Publishing Policy Changes

To encourage authors to help us build the technology archive, I've made some pretty substantial changes to the publishing policy. You are now permitted to publish articles you've written but already published on your blog or other websites. In other words, if you have a tech site or blog you are free to republish those articles on ITNewb.

Free Exposure While Helping Others

As time goes on, ITNewb will grow and attract a lot more traffic. By publishing your articles on ITNewb you and your website will gain more exposure. If even one of your articles gets archived, you'll appear on our Author List with a "dofollow" link to your website. We also use dofollow links in articles, so if you link to a "relevant" resource on your site that can help you as well.

Initially, when you published on ITNewb you had to wait 30 days before republishing your work elsewhere on the web. This restriction has also been removed. So, if you write a new article and publish it on ITNewb first you are free to immediately publish that article on your blog. We would obviously appreciate it if you waited a few weeks, but you are no longer required to.

So in a nut-shell, publishing has been opened up, you get to enjoy dofollow links, gain more exposure and help people learn about technology!

Leaping Forward

I'm pleased to announce a massive update here at ITNewb with many new features and improvements to the site itself and the backend. Here is a list of highlights:

• Revamped Home Page
• Revamped Site Footer with Article Copyright / Usage Information
• Revamped Single Page Site Tour
• Revamped / Completed Help Central
• Revamped About ITNewb Page
• Updated Terms, Privacy, Publishing and Netiquette Policies
• Minimum Article Approval Rate Increased to 85% B+
• Improved Documentation for Authors
• New Member Dashboard / Home Page
• New Site-wide Activity Feed
• New, More Advanced Member Notifications
• New Online Friends Sidebar
• New Member Status Feature
• Member Ranks, Titles and Badges
• Improved Profile, Photos and Settings Forms
• New and Improved Profile Fields and Privacy Settings
• Article Search + OpenSearch Plugin for Firefox / IE
• Start of the Newb Initiative, Steered by New Topics index
• Invite Friends to Join ITNewb Back Online
• Revamped Author List Design
• Various Interface Design Improvements
• Improved Article Publisher Error Responses
• Various Improvements to CSM Tabs

Member Dashboard

Once logged in, you'll find the ITNewb home page changes to a cool new dashboard which has 3 tabs: Public Feed; Friends Activity; and Notifications. The new public feed displays activity site-wide, and is governed by the new Activity Filter settings which allow you to opt-out of a story or define a scope of "Everyone", "All Members" or "Only Friends" for the stories you choose to have published.

Friend activity feeds haven't changed, but they have been moved to the dashboard.

The new notifications tab delivers specific messages to you for every action that occurs on the site related to you (up to the past 60 actions). When you're in one of the other dashboard tabs, the notifications tab blinks if you have an unread notice (which are highlighted in yellow). While you're browsing other areas of the site, a large notification bar appears and blinks below the main site navigation.

You'll also find a new online friends sidebar, which appears in various locations around the site and displays up to 20 of your most recently active friends.

Newb Initiative / Topics Index

Most of you are already familiar with the newb initiative, but for those of you who aren't read this.

Member Ranks

You can learn more about the new member ranks here.

Like, Dislike, Bugs?

Due to the magnitude of this update, if we're going to find a bug, this is probably the update. So be sure and submit a bug report if you discover something that's obviously a bug or even something that just doesn't seem quite right. Before you do though, check Help Central to ensure the issue hasn't already been addressed.

Also, as many of you have already learned, your feedback and ideas are highly valued here at ITNewb. So please, feel free to comment and express approval, disapproval, share ideas and so forth.

Enjoy!

Re-Grading of Archived Articles

I have received a few requests to "re-grade" articles that have already been archived. Most of the articles have a grade of 100% A+ because everyone approved those articles. However, those articles may not deserve perfect grades.

Unfortunately, I cannot un-archive those articles and move them back into the newly published list so those who wish to fine tune their ratings can at their own leisure. However, if anyone wishes to change their rating on a particular article and doesn't mind private messaging or emailing me the info I'd be happy to update it for them.

If you'd like to do this send me the title of the article and the following rating info. For each of the 5 criteria you need to provide a rating from 1 to 10.

1. Completeness
2. Clarity / Readability;
3. Technical Accuracy;
4. Appearance / Formatting; and
5. Grammar / Spelling

I apologize for the inconvenience. Fortunately, this issue has only affected a few articles.

Major Update!

I'm pleased to announce the biggest and baddest update to date. In this update you'll find improved graphics, interfaces and many new features. Before I get into the update I'd like to thank Phil Dufault, Frank Lakatos, Guillaume Denormandie, Andrew Stacy and Chris Olstrom for all the feedback they continue to provide.

Here is a summary of what's in the update:

• New, Friendlier Home Page
• Improved Markup / Graphics (Logo, Footer, Buttons etc.)
• Article Publisher (New UI / Look and Feel)
• New and Improved Article Rating System with Extras
• New Article Rating Stats and Traffic Analytics Feature
• Improved Article Listing / View Layouts
• Article View / Author Bio Integration
• Improved Author Pages Look and Feel
• New User Stats and Points Feature
• New "More on ITNewb" Section
• Internet Organizations List
• Open Source / Freeware Software Library
• Complete Database of Indexed / Formatted RFCs (5,000+ RFCs)
• Complete Indexed List of Unicode Charts (BMP)
• Help Central Document Development has Begun

Alright, let's take a look at some of the more important things in this update.

