Hello visitors, my name is Sam and I’m the developer of Answers for Pilots. The owner, James, and I have been planning a redesign and revamp of Answers for Pilots for a long time now, and we are excited to finally put it into action. We wanted to release the new AfP as soon as possible due to our site being featured in our local newspaper, YDR (see article here)…so I’ve coded the majority of the new features, but some are still in progress which will go live in the next few weeks. We ask you to at least skim this post using the quick links down below, and refer to this page if you come across any questions. I’m sure your question will be answered in here. If after reading through here you still have a question, please contact the administrator using our contact form.
The Design
As some of you may have already noticed our site looks completely different at first glance. Our biggest goal was to make our site easy on the eyes, while still containing as much information as possible. In my opinion, our last design was much to cluttered and and rough on the eyes. This design, however, draws your eyes right to the main points. The next paragraph covers some basic features, and where to find information.
View this image to get started with out new design.
The Software
A Typical Question
User System
Visitors who use our question/answer service frequently may have seen these next changes. We have completely revamped the back end of our site to make it more user-friendly. Something James and I have been wanting is do to slowly morph Answers for Pilots into a community rather than a plain website. This update was the first step we made in that direction. As I mentioned before, you can now register and login to our site. The only feature that requires you to be logged in is voting, but it is recommended that you register. Some benefits include:
- Remember name/username for posting
- Remember email for optional notifications
- Removing of the CAPTCHA*
- Score system to prove your reliability
- And more!
* CAPTCHA is the random (and hard to read) images to prevent spam. Spam is not wanted at Answers for Pilots and is hard to clean up, so it is required that you have an account to remove the CAPTCHA system.
Once logged in, you can edit your profile by clicking on the my account link where the login and register links used to be. You can edit information like location, name, and a personal bio. If you click on the users button in the navigation menu, you can see a list of the top users listed by points (points are covered later). You can click on users’ names to view their profile and see their recent activity.
When you ask a question we ask that you make the title a brief sentence in question form that gets the point across in as little detail as possible. Please save all of the details for the ‘more information’ section. When you enter your title, our script searches the database for a recent question (just like before). Please skim them to see if there is a related question that may answer your question. If not, you can continue and edit your title, add more information about your question, add tags* to help users find your question, and choose if you want an email notification when your question is answered.
* I am not sure if everybody knows what a ‘tag’ is, so I’ll explain what tags are and the reason we have them. A tag is pretty much just a keyword. People on the web use tags to show search engines what a page’s main topics are. We are emphasizing the use of tags, because in the new release they are printed below both a blog post and a question. If you click on a tag, it will show you all questions or blog posts that have the same tag, helping you find similar pages. When you ask a question and are entering your tags, there are suggestions below the input area. You can click on these and it will add the tag to your list. Please separate tags with a space and use hyphens (-) to separate multi-word tags (e.g. answers-for-pilots flying airplane aviation-information).
Answering, Commenting, and Voting
Answering is essentially the same as before, just click the link that says ‘answer’ below the question and fill out your answer and other information. Commenting is a new feature that we suggest you to use. If you want to participate in the discussion but what you are going to say isn’t actually answering the user’s question, use the comment feature. You can comment on questions and answers by clicking the comment link under the question/answer. This allows users to add reasons of up-voting or down-voting answers, or just allows users to discuss a topic.
Another feature which we had previously, but has changed is voting. Voting consists of up votes and down votes. Every user on Answers for Pilots can either add +1 or -1 to an answers ‘score’. It is recommended that you comment on the answer explaining the reason for your vote so the community knows what is wrong with the answer.
I have covered the majority of the features, but there are a few more odd ones I’d like to cover. First off you can edit your questions, answers, and comments by clicking the edit link under the post and changing the information. Also, if you write a question, answer, or comment and you don’t want other people to see it anymore click the hide link under your post. This will gray out the post for your and hide it for everyone except administrators. If you want to reshow your hidden post, just click the reshow link under the post. This is a safe substitution for deleting your posted information. There is one last feature I’d like to talk about which is extremely useful for the launch of our site. If you come across a question, answer, or comment that you posted before you were a member, and it says ‘_______ by ANONYMOUS’ you can claim it as yours. Just login to your account and click under your post where it says ‘I wrote this’. Please use this, but don’t abuse it.
