Re: [Haifux] Is the redirect to /newcomers/ a good idea?
Alon Altman wrote: This is a temporary measure to help promote the W2L series. This is the classic paradigm held by Microsoft: The user has no idea what he or she wants, let's push our suggestions. That's why you never know what happens next when you run Windows. Why are we imitating? Let's think who comes to our sites: Ourselves, those looking for concrete info (lectures and such) and those who just heard about Haifux. The two first groups will be mildly annoyed. The third group will get the impression that all Haifux does is W2L. I think that a link in large font, possibly in red, near the top of the original page is enough to make it clear for any curious surfer that there is going to be a set of lectures. Don't worry, some of our potential visitors have the motoric ability to click a link, not to talk about the wisdom of choice. Alon, what do you think when you type a URL and get something else than you expected? Eli
Re: [Haifux] Is the redirect to /newcomers/ a good idea?
On Sat, 11 Oct 2003, Alon Altman wrote: On Sat, 11 Oct 2003, Eli Billauer wrote: This is the classic paradigm held by Microsoft: The user has no idea what he or she wants, let's push our suggestions. That's why you never know what happens next when you run Windows. Why are we imitating? Let's think who comes to our sites: Ourselves, those looking for concrete info (lectures and such) and those who just heard about Haifux. The two first groups will be mildly annoyed. The third group will get the impression that all Haifux does is W2L. You're ignoring a fourth important group. This group includes people who saw the paper ads to the W2L series and followed the link to www.haifux.org, or heard a friend mention Haifux to them. Some of these people are not very fluent with English and might think they have the wrong address if they see the regular Haifux page. and if they had a very clear link, at the top of the page, written in hebrew, that links to the newcomers series, that's all they realy need. what you're doing now, is fix a bug in the ads, by breaking the web site. now, didn't the ads contain '/newcomers' as part of the URL? Most new visitors to Haifux come via a search engine to an internal page, and are not affected by the redirect. I agree the we should not redirect people who visited Haifux via a link (from a search engine or otherwise), but just those who typed the URL in (I can add this simple fix). well, what are you waiting for? add it, until you come back to your senses, and disable this silly redirection. and until then, make the english link at the top of the site _MUCH MUCH_ larger.. for example, large enough so it will be noticeable - they way it is written, it seems like a link to some legal mambo-jambo, that is common on sites, and usually appears in a very very small font (not to mention making it black, which makes it hardly noticeable). lets try to avoid breaking things that work, while trying to fix things that don't. I think that a link in large font, possibly in red, near the top of the original page is enough to make it clear for any curious surfer that there is going to be a set of lectures. Don't worry, some of our potential visitors have the motoric ability to click a link, not to talk about the wisdom of choice. This link exists in any case. There is also a small English link at the top of the newcomers site for people redirected by mistake. the link on haifux's front page is written in english, and using wording that makes it not so clear that it is indeed a link. better write instead click here to get to the new 'welcome to linux' page. and have it in hebrew, with words such as lich'tzu kan kedei lir'ot et hadaf shel sidrat ha'hartzaot 'bruchim habaim lelinux' hachadasha. if you have the link in this way, you'll be able to drop the redirect, and avoid the confusion. and until then, at least make the english link at the top of the W2L page much much more visible. -- guy For world domination - press 1, or dial 0, and please hold, for the creator. -- nob o. dy -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] Is the redirect to /newcomers/ a good idea?
On Sat, 11 Oct 2003, guy keren wrote: and if they had a very clear link, at the top of the page, written in hebrew, that links to the newcomers series, that's all they realy need. what you're doing now, is fix a bug in the ads, by breaking the web site. now, didn't the ads contain '/newcomers' as part of the URL? The ads didn't include '/newcomers' because it breaks the ad design and people remember shorter domains of the form www.something.tld better than a longer URL. Most new visitors to Haifux come via a search engine to an internal page, and are not affected by the redirect. I agree the we should not redirect people who visited Haifux via a link (from a search engine or otherwise), but just those who typed the URL in (I can add this simple fix). well, what are you waiting for? add it, until you come back to your senses, and disable this silly redirection. and until then, make the english link at the top of the site _MUCH MUCH_ larger.. for example, large enough so it will be noticeable - they way it is written, it seems like a link to some legal mambo-jambo, that is common on sites, and usually appears in a very very small font (not to mention making it black, which makes it hardly noticeable). I've made the English link larger. Changing the redirect requires root access, which I currently do not have. The script that does the checks is already ready at http://www.haifux.org/cgi-bin/ipredir.pl lets try to avoid breaking things that work, while trying to fix things that don't. I agree. This link exists in any case. There is also a small English link at the top of the newcomers site for people redirected by mistake. the link on haifux's front page is written in english, and using wording that makes it not so clear that it is indeed a link. better write instead click here to get to the new 'welcome to linux' page. and have it in hebrew, with words such as lich'tzu kan kedei lir'ot et hadaf shel sidrat ha'hartzaot 'bruchim habaim lelinux' hachadasha. if you have the link in this way, you'll be able to drop the redirect, and avoid the confusion. Orna, can you do this change? I still perfer the link to be in English though. and until then, at least make the english link at the top of the W2L page much much more visible. Done. Alon -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 GPG public key at http://alon.wox.org/pubkey.txt Key fingerprint = A670 6C81 19D3 3773 3627 DE14 B44A 50A3 FE06 7F24 -- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- Nothing happens. -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Haifux] Is the redirect to /newcomers/ a good idea?
On Fri, 10 Oct 2003, Shlomi Fish wrote: I don't think the redirect to newcomers is a good idea. First of all, people who surf to our site internationally, or take the last parts of the URL will be annoyed by this behaviour. Secondly, it would be hard to link to the club (http://www.haifux.org/) from web-directories that wish the content to be in English. Thirdly, it is just plain annoying. The site has interests to people besides the newcomers series. Most of the links I gave were directly to http://www.haifux.org/newcomers/ so there's no problem here. And we can put a large h2 link in the front of the page to direct people there. This is a temporary measure to help promote the W2L series. Link to http://www.haifux.org/index.html if you want to force the standard English page. I have put an English link on the top of the newcomers/ page to the regular homepage. It's just one more click for international visitors (which didn't follow a deep link). I could add content negotiation to this forward, and have it done only for people who prefer Hebrew pages. What do you think? Also, I thought of making the schedule page and the links to previous series in English as well. Alon -- This message was sent by Alon Altman ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ICQ:1366540 GPG public key at http://alon.wox.org/pubkey.txt Key fingerprint = A670 6C81 19D3 3773 3627 DE14 B44A 50A3 FE06 7F24 -- -=[ Random Fortune ]=- QOTD: She's about as smart as bait. -- Haifa Linux Club Mailing List (http://www.haifux.org) To unsub send an empty message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