Article Publisher

A new streamlined user interface was developed for the publisher inspired by a rough sketch by Frank Lakatos (franklakatos.com). The publisher has been broken out of the main CSM tab setup and given its own page.

There were a number of complaints that the publisher wasn't very intuitive, so it is my hope this new interface and the "help sidebars" will eliminate any confusion or difficulty using the feature.

New Rating System (aka grading)

Up until now ITNewb has used a simple approve / sink voting system. Articles with a 75% approval rate or higher were archived and everything else sunk (deleted). For most sites, this kind of system is adequate and everyone is happy but it became apparent this wasn't the case here at ITNewb.

So what were the problems? The three biggest issues were that 1) we couldn't fine tune our ratings because the options were only approve 100% or sink 0%; 2) we were unable to easily articulate what we liked or disliked about an article; and 3) authors had trouble determining which areas they did well in and which areas their work needed improvement.

At any rate, Phil Dufault (dufault.info) initially brought these issues to light and helped me hammer out a new system. The end result was ditching the approve / sink system and turning to a more traditional grading system.

Here is how the new rating (aka grading) system works. Articles are given a 1 to 10 (10% F- to 100% A+) rating on 5 criteria: completeness; clarity / readability; technical accuracy; appearance / formatting; and grammar / spelling. Each category is weighted, and a weighted average is used to determine the overall grade given. Everyone can view this data aggregated in a flash chart under the new "Stats" tab.

As before, you may change your rating at any time while the article is still under review.

So what are the extras mentioned above in the update summary? From within the rating interface you can expand a message box from which you can comment, send the author a private message or write on the authors profile.

Rating Stats and Traffic Analytics

A Stats tab has been added to articles that contain 2 flash objects. Each object has 1 or more drop down menus above it so you can control the chart view.

The top flash object displays 6 rating based bar graphs. The bottom chart displays 10 traffic based line charts providing basic analytics including all traffic, traffic breakdown, article traffic, comment traffic and stats traffic as well as a last 30 days and last 52 weeks setting.

Stats were gathered from the apache logs so you'll find these charts already populated with data.

More on ITNewb

You may have noticed a "More" button was added to the main navigation bar. This section of the site will be used for odds and ins, if you will. To start out you'll find an Internet Organizations list, Software Library, RFC Database and Unicode Charts. Soon I'll be adding a TCP / UDP Ports Database and Linux Man Pages.

If you think of anything you'd like to see in this section please contact me.

Coming Soon / Missing

While there is a lot packed into this update, I wasn't able to include everything that I've been working on. Here is a list of incomplete items or things temporarily offline (this stuff will be complete or back online within a week or two):

• TCP / UDP Ports Database (Coming Soon)
• Linux Man Pages (Coming Soon)
• ITNewb Article Search (Incomplete / Offline)
• New and Improved Invite Friends Feature (Incomplete / Offline)
• Help Central (Incomplete)

Additionally, formatting of the RFCs is still a work in progress. That's not to say they haven't been cleaned up, but that some contain minor blemishes and most of the indexes haven't been formatted / anchored yet. This week I'm going to hit the more popular RFCs like HTTP and so on. If anyone is interested in helping with the index formatting please let me know.

Share Your Thoughts

Your feedback isn't simply appreciated, it's very much needed. Once you've had time to check everything out please share your thoughts. Thanks everyone, enjoy!

More Improvements

Just a quick post here to let everyone know about the latest round of improvements. Here is a summary of the changes:

• Added Zip/Tar Support to the Publisher
• Added 10 Email Notices / Settings
• Added a Display Name Setting
• New Method of Displaying Site Dates
• Added Distinguished Author Comments

Publisher Zip/Tar Support

From within the Publisher you can now upload a single ZIP or TAR file (up to 3 MBs) per article you create. When you upload one of these files a "download attachment" link and counter will appear below the top and bottom of your articles pagination.

Email Notices / Display Name

The Edit Profile, Profile Photos and Settings forms have been cleaned up. There are 10 email notification settings and a display name setting so you can choose whether your nickname, first name or full name is used around the site.

Email notices are only sent out if you've been inactive for at least 30 minutes and in the case of article comments (if you're the author) no more than 1 email is sent out per hour.

Site Dates / Comments

Dates around the site are now displayed in the "3 minutes ago", "3 days ago" fashion for the first 3 months and after that switch over to the "Feb 11, 2009" fashion.

So far everyone seems to like dates being shown in this fashion, although I have received a request that when these dates are clicked a complete / traditional date would appear and I agreed (added to the to do list).

To make it easier to browse article comments and identify those posted by the author a unique border and pencil is now used on their photos.

I've also improved various forms (join, reset password, login, contact) and updated the site tour.

Share your thoughts!

So what do you think of these changes? Please share your thoughts!