Upgraded NASASpaceFlight.com News Site Launch

[Chris Bergin]

The only images that would change on the news site tend to be launch articles and events, where it's pre-event/launch, post-event/launch. (Including things like RS-25 tests and so on).

[NSF Webmaster]

This might be interesting reading. There is a lot of magic you can do with image caching... if applicable it can reduce the load on your servers as well as the load on everyone's browser... Most NSF images once posted would never change I think? so really long time to lives might work well.

https://code.facebook.com/posts/557147474482256/this-browser-tweak-saved-60-of-requests-to-facebook/

I don't know (and don't want to know) NSF internals well enough to know if this might apply here but thought I'd toss it out.

Thanks for your input! Yes, images on the news site can be cached really well and will be starting in the coming days. First I wanted to site to move completely before turning on all the goodies (caching etc)

Mark

[Eagandale4114]

As an early Christmas present, a small peek on the on the dark-mode development. Please let me know if this is what you are looking for..

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That looks really nice. Could we also get a pure black option? Pure black backgrounds with white text look amazing on OLED. I’ve attached a picture of the reddit mobile client Apollo in regular dark and pure black modes.

[WulfTheSaxon]

Could we also get a pure black option? Pure black backgrounds with white text look amazing on OLED.

Just as long as it isn’t the only dark option, because straight white-on-black looks terrible on CRTs (we’re still out there!).

[eric z]

 A non-computerization question--- When will the NSF merchandise be re-done? Or can we still get the old stuff? I've put on a few pounds and need a larger-size sweatshirt!

[Chris Bergin]

A non-computerization question--- When will the NSF merchandise be re-done? Or can we still get the old stuff? I've put on a few pounds and need a larger-size sweatshirt!

Yes, we will be working on a new store

[Eric Hedman]

Could we also get a pure black option? Pure black backgrounds with white text look amazing on OLED.

Just as long as it isn’t the only dark option, because straight white-on-black looks terrible on CRTs (we’re still out there!).

What's a CRT?

[CorvusCorax]

I dunno where to best place feedback (aka rant) to the webpage, or if this has already been discussed...

I just read the 50 launches by SpaceX article:
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2017/12/spacex-50-taming-falcon-1-achieving-cadence-falcon-9/

The text is full of dozens of links in the text when historic events are mentioned almost like a text on wikipedia would be, such as

SpaceX proposed Dragon, a recoverable spacecraft it had already been developing privately,

or

Instead, SpaceX leased Space Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, demolishing the former Titan IV launch complex

However these links don't go to a specific article with details about the specific event mentioned as the reader would assume, but to a landing page which lists everything tagged "Dragon" or everything tagged "SLC-40"

The latter is a  page that lists a limited number of articles matching that tag, starting with the newest. But the oldest SLC-40 tagged article is from 2013 about CRS-3. None of the articles from the time mentioned, when SpaceX first leased and transitioned SLC-40 is actually tagged "SLC-40". As such, linking the tag list is completely useless.

That being said, there are articles from that time that mention the plan to launch from the old Titan pad, such as
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/01/musk-ambition-spacex-aim-for-fully-reusable-falcon-9/

The link to the "dragon" tag is even more useless. There are really a large number of "dragon" tagged articles, so the list page is actually paginated - in a bad way, one needs to scroll down all the way to see a link to "older" articles.

Then scroll down again to see the link to "older" articles

then scroll down again to see the link to "older" articles

repeating that 6 more times one ends up on
https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/tag/Dragon/page/8/

and the oldest Dragon article the above mentioned one from 2009. There is no detailed info about SpaceX private development prior to the NASA contract as one would have assumed seeing the link text.

Interesting thing is, reading old articles that predate the tagging system, they are also full of links, but in this case these links mostly link to individual and highly relevant articles.

It's only at a later point that someone got lazy and assumed linking to a tag search result is a viable substitute to looking up a specific article URL from the archive.

Bad news: It's not a viable substitute, it leads to user frustration when they can't find the information they expect.

This becomes especially obvious when historic facts are referenced which are not covered by the most latest articles, as the tag system is completely useless to find those. (Often the tags in question weren't even being used yet when something was brand new. Tags only get established when a certain news item shows up repeatedly)

Tags are nice for a "tag cloud" so a user can look up everything related to X. But linking a tag is pointless, one would have better results putting the link phrase into google.

