Reorganizing homepage for Ike

[Andy Carvin]

Just wanted to start a thread on what features people would like to see occupying real estate on our homepage for Ike. I plan to give the forum less prominence and move up features like the blog, map, etc. Are there any other widgets we should create for it? Any thoughts on the best ways of using the blog?

[Debbie Cerda]

The Federal Hurricane Response badge looks great! However, t I'm not getting the full content of it in Firefox 3.0 or IE7.

[Earl McGehee]

The main heading at the top of the page is a link to the old gustav08.ning.com site.

Also if you Google Hurricane Information Center you get a link to the old site URL and that URL stays in the browser URL line. This means many other people, favorites and sites will contnue to link to the old URL. Maybe the redirection could be handled differently and/or code could be put in the site to tell the Google search bots to use the new URL. There are several causes and fixes for this.

[Andy Carvin]

Yeah, not sure how to fix that since it's their widget.

Debbie Cerda said:

The Federal Hurricane Response badge looks great! However, t I'm not getting the full content of it in Firefox 3.0 or IE7.

[Andy Carvin]

Are you going to gustav08.ning.com or hurricanes08.org? I'm not seeing any gustav reference when I use the hurricanes08 address. All we can do is mask the gustav address; no way to do a redirect.

Earl McGehee said:

The main heading at the top of the page is a link to the old gustav08.ning.com site.

Also if you Google Hurricane Information Center you get a link to the old site URL and that URL stays in the browser URL line. This means many other people, favorites and sites will contnue to link to the old URL. Maybe the redirection could be handled differently and/or code could be put in the site to tell the Google search bots to use the new URL. There are several causes and fixes for this.

[Ben Tremblay]

I managed to get the RSS from my "Weather Alerts" !Pipe to display in the sidebar of my blog, but had no luck with the widget code ... though two different Ning panels brag that they support widgets. (No embed function.)
I pimped the NHC.NOAA alerts so that they appear first in the list.

see http://pipes.yahoo.com/bentrem/weatheralerts08b ... not hard to change the sources i.e. cut out CT/NH/NY/RI etc

[Earl McGehee]

Yes.
I'm doing a Google search for "Hurricane Info Center" and clicking on the link they provide which takes me to the old gustav08.ning.com site. At that point I would have no way to tell there was a new URL for the site. As long as Google sends people to the old URL we will probably have lots of people and sites using the old URL. Regrettably this stuff is hard...

Andy Carvin said:

Are you going to gustav08.ning.com or hurricanes08.org? I'm not seeing any gustav reference when I use the hurricanes08 address. All we can do is mask the gustav address; no way to do a redirect.

Earl McGehee said:

The main heading at the top of the page is a link to the old gustav08.ning.com site.

Also if you Google Hurricane Information Center you get a link to the old site URL and that URL stays in the browser URL line. This means many other people, favorites and sites will contnue to link to the old URL. Maybe the redirection could be handled differently and/or code could be put in the site to tell the Google search bots to use the new URL. There are several causes and fixes for this.

[John Walling]

http://developer.ning.com/tutorials/Easy_Domain_Redirection

Introduction
If you've purchased the Use Your Own Domain premium service, there's a simple way that you can make sure that visitors to your network always reach it though your domain rather than via its ning.com address. This was so popular that we've made it a hidden feature on your social network as of version 3.3. If your social network is running up to date code, please use the easy domain redirection tool. If you're running on an older version of the source code please see instructions on manual domain name redirection. http://developer.ning.com/tutorials/Manual_Domain_Redirection


Easy Domain Redirection Instructions

To set up domain redirection the easy way, just follow these steps

1. Log into your social network as the Network Creator
2. Visit http://examplenetwork.ning.com/admin/index/editDomainRedirection where you substitute examplenetwork with the .ning.com subdomain of your social network.
3. From the dropdown select the domain name that you would like your members to see.
4. Click on the 'Save' button

Yep! It's that easy. Your members will now automaticaly be redirected to the domain name that you selected in the drop down. If you'd ever like to disable this function, just return to this page and select the .ning.com subdomain from the list.

[Ben Tremblay]

I've been trying to find a way of automatically updating from NHC's "Hurricane IKE Forecast Discussion", but each update has its own unique URL.
For forecasting, this is basic. Kudos to the for writing very readably ... technical, but not hermetic.

e.g.: #36

[Earl McGehee]

Ike is upon us her in Texas. Rather than a reorg this late in the game maybe two changes could be made today:
1. Move the Wiki link to a more prominent location. There are still many people working on the Wiki but I fear visitors may not even find the Wiki with the current link.
2. Modify the Flickr photos on the left side. It appears we are picking photos from Flickr based on the tag Hanna and we are often getting pictures of people named Hanna that are unrelated to the Hurricane. As of this writing there are several pictures of a fashion model named Hanna. This seems inappropriate for people recovering from major damages caused by Hanna and preparing for Ike. Note there are some Flickr searches on the Wiki Image Gallery page that filter out non Hurricane Hanna pictures.

[Earl McGehee]

In case someone is reading this, the link "We also have a larger version of the map." in the Gustav map in the center near the bottom of the home page is still broken.

The map is as of last Saturday so it is rather out-dated.

[Ruth Blakeslee]

和热 Hi there Earl,
I see too some Main Page editting fixes requested on the Main Page discussion tab that have been on there for a week. Is anybody reading here or there? Does anyone have a list of who has Main Page editting privileges?
Thanks, Ruthanne

[Ruth Blakeslee]

Ruth Blakeslee said:

和热 Hi there Earl,
I see too some Main Page editting fixes requested on the Main Page discussion tab that have been on there for about a week. I realize this is a community effort with no set process but seems somethings are falling through a crack. I'm not sure who has Main Page editting privileges. My understanding of the process (via the page heading description) is to post & someone will fix, add or edit.
Thanks, Ruthanne