# The New News Digest Page.



## Michael Morris (Oct 3, 2004)

It's up after 49 hours of coding with little rest - so now please feel free to gripe/moan/report errors.


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## smok (Oct 3, 2004)

*Congrats... and a request*

Congratulations on the new system.

I have been using the RSS feeds from the message boards to get a feed of the various message boards that I read.  Can I get the headlines via RSS now?

I use URLs like http://www.enworld.org/forums/external.php?forumids=2&type=rss but a forum ID of 109 still gives the news as a single post per day.

Richard


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## RavenProject (Oct 3, 2004)

Well one thing though. All those "scoop submitted by xyz" are rather distracting and not very pretty. At least it should be changed to "scoop by xyz" or "by xyz". I for one do not see, why credits for scoops should be provided anyway but that's just me.


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## Michael Morris (Oct 3, 2004)

RavenProject said:
			
		

> Well one thing though. All those "scoop submitted by xyz" are rather distracting and not very pretty. At least it should be changed to "scoop by xyz" or "by xyz". I for one do not see, why credits for scoops should be provided anyway but that's just me.




That's how it used to be on Eric's original news page.  The exact phrasing is controlled by a template and can be changed later if desired.


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## Michael Morris (Oct 3, 2004)

smok said:
			
		

> Congratulations on the new system.
> 
> I have been using the RSS feeds from the message boards to get a feed of the various message boards that I read.  Can I get the headlines via RSS now?
> 
> ...




In the new system each category has it's own forum as follows:

Site News #162
WotC News #164
D20 System News #163
Reviews #182
Community News #178
Software News #179
Books & Novels #180
Other News #181

To see all headlines you'll need a news reader that can see mulitiple forums (I presume you do from you're statement).  While this setup is a little less convenient than 1 forum for all headlines, it does have the advantage that you can be selective in what categories go into your news.


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## Umbran (Oct 3, 2004)

RavenProject said:
			
		

> I for one do not see, why credits for scoops should be provided anyway but that's just me.




Because recognition is a good motivator.  It isn't like scoopers get paid or anything.


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## RavenProject (Oct 3, 2004)

Isn't the motivation to help the best D20 site remain the best one?


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## smok (Oct 3, 2004)

*RSS Feed working*



			
				Spoony Bard said:
			
		

> In the new system each category has it's own forum as follows:
> 
> Site News #162
> WotC News #164
> ...




I added these feeds and they all are working.  Thanks for the changes!
Richard - happy he can read En World news in the same place as all the other sites again


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## Wasgo (Oct 3, 2004)

Any way to make the news sort by descending chronological order? Having it sort by catagories, then in ascending chronological order makes it harder to read what's new.


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## Michael Morris (Oct 3, 2004)

Wasgo said:
			
		

> Any way to make the news sort by descending chronological order? Having it sort by catagories, then in ascending chronological order makes it harder to read what's new.




It is descending - there just happens to be only one day's worth of news in the new system.


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## haiiro (Oct 3, 2004)

There used to be a way to see the news by day, broken down into categories -- rather than as I'm seeing it now, where each category for each date has its own entry. The way it looks now drives me nuts.  Is there a user setting to change this?

I like seeing the return of the scoop credits, and I think the new automation is a cool idea.


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## Michael Morris (Oct 3, 2004)

haiiro said:
			
		

> There used to be a way to see the news by day, broken down into categories -- rather than as I'm seeing it now, where each category for each date has its own entry. The way it looks now drives me nuts.  Is there a user setting to change this?




Are you looking at the news page proper????

http://www.enworld.org/forums/news.php

Cause it's layed out the way it always was.  Or are you looking directly at the forums which hold the news?



> I like seeing the return of the scoop credits, and I think the new automation is a cool idea.




There shouldn't be much disernable difference from the system we just left.  I suspect some are looking at the wrong pages by mistake :shrug:

EDIT: Or are you wanting to see the news for one category ONLY?? (Post Nuke had that)  I can do that easily enough.


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## Wasgo (Oct 4, 2004)

The way it looks now is:

Saturday, October 2nd, 2004
->Site News

Sunday, October 3rd, 2004
->Site News

Saturday, October 2nd, 2004
->d20 System

Sunday, October 3rd, 2004
->d20 System

etc.

This makes it fairly hard to see what's new. The old system looked like:

Sunday, October 3rd, 2004
->Site News
->d20 System
etc.

Saturday, October 2nd, 2004
->Site News
->d20 System
etc.

making it easier to view what had been added.


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## Michael Morris (Oct 4, 2004)

Wasgo said:
			
		

> The way it looks now is:
> 
> Saturday, October 2nd, 2004
> ->Site News
> ...




