More usable /cast page... about steamlug.org HOT 13 CLOSED

I'm not too fussed so long as the countdown retains a central focus.

My rationale for having the about text first was that the cast page needs to serve as a usable landing point for people who don't know about the show or are interested in learning more. Anybody already familiar with the page will know where the episode archive table is and will be easily able to jump to it.

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I think we should move the entire table of archived episodes to a new page, as we're about to have a lot of episodes.
And then link to that from the /cast page (refactor the about section).

I don't see the countdown as a necessity, and at the moment I find it too large.
But I think that is another discussion (whether we're aiming to be a live cast, or a recorded cast)

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@Cheeseness People know what a podcast is. It should be pretty evident once they see an episode list and "MP3 OGG FLAC" beside each one. Then, if they still don't get it, they can scroll down.

I think the best design philosophy is content up front, more-info if needed (through a "More..." link, or by scrolling).

It's best to assume your users are intelligent people who want to get to the content. After all, it's the Linux SteamLUG podcast. Anyone who can install Linux and get Steam working is obviously technically savvy enough to know a podcast when they see one. :)

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People may know what an audiocast is, but people aren't likely to intuitively know what our audiocast is.

We get people showing up all the time who have no idea what "LUG" stands for.

Edit: Whoops, missed @swordfischer's comment. Yeah, I totally agree that we need an archive page. We should probably limit any list of recent casts on the main cast landing/info page to say, 5 or so.

I'm definitely in the "This should first and foremost be a live show" camp, but I think we've probably already discussed that as much as we can elsewhere.

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Oh, yeah, I'm not surprised that people coming to the page have no idea what a LUG is. The front page is NEWS, the "about" page starts with how to contact you...

If people don't know what they're looking at, they spend about 4 seconds on a page before closing it. When they first enter the site, you gotta make sure they're not assaulted with a wall of text, and that it contains the most pertinent information.

Here are the changes I'd make:

• Main page has about 4 sentences on it explaining what the deal with your site/group is (in a big font)
• In the header, changing "SteamLUG Cast" to "Podcast" ("SteamLUG Cast" sounds like a list of the actors in the SteamLUG, whatever that is. ;)

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I vetoed the use of the term "podcast" as there are no pods involved :D

We should probably make a new issue for restructuring of other pages.

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It's technically not being 'cast either, since the internet is a point-to-point network.

I was confused when I first saw "SteamLUG Cast", and I'm pretty savvy.

They're called podcasts. Accept it. :)

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Not here. Accept it :D

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@epitron We decided internally on SteamLUG Cast after much debate - and thus the name. We're not changing that in the header. Think of Cast as in BroadCast/PodCast and not a Cast of actors :)

But yes I agree there should be done some changes regarding user interface. I'll poke around with the guys about that when I get the time. But I prefer we have as "many" issues/pull requests as possible for better segmentation and prioritization.

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Why don't you call it something less ambiguous, like SteamLUG Radio?

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As swordfischer says, the name isn't changing. Let's end that aspect of the discussion there.

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@epitron as someone that campaigned to have podcast in the name, we settled on ‘steamlug cast’ as the best alternative and it has a double meaning of it being an ensemble of the members of steamlug. There are a few other podcasts that use just cast in their title, and as such I don’t think we are too far from the norm.

What’s left here in this here bug, making the about section more trim, and the countdown less vertically high?

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Now that the listings have improved, I want to revisit this ‐ to make the page more presentable.
We have #36 for making a guest page, and in talking to @Cheeseness we’d like to improve the about box to better represent our cast of hosts.
Suggestions welcome.

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