Today, we launched a major re-vamp of PCWorld.com. Most of the changes are internal, behind-the-scenes stuff that you won't notice and probably don't care about. But there are some changes that you will notice --
1) Some of the site navigation is changed, including moving "hardware reviews" and "software reviews" into one "reviews" page, and adding Blogs back to the top header of the site
2) The downloads section has an entirely new look, designed to match the redesign of the Shop & Compare section that we did a few months ago.
3) We changed how content is pulled and displayed on each of the index pages (the pages that are linked on the top and side navigation from the home page).
We welcome comments/suggestions/criticism but are most interested in bug reports. If anyone sees anything out of place, that doesn't function, etc, please post a reply here or start a thread in the Web Site section.
As some of you old-timers (heh) may remember, originally I was approving every document that was submitted. I basically just reviewed it for standards violations (of which there were few) and to weed out documents that weren't really how-to tips, but were questions.
I received some negative feedback about this model, and so for the past few months, everyone has been able to submit documents without approvals. This has resulted in some extra work for the moderators, and the munging up of our documents section with things that are better suited to discussions.
So, we've decided to re-enact the approval policy, but with a twist. user:username=mphenterprises} will now be responsible for approving documents. He is also only looking for standards violations and to weed out non-documents.
I encourage all of you to share your how-to tips & tricks in documents. They are meant to be the knowledge base of the PC World community, and as many have noticed, are also starting to appear in PC World's print magazine. Your contributions and knowledge are incredibly valuable to us, and everyone who reads PC World.
Didn't win a shirt in our recent "Save DOS" contest? Now you can order one yourself! Just go to http://www.cafepress.com/savedos to place your order. Shirts are $18.99 and come in sizes S - 3x (2x & 3x are $21.99).
Do you Twitter? If so, you can now follow PC World on Twitter for the latest headlines and how-to content. We are http://www.twitter.com/pc_world (make sure you get that underscore between pc and world!).
As you may have noticed, the PC World forums were down for a little while today, as we upgraded to a new version of our software. We are squashing a few bugs, and please leave a comment here if you discover any more.
Here's some new stuff you can do in the upgrade:
1) Embed YouTube videos. All you have to do is type { youtube } (with no spaces) before and after the YouTube id. (it is case sensitive, btw -- make sure that youtube is in all lowercase.) For example, if I wanted to share this video that is currently making its way around our office (http://youtube.com/watch?v=FrYRY6kx550) I would just put FrYRY6kx550 between the code above (again, all with no spaces).
Voila!
2) Embedding Content Similar to the new YouTube embed, you can now embed the content of one document into another. The code to do this is
{ embedcontent:id=documentid } with no spaces . Here's an example:
How to Turn Off Forum Email Notifications
Tired of getting emails with comments from forum threads you've posted to? Here's how to turn them off.
Step 1: Sign in to PCWorld.com
Step 2: Click "Community" or go directly to http://forums.pcworld.com
Step 3: Go to "Your Stuff" and into "Preferences". Set all Email Notifications to "No".
Step 4: Go to "Your Stuff" and to "Email Notifications". Click the box to the right of all notifications you have already set, and then press "Remove Selected Notifications". Do this until all are cleared.
Once you have done this, you will get no more notifications of updates to message board threads.
You can get the ID for a document by navigating to the document, then noting the last number in the URL. This will usually look like DOC-<document_id>.
3) Set Your Default Tab In the old system, when you clicked on a forum, you were automatically sent to the Overview tab, which may or may not be what you wanted. Now, you can set a default tab in each forum (so it can be different by forum) and it will automatically open to that tab for you when you click on it. I do encourage you not to set the Discussions tab as your default in most forums, as I really want everyone to use and read content from blogs and documents -- I would suggest the Overview tab or the All Content tab. But it's up to you.
4) The new Overview Tab In the old system, the Overview tab was what it was -- and lots of us thought it wasn't that great. I can now customize that tab on a per forum basis to put more stuff there for you. I'm going to be working on these over the next few days. They are really easy for me to change, so if you think another arrangement might be better, please let me know.
Those are the major things.... and of course, there are more admin goodies for me under the hood.
Again, please let us know what you think and if you see any bugs. Thanks!
No, you're not seeing things. Some of you may have already noticed our new layout, which went live a few minutes ago. The community list is moved up to the top, and the top users, tag cloud, and polls are moved over to the left This produces a new three column layout instead of the old 2 column version.
All of the same stuff is still there, we just re-arranged a bit. We hope that this will make it easier for newer members to find their way around and get to the places they want to go to faster.
Let us know what you think, and any other layout changes that you think might make it easier for everyone to use the space.
You may have noticed some new colors on PCWorld.com and our forums. We are trying an experiment by changing all of our links from red to blue. It's just something that we're trying out, and we're looking for your feedback on it. Please tell us if you like it more or less, if you noticed or didn't notice the change, etc.
We also added a darker grey background to the sides of the page. We hope that these changes make the page easier for you to read.
This also gives us the flexibility to use the red color for very hot stories, if we want to.
Click around the community and website, and let us know what you think in the comments below.
One of the things we are most excited about in the new community platform is the ability to have blogs. Now, each person at PC World can have their own blog to share their thoughts and feelings. It is yours to do with what you wish (as long as it's within our standards, that is). Want to rant about today's news, share a product review, or just talk about your day? You can do that all here.
We also have several group blogs set up around our community topics, and many people can participate in those. If you would like to be added as an author on one of these blogs, just let me know and I'll be happy to add you.
We will still have our regular blogs, that are produced using Movable Type. Those will remain in that platform. I know that's a little confusing, but I think it's nice to have a blogging area that is totally open to our readers, while still maintaining our other blogs that have controlled authorship.
I guess we'll just see where it all goes. This new platform is one big adventure, and thanks for coming along with us for the ride.
