The unfortunate thing about making changes is that there can be unintended consequences. You know, cause and effect. I thought it was a good idea to widen the home page to give us more room to work with. It seemed to be working out quite nicely, and I think you'll agree that our home page looks better than ever. On the downside, it also widened every... single... page on the website, which has created some issues. First and foremost, if you're an iPad user, allow me to apologize. Movie pages are looking pretty lousy right now for iPad users as a result of this recent site change. I'm not a coder, so for me, fixing it is a matter of just tinkering with the code through trial and error. If I'm unable to fix it, I may have to resort to compressing the width back to where it was. That's certainly not something I want to do, since it's essentially taking a step backwards, so I'm gonna try my best to find a way around this. If pages look a little off as a result, I apologize. I think the news pages look fine, but the main movie pages are now a little bit off-center (which probably bothers me far more than most people). Please, bear with me as I try to get all of this situated. I'd hate to have a janky-looking website, so I'll do whatever I can to fix it.
Additionally, Ryan and I have come to an agreement about making some changes to the movie pages. We're going to be removing the Twitter and Facebook buttons from the main pages because they're incredibly tedious to put onto every page, and I'm pretty certain that no one has ever clicked any of them, ever. I'm not upset about that or anything, and personally I don't usually click those kind of buttons myself when browsing the internet, unless it's something I really want to share. Therefore, not only is it annoying and time-consuming, it 's really just a waste of precious time. I'm sure the buttons won't be missed.
When it comes to the movie page polls, there are some issues. Currently, we have polls that ask, "Are you going to see this movie?" The problem with that is it becomes obsolete once the movie is out in theaters and people have seen it. To remedy that, once the movie has been released, we've been shifting it over to "Did you see this movie?" However, that's kind a boring poll. Since we've added the rating stars to pages, it's our hope that you'll only vote after you've actually seen the movie, in which case, that poll question serves little purpose anymore. So instead, we're not going to get rid of the poll, but we're going to just ask a question we feel is appropriate to the movie itself. For instance, "Which character in The Expendables 3 is your favorite?" or "Did you prefer book or the movie adaptation of The Giver"? I think these questions will be more interesting so that you'll want to take a moment to answer them.
I'm also thinking about integrating a forum into the website. I don't think I would use the default forum option that's included with my website provider since it seems pretty limited. I'd probably instead implement another forum type from elsewhere. When I added Disqus to the website, it seemed like a more convenient and easy way for people to comment on pages, since people can sign in through various social media sources (Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc.). While I don't intend to get rid of the Disqus comment sections from the movie pages, I realize now that it's a little limited. It's more like facebook comments than a forum. In that sense, it's unorganized, and not likely to provoke much thoughtful discussion. They're also limited to pages for specific movies. I want you guys to be able to talk about what you want to talk about in terms of movies. For instance, what if you wanted to talk about The Dark Knight trilogy? Currently you have no place to do that. A forum would remedy that problem. Forums build communities, and communities push websites. I want 5 Minute Movie Guy to be a place that you can go to where you can connect with people through movies. Where you can read about them, learn about them, write about them. Movies bring people together. Shouldn't movie websites do the same?
Well, there you have it. Facebook and Twitter buttons are gone, polls will be changing, a forum will be made, and the website resizing issues will be remedied. I like to keep you guys updated on things happening with the site so you're aware of changes and additions. Speaking of that, you may have noticed that we've added a couple more people to our staff. I don't want to squeeze them in here at the end of this blog, so I'll give them a proper introduction soon. As always, thanks for reading!
Additionally, Ryan and I have come to an agreement about making some changes to the movie pages. We're going to be removing the Twitter and Facebook buttons from the main pages because they're incredibly tedious to put onto every page, and I'm pretty certain that no one has ever clicked any of them, ever. I'm not upset about that or anything, and personally I don't usually click those kind of buttons myself when browsing the internet, unless it's something I really want to share. Therefore, not only is it annoying and time-consuming, it 's really just a waste of precious time. I'm sure the buttons won't be missed.
When it comes to the movie page polls, there are some issues. Currently, we have polls that ask, "Are you going to see this movie?" The problem with that is it becomes obsolete once the movie is out in theaters and people have seen it. To remedy that, once the movie has been released, we've been shifting it over to "Did you see this movie?" However, that's kind a boring poll. Since we've added the rating stars to pages, it's our hope that you'll only vote after you've actually seen the movie, in which case, that poll question serves little purpose anymore. So instead, we're not going to get rid of the poll, but we're going to just ask a question we feel is appropriate to the movie itself. For instance, "Which character in The Expendables 3 is your favorite?" or "Did you prefer book or the movie adaptation of The Giver"? I think these questions will be more interesting so that you'll want to take a moment to answer them.
I'm also thinking about integrating a forum into the website. I don't think I would use the default forum option that's included with my website provider since it seems pretty limited. I'd probably instead implement another forum type from elsewhere. When I added Disqus to the website, it seemed like a more convenient and easy way for people to comment on pages, since people can sign in through various social media sources (Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc.). While I don't intend to get rid of the Disqus comment sections from the movie pages, I realize now that it's a little limited. It's more like facebook comments than a forum. In that sense, it's unorganized, and not likely to provoke much thoughtful discussion. They're also limited to pages for specific movies. I want you guys to be able to talk about what you want to talk about in terms of movies. For instance, what if you wanted to talk about The Dark Knight trilogy? Currently you have no place to do that. A forum would remedy that problem. Forums build communities, and communities push websites. I want 5 Minute Movie Guy to be a place that you can go to where you can connect with people through movies. Where you can read about them, learn about them, write about them. Movies bring people together. Shouldn't movie websites do the same?
Well, there you have it. Facebook and Twitter buttons are gone, polls will be changing, a forum will be made, and the website resizing issues will be remedied. I like to keep you guys updated on things happening with the site so you're aware of changes and additions. Speaking of that, you may have noticed that we've added a couple more people to our staff. I don't want to squeeze them in here at the end of this blog, so I'll give them a proper introduction soon. As always, thanks for reading!