What the &^%$ happened to the site?
Relax, all is right with the world. We’ve decided to add a “splash” page to break up the three shows. For the record, I hate splash pages. But since “the Dragon Page” means something very different to potential listeners of With Class to those of Wingin’ It!, we had to make adjusments.
(Note for those reading via RSS feed: Check out the new index page. http://dragonpage.com/index.html if you wanna see what all the hubub is about.)
Love it? Hate it? Whatever. Got a better idea that doesn’t rely on rebranding one or all three shows? Comments are great.
April 25th, 2006 at 11:14 am
Love the splash set up, but what happened to all the ‘misc’ entries?
April 25th, 2006 at 11:15 am
Oh, and the Charlie the Beer Guy link is broken. You’ve got .com.com on the URL.
April 25th, 2006 at 11:45 am
Yeah I was thinking about that. When I first saw what With Class was about I thought… hmm is that a good mix with Wingin It? But it looks good.
Just a thought- Maybe you should put With Class seperate and bring Slice of Sci Fi on to here. Because how many kids will see that warning and want to come over here and see what this is all about?
April 25th, 2006 at 12:31 pm
J.R. - Misc junk will still show up in the Wingin’ It! section. And thanks for the heads up on the SoB link. I’ve fixed and am rebuilding all pages now.
Andrea - I’m not necessarily doing it to keep kids out. Honestly, I’d be surprised if that many kids listen to WC. It’s more for parents and teachers. If they hear about WC, now they have an obvious place to go. Some will be curious, and that’s OK.
And bring SoSF over? Uh… no. Too hard. And I want more separation than that.
April 25th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Hey Evo,
What is the whole story with that anyway? You guys do Slice and Wingin’ It on the same day even, why make the distinction? I understand you probably have solid resons, but I’m curious…
Paul in Elk River
April 25th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Evo- I hear you brotha.
I was always curious as to why SoSF was over on its own
April 25th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
John - Are you asking why we make a distinction between SoSF and WI!? I’m not sure I understand your question.
Andrea - When we started, tDP was simply tDP. A book-focused show where we intereviewed scifi/fantasy authors. SoSF was our attempt at a media-focused show, dealing with scifi you find on the tube or the big screen.
Why do I get the feeling we’ve done a piss-poor job of clearly deliniating those two things? Is it Wingin’ It! which is throwing every thing off? And what about With Class? Does that add additional complexity?
You guys have me rethinking a lot of stuf right now.
April 25th, 2006 at 2:11 pm
Oh Evo sorry to make you confused. No I understand the difference between all the shows but it was just they are all dragon page and they are all basically sci-fi/geek based shows.
I started listening probably 2-3 months before Serenity was released and it took me several shows to go visit sliceofscifi.com and even longer to realize that there was this dragonpage website with other shows. Its Dragon page so why is it on its own website I guess was more what I was getting at. Because all the shows together are a much more satisfying experience than each alone.
Sorry if i helped ruin your day- you get a hug and a smooch from me to make it all better.
April 25th, 2006 at 3:16 pm
Pretty much what she said, without the hug and smooch at the end. I see the delineation, understand that there is a difference, but wonder why you are strident about maintaining the separation.
Oh what the heck, you can have the hug and smooch from me after all…
April 25th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
With Class seems like the odd man out to me. At first I thought SoSF was separate because of the Save Trek thing, that it was supposed to be their show. That’s not true, if it ever was. So I’m not sure why it’s kept separate, except that there are lots of SoSF news updates in the blog which would cycle the C2C and Wingin It show notes much faster.
Not in love with the splash page, but I could just update my bookmarks.
April 25th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
Not to add to the morass (huh huh…more ass…), but I’m curious about why the three tDP shows aren’t MORE delineated from each other, a la SoSF. Each has it’s own distinct format, philosophy, tone and “flavor.” The only thing they share completely is Draco Vista, and you can’t tell that by listening. I realize they all grew out of the original Dragon Page, but maybe it’s time for WI (at least) to completely “bud off”. Just call it “Michael & Evo’s Wingin’ It!”, lose the “Dragon Page”. Set up a separate site, with lots of “go away kiddies, this is for grown-ups” signs. And pictures of nipples, maybe…
The literary ‘casts make the most sense grouped together, as the splash page goes to great pains to point out, and the “Page” in their names makes perfect sense.
