Surprise!
After a lot of back-and-forth tussling, hair-pulling, shirt-rending, and other hyphenated actions, I have finally made a big step in the evolution of the Bad Astronomy website: making this blog the homepage.
There is a lot of reasoning behind this. The main motivation was that I update the blog pretty much every day, and sometimes two or three times daily, but I update the main website less than once per month. It seems logical to have the far more active page front and center.
This is also Step 1 in a series of steps to upgrade the site. Once any bugs are ironed out (and if you see any, or have suggestions, leave a comment below!), the next step will be to add software that will move comments from the blog to the discussion board. This allows a LOT more flexibility in commenting, including being able to reference and link to other comments, a serious deficiency currently. Eventually, I may use the blog software as a system to manage the whole site, but that’s a serious commitment that I am not yet ready to make. We’ll see.
Anyway, for regular readers, you won’t see much difference. You can still get to the blog from the old URL (www.badastronomy.com/bablog), but I’d prefer if you updated your links to the main page (just plain ol’ www.badastronomy.com). If you read using some blog reader (Google, Bloglines, or whatever) you should see no change.
The old main website page is still available, and you can see the link to it under the logo at the top of this page. Once there, you’ll see the usual menu on the left with links to the rest of my overbloated site. Nothing else has changed: I will still skewer antiscientists, uncritical thinkers, and all their ilk as before. But now I’m hoping to open it up to a bigger audience, and make it easier to interact as well.
Enjoy!
July 9th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
I think that change is a permanent feature of the cosmos, so why not the website which presents so interestingly the cosmos to us? Evolve we must, else the other permant feature, entropy, will surely overtake us as we devolve into stagnation…
July 9th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Ah, well, that’s a bit more high-falutin’ than I was expecting, but thanks.
July 9th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Okay, I’ll make it more simple.
Websites are never complete. The good ones are always in a state of “change.”
July 9th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
We fear change…..
July 9th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
…But change is good for us!
July 9th, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Alright then… I guess…
July 9th, 2006 at 2:57 pm
There is a small little WP plug-in that allows quoting of comments if you want a quick way to allow that: Quote Comment.
July 9th, 2006 at 5:14 pm
Excellent upgrade! The title in the RSS feed works too!! Kudos!
July 9th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
Hmmmm……
I know the main page isn’t updated all that often, but it does have all the links to movie reviews, astrology debunking, the moon hoax, and Hoagland. It seems to me that the main page should remain as it was. Either that, or make some links to those sites from the BA Blog.
July 9th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
Max, at the top of this page, under the logo, is a link to the old home page, now renamed as intro.html. I may add something to this new page that acts like a more detailed menu, but I’m not sure how without cluttering it up. I am open to suggestions!
July 9th, 2006 at 6:11 pm
Excellent idea. It’s true that the blog has become the main part.
July 9th, 2006 at 11:25 pm
I’ve got to go with Max on this one.
To me, Bad Astronomy has always been the place to find the most detailed debunking of some of the worst pseudo-science out there. That’s what the website’s title is all about: Bad Astronomy.
But this blog is something else entirely. Not to say that I don’t love it and read it daily, but it doesn’t seem to fit with the namesake.
Ultimately, I don’t see there being a problem with you doing whatever you’d like to with your own website, but to relegate all of that amazingly wonderful and important information to that tiny link which is likely to get overlooked, doesn’t seem to do a service to the value of the content, or what you’ve professed your intents to be for it in the past.
I think the best thing to do would be to detach the blog from the website alltogether since it’s proven that it can stand on its own well enough, just like the forums have.
But again, your site, your decision.
July 10th, 2006 at 12:33 am
I go along with Max and Jon.
If you like this blog to be the welcome page of Bad Astronomy, well it is your site. But in my opinion the Blog has always been an extension. An heavily used one, but still an extension.
BTW. That “Bad Astro Intro” link tells nothing.
How should someone know that the “old” site is behind that link? Maybe you could rename it. And please make it MUCH more peresent. Without your comment here I would still search for it.
July 10th, 2006 at 1:43 am
I agree with your reasons for making the blog the home page but also agree with the previous comments; I think you really ought to make the link back to main site more prominent & informative.
