h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Now the messageboards are starting to move across and we're getting lists of 300 or 400 users online (which I imagine is going to get a lot bigger when _all_ the messageboards have been migrated), could we have a site-specific online popup - otherwise it's going to be completely unusable.

Traveller in Time trying to find the right button
"It should work already. . . If only I could find this left out button."

Hi Whisky,

It's already on the 'to do list' for the new boards, I'm not sure when it's due to launch though, it may have drifted down the priority list lately... But anyway, it *is* in the plan!

That's good to hear! *fingers crossed for sooner*

How come the PS URLs on the Who's Online list are all h2g2 when lots are obviously on other sites?

I think its because you opened the who's online popup from within hootoo... If you're on another site and open the box it pops up in their skin and gives you their PS...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/hub/online

Traveller in Time changing to < <./>/dna/mbni/online</.> >
"Was that not the 'Site Confusion' created last october, showing everyones 'Personal Space' in your skin. . ."

Whisky, I'm not sure what you are meaning there.

I was meaning the URL that shows at the bottom of my browser when I hold the pointer over the researcher's name. At the moment they all show an h2g2 (or hub, or whatever site I've opened from) address so you can't tell if the researcher is actually from h2g2 or not.


Traveller the link you gave opens a blank page

> "At the moment they all show an h2g2 (or hub, or whatever site I've opened from) address"

That's because the dna sub-site skins naturally do that with all links unless explicitly told otherwise. Some previous errors were quite funny when named pages didn't even exist on alternative sub-sites but had been included in the templates.

Your who's online box was opened from within h2g2 - therefore _all_ links are to within h2g2...

If you open the who's online box from the hub - _all_ links from it are to within the hub.

If you open the who's online box from collective - _all_ links from it are to within collective.

Can't really explain things a lot simpler than that.

Actually that was much clearer

Can you say why they designed it like that? I assume it's to do with the whole DNA thing, but it doesn't seem to be very useful.

I presume it's because they want to stop people getting confused and bounced from one site to another without being able to find their way back...

It might be confusing to some people if they've only ever used one site, they click on someone else's name to see who they are suddenly projected into an odd colour scheme and a completely different page layout. (Imagine your average WWII poster being dumped in the middle of a nighthoover thread )

I never really understood why they wanted all the sites linked up like this. How many people actually take part in more than one community on a regular basis?

A single membership across all sites is a darn site easier to manage for both the user and the BBC than inidividual memberships. As to how many folk use, well when the messageboards are fully migrated to the DNA platform, I will be up to four plus the Hub

Who's online can already show only the current site's users, but the skin for h2g2 hasn't been changed to make use of this feature. It's an easy change to make.

Sounds good...

"but the skin for h2g2 hasn't been changed"

There's more than one h2g2 skin - and more than one thing which wasn't kept up to date between them, eg reply links for journal entries and more recently the MP list link to unseen posts.

So is it true that brunel is now the only supported skin (someone said this recently in another thread)?

Jim, if you 'activate' the feature will it be available in alabaster and goo as well?

This feature will be for all skins (including plain).

There are some features that, when made active, will work across all skins; there are some that, when made active, have to be specifically tailored for each skin. Of the latter type, we're only putting requests in for the current skin (for example, changes to the main navigation menu).