news site?

[matt3o]

what would you think of a KB news site? Would it have any value? It would take me no time to setup a wordpress site... but I'm wondering if we could set up an editorial staff of 3-4 people who more or less absently help with the updates.

[webwit]

Revive this
http://deskthority.net/news-reviews-f4/

[matt3o]

yeah I thought about that, but honestly I don't think a forum is for news and reviews. But well, it was just a crazy idea.

[Daniel Beardsmore]

If you're bored and restless, you may as well resurrect kbdb.io. Then at least people would be able to find out what does exist in the world. What are my options for an ISO TKL with MX Red and Cherry stabilisers? For people in Australia, what can they obtain at all? (I've given up hope that the wiki will go anywhere. Whether you're more likely to find co-operative lackeys to keep kbdb.io up-to-date, I don't know. However, with kbdb.io, it's in the best interests of companies like EK, keyboardco, MK etc to keep the site updated so that people will see the products they're carrying, but whether they'd ever find the time, I do not know.)

You could put staff reviews there, as well as permit user reviews. The staff reviews could be collated as a blog as well as being tied to individual products.

With that said, webwit has a point — what are you hoping to achieve with a news site that the forum cannot provide?

[matt3o]

Speaking of which (super sneak)

[sth]

i'm willing to contribute copy. maybe i could do some goofy reviews or something too. i sent you a PM

[Muirium]

I agree there's a use for this. Forums are great, for forum regulars. But sifting around, when you haven't been in a while, is way more work than people like to do. Forums prioritise topics over timeliness; and projects over news. So we could use a… ugh, I never did like the word, but yes we could use a blog.

Quite how it would dovetail with the forum, I'm not sure. Perhaps each blog post (or as I'd prefer to call it: news item) automatically creates and links to a topic in the forum with the same content, where all discussion takes place. There's much to be said for clean looking blogs with no comments, just full content posts.

No "read more" buttons please. People can scroll nowadays! The idea is to put all the focus on the posts themselves, including pictures, right on the front page. Each item can have its own URL of course for linking, but it's so much better not to require people to read them behind a click. Be different from the forum, or go home!

[webwit]

Different sort order and views. Create mod or use an existing one.
http://phpbb3hacks.com/modifications.php?name=Blog

[matt3o]

wordpress has become a CMS more than a bl(ahem)og nowadays, so no worries. we are not using the B-word.

Apart from that I agree on most Muirium said. I find the forum a great tool for discussion but it simply doesn't work as a content management.

The suggestion to post the news on the forum is not bad, maybe just title+link+excerpt, but I see some issues (not last admins' support that seems to be lacking) and I'd like to keep it simple.

[Icarium]

I agree, some sort of curated news site would suit me greatly. I just don't have the time to regularly read DT right now, much less GH. And I hate missing great projects and group buys.

[matt3o]

PS: I've also found a phpBB to WP bridge http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-united/

[Broadmonkey]

I agree, some sort of curated news site would suit me greatly. I just don't have the time to regularly read DT right now, much less GH. And I hate missing great projects and group buys.

Ah, so the news shouldn't only include new products/keyboards, but also some kind of handpicked forum threads/activities and groupbuys? kinda like a community gossip girl

[Muirium]

Oooooh!!!

[webwit]

The suggestion to post the news on the forum is not bad, maybe just title+link+excerpt, but I see some issues (not last admins' support that seems to be lacking) and I'd like to keep it simple.

I think I was giving the wrong vibe? I was not trying to be unsupportive, but rather the opposite by trying to make you consider that we have a club with a software stack, user base and hosting at your disposal. But if you want to start something separate instead, that's fine with me.

[matt3o]

ok let's start over.

my assumption is that the forum is not the right place for news but it's great for conversation. I don't think the forum news section is a good way to offer... well... news. A dedicated website would get more traction, wider audience, better indexing and eventually traffic to deskthority.

my premises might be completely wrong, but looking at reddit --for example-- there's a whole world of people interested in keyboards that don't even know deskthority existence. Do we care about the rest of the world? I dunno, but I was trying to understand it with this post.

