I previously described my good fortune of working with ScottW's .text 0.94 framework in putting two distinct project and proposal weblogs online at my company. A sure sign of a successful app is when users have specific change requests in the first week of release to get more out of the application. Since most readers of this blog are familiar with .text and with writing applications, I thought the changes requested (and now online) would prove interesting.
1) Removed a Join In link in the MyLinks sidebar menu
Because all users could post to any given weblog, I needed to accommodate yet circumvent the login and cookie-based authentication for weblogs, so I went with a Join in link which set the cookie and reloaded the page. Easy enough and it followed the existing backend logic, but it was an unnecessary step for users who wanted it gone. So I made it gone. Good suggestion.
2) Ability to enter a New Post link in sidebar option
The bottom line was users didn't want to deal with an “Administrative“ area. We techies find it logical and appropriate, but Joe User was intimidated by having to enter “Administration“ to make a new post. Agreed. So a Enter a New Post link was added in the weblog sidebar with an entry form which shelters the user from those nasty administrative widgets.
3) Changed database logic so posts are not deleted but deactivated instead
To preserve all posts and comments for legal liability and other reasons, I changed the stored proc so that posts and comments were merely de-activated, or hidden, rather than deleted.
4) Added a printer-friendly, comprehensive blog dump for each weblog--including comments
A View Complete Weblog link was added in the sidebar menu for each individual weblog, which displays all posts and comments of the weblog on a single page for printing purposes. I can see the value in this.
5) Redirect post and comment entries back to the weblog page
On entering a new post or comment, the user is automatically redirected back to the individual weblog contents page. They didn't like returning to the Enter New Post or Enter Comments page that they were done using. Agreed.
6) Improve home page access to all weblogs
A View All Project (or Proposal) Weblogs link was added to the weblog home page sidebar which displays a list of all weblogs in the body area of the page instead of "recent posts" content. The sidebar elements have been repositioned (the Welcome and Stats blocks moved to bottom) and the list of active weblogs viewable in the sidebar has been set to 20 or less. I want our people to move to Newsgator or some other client aggregator, but for now this is mainly a web-based app so we need to make it as navigable as possible.
Of course I was happy to make these changes, and along the way get as much out of ScottW's intelligent coding practices as possible. More on those practices later.