July 10th, 2006 at 1:53 am
I’m going to register my vote in support of keeping the original web page as your main BA attraction and this blog as an extra feature. I also think the blog page should have a more prominent link to the web page. “Bad Astro Intro” under the logo really doesn’t do your web site and work the justice it deserves, Phil. A comment about the web site that includes a link to it would, IMHO, be better.
July 10th, 2006 at 2:26 am
I will chime in with the crowd. Phil – your site is an informational site for those looking for truth in science. If you start with the blog, all the other good stuff gets lost and the impact of your site changes totally. If I were a kid looking for information about standing eggs on end and somebody sent me to badastronomy.com with this homepage, I’d think I was in the wrong place.
July 10th, 2006 at 4:38 am
Sorry Phil, gotta agree with everyone else – while your blog might get updated heaps, most people who are coming to ‘badastronomy.com’ will likely want to read about ‘bad astronomy’ (me included).
I usually do not have the time to read through every blog entry here – there are plenty of astronomy blogs around – but I like to catch an update on the main page whenever I can.
Anyway, good to see you still making updates.
July 10th, 2006 at 5:41 am
Phil,
As somebody who often tells my students to look at your webpage for information, I have to vote to keep your old web page as the first thing one sees.
July 10th, 2006 at 6:06 am
Vaguely related: The link in the
sidebar to another great blog,
“Orac Knows”, points to his old
(pre-SciBlogs) site; perhaps it
should be updated?
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/
July 10th, 2006 at 6:26 am
How about adding up the old menu of the main page on the left?? Wouldn’t that solve the problem?
July 10th, 2006 at 7:20 am
For some unknown reason, I stopped receiving RSS feeds in my e-mail in mid June. Since then, I have been getting here through the BAUT forum. At least it saves me one click getting here.
July 10th, 2006 at 8:03 am
It’s obvious that this is not change for the sake of change. There have already been suggestions, as above, that we, as fellow commenters, (as opposed to commentators), will consider. But then Phil, you can do as you want, anyway. ’sO.K. with me.
But I do have a request though. Can anyone point me in the direction of the actual rules and regulations for typing these responses. Things such as how does one copy the quotes and have them shown with the left hand vertical line and also indented. I also have not been able to ‘italicize’ any word. Maybe that is because it is not available, but I can’t see why. I also realise that words in all CAPS is regarded as shouting, but I cannot find any other way to emphasise a word. I have just checked (again) the Font menu but it is greyed out, so is not available. (Is it because I’m in Safari? I’m not going to change browsers just for this.)
Ivan. ( PS … the Preview button?? Yet?… Please.)
July 10th, 2006 at 8:17 am
I think that’s what the XHTML stuff is for
July 10th, 2006 at 8:19 am
Some explanation would be handy though
July 10th, 2006 at 8:29 am
I treat it like html. You need an open block and a close block.
open italics
close italics
(Except remove the extra space)
Same thing with blockquote
I have had trouble making the link work.
July 10th, 2006 at 8:30 am
Hmm, the spaces got deleted automatically.
italics
blockquote
July 10th, 2006 at 8:31 am
Okay, try this
[i] italics on
[/i] italics off
[blockquote] blockquote on
[/blockquote] blockquote off
use angle brackets instead of square brackets
July 10th, 2006 at 8:34 am
I’m split on the change. I think having the blog as your homepage is great when you’re posting about astronomy-related issues, but maybe not as appropriate when you comment on anti-science (which I love, don’t get me wrong). Perhaps you should just make a general homepage with two big graphic links in the middle — one for the main site for those looking for information, and the other for the blog. Either way you do it, I think bigger, more obvious links would help in locating the rest of the site, especially considering how students are often directed here.
July 10th, 2006 at 8:37 am
Phil, perhaps use the links on the left, or tier them under the link bar at the top. Preferably the first, as it is more visible. That way you also have the blog content mainlined into the main page, but your main page has visible links to the full content to allow the new visitor to be aware of the breadth of material.