Of course to fix this, the authors need to search the archive to seek out the actual article links, which can be tricky, especially if the archive is large. Tags could make this easier, but only if one can narrow the search by also specifying the timespan in question. And also only if someone ever went to the trouble and updated the tags of older articles where applicable, especially as new tags get introduced.

Ah and by the way,  merry xmas and a happy new year to the NSF crew :-)

[Chris Bergin]

Added it here as it's the right place.

Yeah, that's not the fault of the site, more to do with the editor (i.e. me as I add the links), as I've found giving the read a lot of resources is better than a specific article link, as much as we do use such specific links a lot.

Also, for the interim, that's my best option as the old articles are ported and not in the style we are now using. Eventually, as more and more new style articles are published, I will be at more liberty to link to specific articles.

Also, probably a bit of lazyness on my part as it's a lot of work to get an article from text draft to published with pics and links, and long articles can result in "I'm running of out of time here and we're mentioning Dragon again, let's just link the Dragon articles and give the reader the option of what they want to read about.

Potential mid-solution is to use tags less and use more of the search string link, with multiple words to refine the articles the link sends you to, so I'll do that.......but the new style needs to bed into the article range of course.

[CorvusCorax]

Added it here as it's the right place.

Yeah, that's not the fault of the site, more to do with the editor ...

(emphasis mine)

I fully agree, however I think the site could help make it better. Especially if a tag (like Dragon) links to a very large number of articles, the page listing them should have additional means to narrow the search down. Clicking repeatedly on "older articles" when searching for something specific is somewhere between tedious and frustrating (especially if one doesn't know if the article one searches even exists and/or has been tagged correctly)

The same is true for the search results. Just for shits and giggles I tried

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/?s=Dragon

which lists an unknown number of articles
(I went to the trouble of following the "Older Articles" cascade, there are 34 result pages with the oldest from 2006

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/page/34/?s=Dragon

I think there's roughly 20 articles per page

trying to narrow that down with

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/page/34/?s=Dragon+2009

which gets it down to 9 pages (that's good!), but most are not actually from 2009 but only list any date or link with the number 2009 somewhere in it.

I like that its possible to narrow the search by adding more search terms (with google it's the opposite) but a more specific search interface to search for combination of tags and terms and/or date spans -- as well as narrowing down a search result by tags and the like would be useful.

so I could run a search result anything tagged SpaceX with the search term "planned"+"Dragon" in an article before 2010

and/or, the ability to see a tag cloud with all the tags and their relative prevalence within a search result. Which could then be clickable to narrow the search further.

just a suggestion :-)

[bulkmail]

I miss an easy and consistent way to get a "timeline" of articles, e.g. when I'm back from holidays I want to check all articles appeared during the past 1 or 2 weeks - not to look in various sections ("hero" pictures on top, latest news, commercial, SLS, SpaceX, etc)

It feels like I'll get that if I go trough the "hero" roll (all of its pages) and then start clicking "load more articles" on "latest news".... but I'm not sure there aren't some OTHER articles falling trough the cracks somewhere in the other sections.
Confidence would be higher if "Latest news" also included duplicates of all other sections (although I assume you made it NOT TO have those on purpose)

Can you add an overall "view all" page? Something like "https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/news/all/page/1/"

[whatever11235]

Thought I give my feedback after a week or so of using a new site. It's slower compared with old site. I get that old site was Web 1.0 version and this one is modern one with mobile version included, but it really feels slow. Mobile version even more.

"Active disscusions" section for mobile version is waaay down and requires a lot of scrolling and for me this is really importat section. If possible, I would move it up more. That section changes probably most and people probably use it most.

Old grey/blue colour theme was better that this black/white and now is different than forum one.

[tater]

The main NSF page routinely throws a warning on Firefox, Mac, that a web page is slowing down my browser. I don't recall it doing so when the new front page went live, but it has for the last few days. If there is anything you'd like me to do to try and diagnose the issue, I'd be happy to help out.

The thread for NSF in general is locked, so I posted here in the forum thread, sorry.

[Chris Bergin]

Tater, moved it here as this is the thread now. Other one is just the forum (as that's a continuation), this is a new one for the news site upgrade.

