Q3 What additional functionality is needed in Salon/Radio?

  1. Mirroring: Few of you want this feature (ability to simultaneously post to two blogs in different domains), and some said it can be done with categories already, though the process is awkward.
  2. Search Functionality: Most of you want this added, saying that adding a Google search bar is hard to do and not well explained, and sometimes produces inaccurate results. Also, Google often brings people to our blog URL or our Day URL, when they should bring people to the specific Item URL with the permalink. As a result, visitors from Google often leave without finding what they were looking for. Can’t Google fix this?
  3. Trackback: The few of you that understand what this feature is, really want it.
  4. Access Restriction: Few of you want to be able to restrict access to your blog or to selected pages of it.
  5. Headlining: Almost all of you want this feature. This would allow us to post just the title, or the title and first paragraph, or the title and synopsis (abstract) of longer posts, with a link to the full text. It would allow more posts to be visible on the home page without scrolling down, and would allow more posts to be maintained on the home page without unduly slowing down page loading.
  6. Editing & Deleting Comments: All but one of you want this feature, and promise you would use it with discretion (remove spam, remove duplicate comments, fix HTML errors). Some also want the ability to ban/block/report abusive commenters.
  7. Separate Templates for Each Category: This feature actually exists, but most category lovers either don’t know about it or can’t figure out the necessary ‘hand-tooling’ to do it. Some warn that too many different looks for different categories make your blog ‘noisy’. A few would like the ability to remove categorized posts from the ‘main’ archive (they would only appear in the category archive).
  8. Archive Table of Contents: Almost all of you would like this feature added.
  9. Other Functions: Individuals asked for these features: Faster page loading, easier photo posting, ability to customize the comment template, ability to use a different template for archives, a sortable list (alpha, by latest update, by date started) of all Salon blogs, the ability to change story names, better documentation, make Radio more Web-based like Xanga so you can access/post from anywhere, ability to edit RSS feed text when posting from news aggregator.
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3 Responses to Q3 What additional functionality is needed in Salon/Radio?

  1. xian says:

    re “A few would like the ability to remove categorized posts from the ‘main’ archive (they would only appear in the category archive),” I’m not sure if this is what’s wanted, but Radio does enable you to post an entry to a category without also posting it to the blog’s home page.Great survey!

  2. Charly Z says:

    I’m one of the few who asked for that ability. My thinking is, I’d like to show all my output (whether categorized or not) on my main weblog’s page, but I don’t want duplicate archives both in the category and the main archive. What Xian mentions would certainly archive a post only in the category, but I wouldn’t have it also in my main weblog’s page.

  3. A couple of these features have been implemented by the Python Community Server project (an open source community server for Radio weblogs):- comment deletion- authentication (I don’t have this turned on on the free pycs.net server though, so you have to run your own or I can host one for you)I’ve also been working on search over the weekend; hopefully I’ll have it going sometime over the next few weeks/months. If my server’s up to it, I’ll host a free search engine for Radio blogs (maybe with ads or something) that will take you straight to the post you’re looking for.

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