July 10th, 2006 at 9:07 am
One more thing Phil, on the recommendation of you Sky &Telescope piece from 4 years ago, I’ve directed several Astrologers and HB’s to badastronomy.com for information. I love the blog, but it doesn’t provide the quick access to the information that these people need to see. Also, googling “bad astronomy†also takes you to the blog. I agree that it’s your page, but I still strongly suggest keeping the main page as the home screen.
BTW, does anyone here subscribe to CSICOPs “The Skeptical Briefs?†I just had a column published there about testing a tarot card reader. She is one of the people I’ve directed to Bad Astronomy for info about astrology. I would hate to loose this chance to educate.
July 10th, 2006 at 9:43 am
Actually, putting the left-hand menu up is something I considered. There are difficulties and drawbacks, which is why I am soliciting other ideas too.
But that may be one solution. Another is to have a drop-down menu under the banner, or a page-wide section under the tabs (the links under the banner) with links to the main site.
I understand the issues y’all are bringing up, as I wrestled with them (those are the hyphenated actions I mentioned in the post
. Keep ‘em coming.
July 10th, 2006 at 9:47 am
Good move. The blog system is the way to do things. I’d agree that keeping some hot links on a side bar about parts of the old site would be a nice idea, like the reviews, the fake moon landing, and that sort of thing. That’d be useful for newcomers. A preview mode for comment system would be help.
July 10th, 2006 at 9:49 am
I think that BA should completely redesign and reorganize his site. Blog on main page – sure, but of course on sidepanels must be links to debunking and other things. Really, old main page looks rather… simple. You really should do something with this.
July 10th, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Yes, appropriate. logic is as logic blogs.
July 10th, 2006 at 3:05 pm
MaDeR: I agree that a redesign would be wonderful, but having designed several websites myself, I know how much work this can take and I’m sure Phil’s time is better spent combating bad science than making webpages.
But who knows. Perhaps Phil could ask for volunteers. I did this sarcastically once and was surprised when I got a whole new web site in my inbox one day.
July 10th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
I agree with BA Brother and others making similar points. I think of blogs as adjuncts to a web site(if there is one), and when I reached the main page through a NASA site (a kids page, no less)regarding moon hoax info, it made sense to be looking at the main page with an overview of what you offer. If it had been a blog page I don’t think it would have grabbed my attention in the same way (also there isn’t a lot of blog-entry activity here besides). In general I’m more impressed by a well-designed web page with lots of info on it–maybe it just looks more professional to me. People know where to find a blog if they’re interested to hear more from the author and then just bookmark the blog.
Also, re attaching comments to the BAUT board–seems like there would be an issue with the strict rules there clashing with the kind of comments one often finds here. How would that be controlled? How would you say you can’t talk about this or that or in such a manner on BAUT, but in this section you can? Seems they should be kept separate, or then it’s essentially going onto the board.
July 10th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
BA, I like that the Blog is your main page.
But, I agree with the others that the “Bad Astro Info” link just isn’t sufficient.
Perhaps, a listing of some of the cooler stuff (like “Movie Reviews”, “Apollo Moon Hoax”, “Debunked”, etc.) could appear as a list (like your Categories, Archives, etc.) above your picture. I realize that you are drawing the chicks in with that picture….but, ya know.
July 11th, 2006 at 2:25 am
There are undoubtedly a great many references from all over the Web to the “Bad Astronomy Web Site” at http://www.badastronomy.com. You have effectively broken those links by changing what page they now point to. Furthermore, even if one realizes that he got to the blog and not the BA site, it is still not obvious how to get to the Bad Astronomy Web Site.
I think the change is wrong. Folks who want the blog already had a URL for that. Folks who want the BA Web Site should still get it at the URL where it has always been. The links to the blog from there are quite evident. The link for going to the BA Web Site from the blog is far from obvious because “intro” is not the right concept.
BTW, Phil, while you are fixing things, could you please provide a “Preview” feature for submissions. I am afraid to try any of the XHTML markup because I have no confidence about what the effects will be.
July 11th, 2006 at 2:29 am
The reason that my previous submission appears twice is that I got an error message indicating that I had not successfully posted it the first time, and I could not see it on returning to the page. I did add a paragraph on the second submission though. Then it occurred to me to force a new download of the page, and I saw that the submission did go through in spite of the strange error messages.