Screen shot please.  There was a bug at one point that did that, but I thought I'd killed it.

EDIT: Also, what is you're time zone setting (Yes, that makes a difference)


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## Wasgo (Oct 4, 2004)

I'm in Pacific Time (GMT -8:00) and I've attached the screen shot.


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## Michael Morris (Oct 4, 2004)

Ok, I modified the code.  Did it correct the error for you (it did for me - I was able to replicate the error by switching to pacific time temporarily)


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## Wasgo (Oct 4, 2004)

Assuming that all the news is supposed to be under Sunday, then yes it did.


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## Michael Morris (Oct 4, 2004)

Yes, all of the news currently on the server should be "Sunday" news.


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## haiiro (Oct 4, 2004)

Spoony Bard said:
			
		

> Ok, I modified the code.  Did it correct the error for you (it did for me - I was able to replicate the error by switching to pacific time temporarily)




I was looking at the news page proper, and your fix seems to have corrected the bug for me as well. Thanks!


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## Jaws (Oct 4, 2004)

The 'justified' look has got to go.


Peace and smiles 

j.


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## Nellisir (Oct 4, 2004)

I really like the new frontpage.  In the "Player's Handbook" view, however, the scoopers show up in red, which is a little distracting (the orange in the default view doesn't seem as bad). Can that be changed?

Thanks
Nell.


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## haiiro (Oct 4, 2004)

More or less on topic, there's one thing that's never quite worked for me on the front page: keeping the poll box closed. All of the others stay open/closed, however I set them, but every time a new poll appears that one pops open.

This was true on the old news page as well, and in both IE 6 and FireFox 0.9.3. Any idea why this is?


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## Michael Morris (Oct 4, 2004)

haiiro said:
			
		

> More or less on topic, there's one thing that's never quite worked for me on the front page: keeping the poll box closed. All of the others stay open/closed, however I set them, but every time a new poll appears that one pops open.
> 
> This was true on the old news page as well, and in both IE 6 and FireFox 0.9.3. Any idea why this is?




Each poll has a different object code for the others, ensuring that even if you closed the old polls, new ones still display.  That isn't a bug, it's intentional.


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## haiiro (Oct 5, 2004)

Spoony Bard said:
			
		

> Each poll has a different object code for the others, ensuring that even if you closed the old polls, new ones still display.  That isn't a bug, it's intentional.




OK, I can live with that -- but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, no disrespect intended.

If I've decided that I don't want to know the day's sci-fi news, it's because I'm not interested in sci-fi news -- I don't need that box, and closed is how it stays.

With the poll, if I've decided I'm not interested in seeing polls with my news, it's coded to interpret that as me not wanting to see a _particular_ poll (which isn't the case). To me, it seems like the poll is an option like any other -- on or off is dandy.

Seriously, this is no big thing. If you'd said "That isn't a bug" and nothing else, I would have left it alone. But seeing that there's an underlying reason _why_ it's intentional makes me want to poke at it, because I don't get it.

At the end of the day, this site rocks on toast. Put ten polls on the front page, I'll still read and enjoy it. I'm just saying.


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## Umbran (Oct 5, 2004)

RavenProject said:
			
		

> Isn't the motivation to help the best D20 site remain the best one?




Ah, you want to depend on pure, unadulterated altruism for the scoops?  

Even the altruistic like a nod of recognition.  Otherwise, they get the feeling that they're being taken for granted.  And they would be.  Why should you resist giving credit where credit is due?


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## cybertalus (Oct 7, 2004)

I see the scoop credits are gone again already.


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## Morrus (Oct 7, 2004)

cybertalus said:
			
		

> I see the scoop credits are gone again already.



Well, most of them were the newshounds, and it seems a bit silly crediting them for each individual scoop when it's easier to just remember the fantastic job they do constantly.  Some of the others are publishers hawking their wares -- and that doesn't really deserve a scoop credit.  Nobody has ever got credit for scooping their _own_ scoops. The remainder - scoops from the community - can easily be credited manually as and when they are needed.


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## DaveMage (Oct 7, 2004)

Morrus said:
			
		

> Well, most of them were the newshounds, and it seems a bit silly crediting them for each individual scoop when it's easier to just remember the fantastic job they do constantly.




It does get quite annoying (IMO) on gamingreport to see Damon White's name next to almost EVERY news item there.

I mean, we get it: Damon gets the scoops.


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## cybertalus (Oct 8, 2004)

Morrus said:
			
		

> Some of the others are publishers hawking their wares -- and that doesn't really deserve a scoop credit.



Actually having these labelled was my favorite thing about having scoop credits again.  I was curious to find out who was frequently tooting their own horn.


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