I find it nice and fast, but there is more work being done as there's things like refining the cache where it helps loading, but we probably went too far as I didn't see a change/edit applied when I edited it in. That live edit is solved now, but Mark is working a bit more on the CMS, so there's more cowbell options that may help you.

By all means always diagnose anything you see amiss and add it to the thread!

Bulkmail: The layout is my wishlist.

Featured will rotate around the top per the timeline of publication.

Secondary stories (as I inaccurately call them) move on the two spaces below the featured block.

Scenario, where you come back after a few weeks, would be to check all the featured block, the secondary block and then "load more articles". <---that totally covers you for all the secondary stories per several weeks.

Most featured articles here will be SpaceX, SLS, Commercial - and the blocks of five further down the front page will host probably about a month or more worth of articles for that subject block.

The only ones you may miss, if you went away for a long time, would be a featured article, not from a major block, published just after you left. So hmmm, that I'll have a think about.

The vast majority of readers come back every day, if not every few days, so that's how I knew we'd be covered, but yeah, I'll think about some sort of RSS feed timeline (either a standalone link, or added to the forum) where you'd come back and see a list of article links covering the past month or two. That'd solve it all.

[gfagley]

I would like to see a list of articles by date.   I don't want to have to search through the the whole page to figure out what articles are new.

[Michael Baylor]

I would like to see a list of articles by date.   I don't want to have to search through the the whole page to figure out what articles are new.

I agree. It would be better if the "Latest News" section had all articles in chronological order including the SpaceX ones.

[Chris Bergin]

I think both of you missed my post directly above yours.

[dansoton]

A minor possible improvement: It would be nice as a recent L2 subscriber to not be shown the "L2 Sign Up" Top Nav item everytime I hit the homepage.

Not sure if the main site tracks the same logged in user as the forums do (I'm guessing not?), but perhaps a cookie could be used to distinguish an L2 user to remove this redundant Top Nav item? For L2 users it could perhaps be moved to the "Other" section in case L2 users want to review the L2 Signup page - to perhaps send it to a friend!

Second piece of feedback: Where's the About (https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/about/) page linked from the home page now? I expected it perhaps under the "Other" section and also/instead in the footer, but I can't seem to find it. I had to google it to find it.

Those tiny niggles aside, the site redesign looks awesome!

[dansoton]

Oh another thought: Any chance L2 subscribers get to view the main site ad free as one of the perks?

Again it would require the main site to track logged in user status among other things, but would be a nice perk if doable and not overly costly in terms of lost ad revenue.

Apologies if this has been brought up before, and you're answering this for the umteenth time.

[Michael Baylor]

I am still not clear on how this whole secondary article thing is useful. In my opinion, it is making things way more complicated than they need to be. Really, all you need is dynamic control of the arrangement of articles in the headline boxes at the top. Think about it like this. On December 22nd during the launch mayhem, the average order of interest in a user coming to the site was Iridium, followed by Japan, and then the China launch.

In reality, the site instead had the Iridium article front and center (good), and then had the less hot Cygnus, MS-07, and SpaceX at 50 articles (bad) featured along side it. In my opinion, during that time the Iridium article should have been in the main box, and then the smaller boxes should have had Japan, China, and SpaceX at 50. However, the this was not possible because the site was categorizing articles based on their long term importance, rather than the short term importance.

By the next day the hype for the China and Japan launches would have died down, so you could have gone back to running the Cygnus and MS-07 articles at the top. The internet is very dynamic. What people want changes rapidly. The "featured" articles system should be flexible rather than rigid. The current system does not allow for this.

Additionally, the latest article section is confusing. If I see something called "latest articles," I am expecting to get a list of all recent articles. Instead, I get a list that only has the less exciting secondary articles. You are making the recent news too boring! 

A good example of a site that puts this all together is https://electrek.co/. They have a flexible headline system. Whatever people are the most interested in goes at the top. Then, below that is a list of all articles chronologically. I think you should consider doing the same.

Now, NSF does not post as regularly as Electrek, so I think it's good that you also have the SpaceX and Commercial Crew sections below the latest articles. That helps the people who only care about SpaceX (and there are a lot of those) find their meat.

TL;DR - Basically just have normal articles and headline articles. If an article is about a hot topic, headline it. Once it's done being hot it becomes a normal article. All articles go in the latest articles section no matter what.