July 11th, 2006 at 9:40 am
Well… all right, I guess. I second (or third, or nth others’ suggestions to add some links to the (now new) main page to make it easier to find the old BA stuff.
Also, if you do make changes or significant updates to the non-blog part of the site, I think it would be helpful to post them to the blog so that we would notice.
Nick Theodorakis
July 12th, 2006 at 11:06 am
How about this: Make the link to the other content name “Bad Astronomy Index”, then make an Index page that takes the categories from the link column on the old main page, and underneath summarizes content found at each. The “Index” link title tells the readers where to find more about the breadth of content available, and the short summaries on one page make sorting the contents easier. Then the blog is still the main page, but the other content is easier to know is there and easier to find.
July 15th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Problem: updates to the blog do not show on the homepage unless you do a shift-reload to over-ride the cache.
I think there’s a server setting to fix this.
July 15th, 2006 at 10:05 am
The pages are cacxhing because the server load is getting a little hot these days. By caching, the pressure on the server is relieved. I could take the main page off the cache, I suppose, but I’d need to check carefully to see what the impact is on overhead.
July 15th, 2006 at 5:13 pm
I understand that you need to balance bandwidth efficiency against keeping the page up to date, but I was seeing “Why we must fund NASA– will no one think of the chimps?” with just one comment for a few days.
I thought everyone must’ve gone on vacation or something….
July 15th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
I have added a second navigation bar under my banner– it has links to the most topics.
I have been fiddling around for hours with the blog, and I have determined that the template software I am using is too cumbersome to add a left hand menu. I think I could use one, to be honest, so the choices are stick with what I have and continue trying to hack it (very hard), or redo the whole dang thing from scratch using better CSS (also very hard).
I got very close to being able to add the menu with the existing template, but somewhere, deep in the code, it won’t let me float the menu and the right hand side at the same time. The RHS always gets pushed down to below the main content. I think it’s because of the order in which files are called in the template, but the template is a mess logistically, so it’s hard to tell. I might try to dig up a three-column template and see if I can make it look like what I have now…
July 16th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
I’m accessing the website now at 11:00 PM MST. Are you in the middle of redesigning? a lot of things have changed.
July 17th, 2006 at 11:14 am
I’ve just starting getting the new layout, or is it a newer layout? Re-design mark ll even? Curiously this only happened after some frustration due to overly long delays and time-outs trying to download/open links. But it was about time I refreshed the router/modem, marvelous how that little action peps up the performance. Just switch it off for half a minute and it “goes like a bought one”!
I think it may have been mentioned before, but I do now suggest that the biog details Phil, after the reply box, is positioned just a little way down the page, and could be missed. I mean, that is where you advertise your goodies. There is too much space around your
mug-shot .
Not sure how you can rectify that, but maybe ‘headlines’ or ‘pointers’ for what’s below, would be my humble suggestion.
Secondly I find it hard to reason with having black lettering on dark blue or darkish blue on the darker blue, or on the dark grey. I know this is for your suppliers of the site and facilities, but they probably deserve a little more prominence, for their sake. (I don’t believe I’m saying this after working 30 years in Public Radio and TV, where commercials are not wanted, at least not for paid ads, we did have plenty of promotions for our own programs though!).
Surprisingly, I’ve already gotten used to the layout, so I guess it must have a lot going for it. With those couple of mods. and a preview button, (I looked and did not find one), it is at least an improvement over the old style, but still only 8 * (stars) out of 10.
Ivan.
July 17th, 2006 at 11:32 am
Dang! the “mug shot” layout got messed up. I’m sure missing a preview button. It would, or should, show just how the comment would look in the post, and any glaring errors would, or again should, be more obvious, and any funny spacing would stay as required. And I’m still not game to try some of that XHTML Markup stuff. Maybe we need an XHTML 101 course!
Ivan.
July 17th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Phil, MODx might be good for what you want. It’s a highly (and easily, I might ad) costomizable CMS (Content Management System). As the name implies, it is very easy to modify the cms and add modules to it.
Here is the MODx Site:
http://modxcms.com/
And this is a demo of it in action:
http://opensourcecms.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=2101&Itemid=159
Notice how easily the fourms are integrated into the site.