Along with the new user system, we have added a point system. Points are balanced for each user depending on their positive activity on our site and their negative activity. If you see a user with -10 points answering your question, you may want to disregard his/her answer as it may be spam or false information. If the user has 250 points you can usually trust them as he has received good feedback. Points are awarded and taken away according to these guidelines:
- Asking a Question → +2 points
- Selecting a Best Answer for your Question → +1 point
- Answering a Question → +3 points
- Having your Answer Chosen as Best → +10 points
- Up/Down Vote on your Answer → +/-4 points
- Maximum Point Increase/Decrease from Answer Votes → +/-20 points
- Voting → + 1point
Sharing our Site
Share & Save Buttons at Bottom of Blog Posts
Updates
This isn’t all I plan to do with Answers for Pilots. More updates will be arriving in the very near future, enhancing user experience. Then James and I hope to go into development of another major redesign/update.
Some parts of the question and answer part of the site are slightly different from the blog, for example most submit buttons are not styled the way they are in the blog. I will be working on design items over this next week and will be uploading aesthetic changes periodically. Also, in the sidebar you might have noticed that I have a recent blog posts and recent questions post section (recent posts on question pages and recent questions on blog pages). In an attempt to connect the two separate parts of the site I am making a feed of recent activity in the sidebar. I should have this up in a week or two without a problem. Also in these first couple of weeks I will be fixing bugs and glitches as fast as I can.
Stay connected with us via Twitter, RSS, or monthly newsletter subscription as I have plans for another major upgrade. My main goal is to make Answers for Pilots have more features but be easier to use and navigate. Also I plan to have an even bigger sense of community by adding badges that you can earn for accomplishing tasks and features like being able to send messages to users. This is going to be a summer project for me and hopefully I have the motivation to do it.
Error Reports and Feedback
Whenever an update this big is initiated, there are bound to be bugs and broken links (especially with only 2 testers). If you come across a flaw in the design, a bug in the system, or a broken link, please email us with some details so we can fix the problem as soon as possible. Also, I’m sure many of you have noticed the red tab on the right center of your screen saying feedback. We signed up for an account with User Voice to get our own feedback page. I ask all of you to post your suggestions and vote on suggestions so we can help meet your wants.
- Some email updates are not working, working on a fix
The Kill IE6 Movement
Kill Internet Explorer 6 Alert.
This may sound a little bit harsh, but bear with me. Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is a web browser made in 2001 and came as the default browser for the new operating system Windows XP. Still today, 60% of computer users (including me) have Windows XP installed even though Microsoft has released two new operating systems. 10-20% of computer users have not upgraded to a better browser, even with the security risks IE6 has as an old browser. IE6 is not only unsafe to use and much slower, but the way it renders a web page is outdated and causes sections of code to display completely different things than in newer browsers. This causes pains for web developers. Google just recently stopped support of IE6 users, meaning IE6 users are not supported when running Google applications like Gmail and Google Documents. Many other sites have been on the same page as Google in trying to rid of IE6. Well Answers for Pilots has joined the fight to stop Internet Explorer 6. Whenever a user comes to our web page on IE6, a box stays at the top of their screen recommending them to upgrade. If you see this, please do yourself and web developers a favor, and upgrade. Mozilla Firefox is my recommendation for people who are used to Internet Explorer, because it is essentially the same layout (nice and simple) but much faster and safer. Google Chrome, however, is my browser of choice because it opens amazingly quick and has a nice feel to it. But for users used to IE6, Google Chrome would take some time to get used to.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[...] practice for his part as the sole pianist in an upcoming spring concert, Sam developed and launched a complete new site design which includes a simplified user interface as well as many underlying changes. On Monday April [...]