My understanding is that you (webwit) were suggesting to "revive" the news section which I believe is not the right platform for the purpose, but maybe there are some tools/plugins we could use to help in the task. I don't want to start something separate, otherwise I wouldn't have posted this here I guess

[wheybags]

A /blog using WordPress would be pretty cool. There could be a section on the forums where people submit articles for review.

[sth]

what about the idea of integrating the news site in the same way that the wiki is integrated? so it could use the same authentication and be tied in with the rest of the site, but using its own CMS for news posts and stuff.

[Icarium]

How about articles that can be attached to threads. So when there is a really huge thread like for the ergodox or soarer's converter somebody can write a nice article about it and it can be attached to the thread like a summary. A version of the spy solely for new articles would make a nice overview page. I suppose we could just create sticky's for that. Wouldn't require any changes to the board.

[matt3o]

I'm open to any suggestion to make the community better, but I don't want to step on anybody's toes.

[IvanIvanovich]

There are lots of tech sites that are both news/reviews/articles and forum... where the end of the article links to forum comments. But for here to follow usual form it would need to change the main page to a news site and make a forums.deskthority.net or whatever... but unless we have people that will be regular contributors of articles/reviews and someone to act as editor it probably wouldn't be worth the effort to change things that way.

[matt3o]

I would start with "news" and maybe expand if there's interest. It wouldn't be technically impossible to connect two sites with different domains, but again I need admins' support.

[sth]

it strikes me that Deskthority is a particularly good name, even out of context, to be attached to a news-type site.

matt3o are you a club member?

[matt3o]

I am, why?

[DerpyDash_xAD]

Personally I think this is a great idea - a dedicated URL would appear more professional, but you could retain deskthority as host. This would only cost 10$ or so a year (theoretically) as domains are not expensive.

My ideal layout would be a simple page, just with articles, and two links - Forum Thread and Permalink - below each article.

I think a basic version should be offered along side a full version - full version autoloading with scroll down (ie Facebook), basic having zero images and pagination for text browsers and slow internet connections.

Finally, a simple topbar displaying login status, level (user\writer\editor) and a dark/light switcher would be very good also. Instead of a login page we can use cookies from deskthority.

[matt3o]

Thanks for your feedback Derpy! I agree on most of your suggestions (the "distraction free" mode is very nice indeed).

I'm trying to figure out how this could be integrated with DT, I'm talking with webwit about this, but discussion is slow moving

Maybe the best is to just start and worry about integration later.

[kbdfr]

[…] (ie Facebook) […]

Oh no - please no Facebook function/link/logo/whatever on DT!

[mintberryminuscrunch]

[…] (ie Facebook) […]

Oh no - please no Facebook function/link/logo/whatever on DT!

this!!

[scottc]

Relax - I think that DerpyDash just wants an infinitely scrolling list in the design of the website in the style of Facebook's news feed, not actual Facebook integration.

Anyway, I don't think webwit would ever violate user privacy by adding Facebook Javascript trackers to DT. The only analytics on DT are Piwik, which is self-hosted by DT and therefore not a big issue.

[DerpyDash_xAD]

Relax - I think that DerpyDash just wants an infinitely scrolling list in the design of the website in the style of Facebook's news feed, not actual Facebook integration.

Anyway, I don't think webwit would ever violate user privacy by adding Facebook Javascript trackers to DT. The only analytics on DT are Piwik, which is self-hosted by DT and therefore not a big issue.

Yes, I only referenced Facebook because I could not think of another who also had infinite scrolling.

What I meant was once you reach the 'bottom' more articles would load, so you could continue scrolling.

[matt3o]

I'm not a big fan of automatic infinite scrolling, but a "load more" button could do the job (basically a "manual infinite scrolling")