No smooch, but I’ll throw in an awkward man-hug.
April 25th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
Ooops..come to think of it, what I said probably qualifies as “rebranding.”
Never mind [man-hug withdrawn].
April 25th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
I think the spash page is cool if it helps updating a specific page instead of a mondo page that has everything. And all about easy.
April 26th, 2006 at 12:03 am
As a former webdesigner I’m not big on the splashpage thing, though I get it. I think a great addition for it would be to parse in the ‘release date’ for each podcast. Right now we have to poke each link to see if the latest and greatest has come out yet.
With the ‘old’ main page you could quickly check if the new show was ready for download.
I should note this is probably more for the midnight workers such as myself, who directly download instead of having Juice catch it.
I think if that was added it’d actually work out to be a pretty cool way to do things.
Just my 2c, before Uncle Sam takes his cut.
April 26th, 2006 at 12:32 am
My brilliant idea-instead of splash page you should have Farpoint Media family page showing all offerings with, get ready now, working links from it to the individual pages. I think the Dragon Page moniker should rest with Cover to Cover because it is about books. That being sad, what the hell do I know, I only speak Chinese and live across the water from the “Big Dragon.”
April 26th, 2006 at 3:27 am
They have http://farpointmedia.net/
Is this the kind of thing you meant?
April 26th, 2006 at 6:09 am
The go to the Farpoint site idea is interesting. The only problems I see there are:
Firstly,
‘Dragon Page’ is probably what people associate with With Class, not Farpoint.
Secondly,
The Farpoint list has With Class at the bottom after a bit of scrolling. If, however, the list was made into a grid (say 4 podcasts across) so that they all fit onto the screen then With Class listeners could find it easily. I guess this is more of a presentation thing though.
I’m not a fan of splash pages but this one does the job, in that it groups the 3 Dragon Page sites together making With Class easily findable yet clearly seperate from the others.
But then, this is just my 2c
April 26th, 2006 at 7:15 am
I’m sure that Evo and Summer are working on ideas. What I would like to see from this - splitting up of the show notes - is that With Class and C2C get more posts and conversations started on their show notes.
Right now, the Wingin’ It! show notes take all the traffic. Having comments that are more ‘topic specific’ would be nice to see. Since the girls really don’t get that much feedback on their side of things.
But, then again, maybe all the WC fans are still scared off because of the WI crowd. We’ll see how much the traffic to WC and C2C increases this month, then we’ll know that is was all us crazy drunks driving the timid parents and teachers away from the site.
April 26th, 2006 at 7:44 am
Hey now Mike…I’m living proof that it’s possible to be a parent, teacher AND crazy drunk, all at once
April 26th, 2006 at 8:13 am
Not saying crazy drunks can’t be parents too, just that, there are (so I’ve heard tell) some parents that don’t drink at all, and (get this) they even get all upset if they are surrounded by a bunch of crazy drunks…
I know it’s hard to believe. There are people that just don’t drink.
It’s just… just… sick and wrong.
April 26th, 2006 at 10:14 am
I often come to the website to find a link or more details on something I heard on one of the shows and I can’t remember (old age I guess) which show it was on. With the new splash page setup I may need to keep bouncing back and forth to find what I’m looking for.
How about using a category system like you see on traditional blogs so you can assign each posting to the appropriate category and then have category links or a drop down box near the top of the page so site visitors can see either “ALL” entries or just the entries for the category (dpWI, WC, C2C) they want?
If you do leave the slash page how about adding a link to Slice since many people will think of it as a DragonPage show.
Good luck with all this!
Kevin
April 26th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Stephen K,
It’s kind of hard to notice at first, but on the Farpoint website, the shows are in alphabetical order by show name (which is why Wingin’ It and With Class are at the bottom).
Getting the Farpoint website to look a little better is one of the things I will get to after a handful of other assignments are completed.