracked in a new subscription available in Dashboard.

Russ Wilhelm | October 15, 2008
Thank you for bringing it back, and I like the way you've done it.

Erik Bates | October 3, 2009
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Scott Hardie | October 3, 2009
I've been meaning to break that up into a separate subscription for each site section. This is especially important while I add a bunch of attributes to Gothic Earth – the players need to be alerted to which ones are new, but nobody else does. Please stand by while I get to this.

Amy Austin | October 3, 2009
You asked about any other little tweaks we'd like to see... I'd like to once again mention my strong desire to see automatic hyperlinking of urls brought back. I take the time to format things for the reading convenience/enjoyment of others, and I feel really self-annoyed (and lazy!) whenever I'm reminded of just how perturbed I get about having to copy/paste/open another tab/window anything not pre-linked for me... especially if it's ever more than one item!

Jackie Mason | October 4, 2009
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Scott Hardie | October 4, 2009
Done, Amy. Regular links will still work in addition to pasting in URLs.

Jackie, I'm sorry, I'm not seeing what you mean about that discussion. The "clear this discussion" button is missing from the bottom because it's missing from all old discussions that haven't been active in some weeks, but it shouldn't appear on the Current Discussions page for the same reason. Where are you seeing it?

Jackie Mason | October 6, 2009
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Scott Hardie | November 8, 2009
Erik, you can now subscribe to updates only for the sections of goo.tc that interest you: (info) Thanks for waiting on this.

Jackie Mason | November 17, 2009
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