victoria_neely wrote:

I just took down as many of the orange TOC boxes as I could. I may have missed a few.

How did you do that?

I think that it is too orange, and the placement of the explore other lenses is the worst location yet - I have no objection to promoting other lenses (as I hope there are links in other lenses back to mine) but please put it AFTER my content not in front of it, please?

Shouldn't my content be the priority?

JMHO - I know it's a work in progress and young yet...

I was in the middle of updating a lens when the change went over.  To be honest, I like the changes.

However, if I could make a couple suggestions:

1.  The bio info at the top of the page would look a lot more attractive if it were contained within the white column to the right of the lens intro.  If that is not possible, if I may suggest that the avatar be scaled to a smaller size so as not to overwhelm the lens intro.       

2.  I love the Discovery Tool in the Intro Mod, and I really like the Exploring Other Lenses feature.  While it would not be my desire to distract from my Table of Contents, I would love to be able to use that feature in the Guest Module.  Yes, I would like to promote my other related lenses right along with my lens rolled colleagues.


Again, I really like the changes, and IMO, they are an attractive, major improvement over the previous change.  I even included a subtle mention of  the update in the intro mod of the lens I was working on.

Thank you

Last edited by charlino (04/16/2008 7:35 pm)

I've been taking the orange "band of badness" off my lenses as well. It just makes the introduction section look like it doesn't belong with the rest of the content. Just strange.

What I also find odd to this point is that what I'm choosing is to not have my lenses be found on other people's lenses. So it's a quid pro quo kind of thing. Since I won't show your lens, you don't have to show mine. (Unless you specifically choose it?) But, if I have a SquidWho lens, it might be featured on your regular lens despite the fact that yours will not be similarly featured on my SquidWho. Or will we be getting BOBs on those lenses as well? Ack!!

I'm going to bed to sleep on this. Just too wiped to deal with changing everything right now.

I unmaxed all my lenses after the last change so I'm fortunate to be able to sit back and wait for the bugs to be fixed and see how the templates are received.

What I would like is an idea of the philosophy/strategy behind the design of the lens. By that I mean (for instance) is the aim meet the reader's needs, promote the content, make it easy to use, maximize revenue etc. It seems it's a cross between needs, revenue and listening to the people who complain the most in the forum.

A nice blog post on the subject would be appreciated by me.

flowergardener wrote:

I'm with all of ya on removing the ugly orange in the beginning of my supposedly precious and important content.

Just be thankful that we have the choice to remove the orange box.  Imagine we didn't have that option??  I shudder to think about it.   You are not alone, Deb, I am kind of emotionally drained here myself.

OK,

1) The explore related lenses feature is my favorite part of the new setup. Why? because it pulls lenses based on primary tags. I've been working on building at least 7-10 lenses for every new primary tag I have so basically, it makes my lenses look more put together and my 'lens clusters' form a more cohesive unit. It's also going to be great for the SEO aspects of it. We've been talking about how big primary tags are going to be for the last 3 months or more, why is everyone so hot now that they matter?

To me, my lenses say 'here's what's on this lens (TOC)' and 'here are some more lenses by me' (Explore/Discovery thingy). What's not to like about that?

2) I agree, the CSS in the sidebar is a little wonky, it mostly appears to be due to different elements in the sidebar that take up multiple lines instead of one. I give this 48 hours before it's fixed, not a big deal.

3) I DO miss the top 10 for each category.

4) I DO NOT like the 'Loyalis recommends'  section of the sidebar. What is the basis for recommending those lenses? I don't even remember visiting most of them, much less leaving stars. I try and be reasonably selective about what I recommend, and that sidebar item is decidedly not based in any reality I can determine.

5) 'Related Topics' are fine with me. The backbone of the link juice on squidoo passes through tag pages. If you have links to quality tag pages, this will only help your lens.

I think that's probably enough of a start to get a reaction

-Captain

I'm not sure what it's pulling up for you, but on my lenses the Noadi's Recommends list is the lenses I've lensrolled to that lens.  Is it possible that those lenses yo are looking at you hadn't lensrolled anything to them so it's picking up random related lenses?

Loyalis wrote:

4) I DO NOT like the 'Loyalis recommends'  section of the sidebar. What is the basis for recommending those lenses? I don't even remember visiting most of them, much less leaving stars. I try and be reasonably selective about what I recommend, and that sidebar item is decidedly not based in any reality I can determine.

This is your lensroll.

I agree most of the other comments.  I like that I have the option to remove the orange box.  I would also like to be able to remove the bio from the top of the lens.

Are you saying that on all of your lenses, the Explorer box displays only your lenses?  Even if that were the case for me (which it isn't), I still think the placement of the box stinks. 


Yes, because I've been building lens groupings with the same general primary tag.

Janet21 wrote:

For instance, if I have a birthday lens on a particular party theme, do I really need a link to another lens that covers this same birthday theme to come up before my content?  Does that make sense to anyone?  When these primary tag selected links were at the bottom of the page, that was okay because as fluff put it, if they get to the bottom of my lens and still haven't found what they were looking for, then they will be presented with related lenses to visit and this will keep them on Squidoo, which is a good thing.   The longer visitors stay on Squidoo, the better it is for all of us in terms of monetization.  However, with this new layout, visitors are being tempted to visit competiting lenses of mine before my content even has a chance to do its thing.   I don't get the basis for this decision.

Why not change all the primary tags  on your lenses about birthdays to 'Birthday Party' or something similar? heck, if you wanted you could make it easy and change every primary tag you have to 'Janet21' and be assured that it only showed your links....




I think Squidoo is trying to promote 'stickyness' and turn squidoo into a destination. If people come to squidoo like they do to wikipedia, as a source for information, we all win big time in the long run. I'd rather give a visitor now to foster that goal than forsake it for an extra visit today...

I'm reserving judgment on the new template....

I'm going to watch traffic stats with interest because visually I'm not impressed.

I won't repeat the other complaints (all quite valid). If traffic improves, I'll get over it. I have a different issue, concerning the bio.

Layout / formatting in a "maxed" lens bio is gone...

I tailor each bio for my lenses (bold, italics, relevant links, images. etc.) and it's ALL GONE! Just a rambling text box. Even the line breaks and paragraph formatting is shot...
(click on "more" in a lens bio to see)

Un-maxing the lens fixes it.

If this is the new norm...

Please restore the html in each maxed lens bio section capability.