Over the past few months we at Praxis Language have been considering various ways to put the Home page to good use on both SpanishSense and ChinesePod. Today we have launched a new version of the SpanishSense Home page which displays more lessons and more links to those lessons.
This is the previous version of the Home page:
This is the new version of the Home page:
Here are some of the changes that went into the update:
- The links that used to take up the main column of the page are now in the top right.
- Under the links are a preview of the latest comments. (Obviously, you’ll see a lot more if you go to the Conversations page, but this gives you a little preview.)
- Latest lessons are no longer three small links at the bottom; they take up the main column. You now have links to all the main parts of a lesson, including the downloads (MP3s, PDF). Free or Basic users will have some of those download links grayed out.
- The lessons in the main column are not just the three most recent lessons; they’re whatever you configure them to be. That means if you go to Your Feed and subscribe to only “Future Newbie” and “Future Elementary,” then that is all you will see on your Home page.
- Bookmarked lessons also appear on your Home page. The instant you bookmark a lesson, it appears at the top of your Home page. Marking a lesson as “studied” removes it from the Home page (but it is still in your Archive).
- If you want to organize your lessons, go to “Archive” on the Home page. There you can move lessons from “bookmarked” to “studied,”or even add your own tags to organize your lessons.
Note that with this new upload there is no longer a calendar for scheduling lessons for particular days. After doing our research and listening to user feedback, we find that very few people want or use this feature. Most people want to bookmark a lesson and then they want access to it right now. The new Home page reflects this.
SpanishSense users, please let us know what you think of the changes. If you’re a ChinesePod user, you can log into SpanishSense using your ChinesePod login to take a look and try it out, but you may need to bookmark some lessons to play around with it. These same changes are coming to ChinesePod soon!
As always, we appreciate your feedback.
-John
中文 Chinese
Lunetta Says:
August 13th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
I’m one of those few who actually do use the scheduling feature to get some structure. I’ve checked out the new page on SpanishSense and I do like it but it would be nice to be able to see when I have bookmarked something. It doesn’t have to be anything elaborate, it could just be a date right after the bookmark box or in the down right corner.
Marc Says:
August 13th, 2007 at 5:31 pm
The number of improvements to the website that we have seen since the launch of V3 has been incredible. V3 may have been launched too early, but then again, a lot of improvements were only possible because there was so much feedback from the users. I think it is great that you listen so well to what we say
even when it means giving up on some of the stuff you really believed in :-)))
I really, really like the website as it is now. And I am sure that it will continue to evolve in the right direction though. Great job!
Marc in Belgium
Moloch Says:
August 13th, 2007 at 9:00 pm
Great integration - any plans to incorporate the Community page into this, perhaps in the quick links block. Also could have a Recent Blog Entries block underneath the Recent Comments block.
Anyways, great job.
excuter Says:
August 13th, 2007 at 9:07 pm
That improvements sound great. I´m looking vorward to see the changes on cpod Home page, they will make our online home look even better. Now the award definately goes to cpod
Bob Mrotek Says:
August 13th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Hi John,
I am happy to see that some attention is being paid to SpanishSense. Up until now I have had the feeling that it has been treated like an orphan. I was one of the first people to sign up for a trial when SpanishSense started. Unfortunately there were so many glitches at the time that my trial subscription ended one day after I was finally able to use the site. I have since tried several times to obtain a basic subscription like I currently have with ChinesePod but I received various error messages including one that says that I have to use a different e-mail address than I am using with C-Pod. I have joined the SpanishSense forum twice. The first forum just disappeared. The current forum sees very little activity. If you are serious about SpanishSense then I think you need to devote a little more time and effort to it. It appears that you have already begun this effort and I hope that you will keep it up. In the meantime I will be happy to pay for a basic membership if you will only let me. I promise to be good
Saludos,
Mexico Bob
gmulliga Says:
August 14th, 2007 at 12:05 am
I have been using the schedule feature as well and found it a good way to coordinate my study plan with my other activities. I was away for three weeks and could conveniently schedule my return to Cpod study at a nice pace to fit my ‘everyday’ routine at home.
As for other features I am still not sure how to easily make good use of my vocabulary lists. I haven’t successfully downloaded them into a flashcard program (older mac laptop)and I am really trying to find a way to put more focus on the hanzi because the pinyin is still easier to read. When I look at sites like Zhongwen.com I can see the potential for a more rapid, broader language understanding through the characters. So, more help with character work for newbies like me would be appreciated.
cheers
Graham
Henning Says:
August 14th, 2007 at 12:43 am
An input box for sending queries to the CPod power dict would be cool. For all pages.
leviathan Says:
August 14th, 2007 at 12:51 am
I think it looks great.
lesson scheduling is one of those features Love/hate.
I used it for a while, It’s just as quick to visit each lesson page and download what you need.
When will this be rolled out to Chinesepod ?
多谢
John Says:
August 14th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Moloch,
This is just the beginning; there will be more changes made, and the possibility of other content in the sidebar of the Home page looms large. (One plan is it to put ChinesePod Dictionary search there.)
John Says:
August 14th, 2007 at 9:47 am
d4rko,
Whatever you see on the Home page is what is in your personal feed right now. So if you want to add an old lesson into your feed right now, you just bookmark it, and in it goes.
admin Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Hi D4rko,
The new home page for ChinesePod is not up yet so as of the moment, it still uses the bookmarking and scheduling system.
Eileen
Cornelia Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
May I ask again for a small feature to navigate whenever several dozen pages are available? Currently I only have “previous”, “next” and a selection of 5 pages to jump to. This is very cumbersome if there are a lot of pages and could be easily helped by “first”, “last” plus “goto page _”. Thanks, Cornelia
Michel Says:
August 15th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
The site looks good, makes sense to have what matters most (the lessons) be the first thing to notice when entering the page.
However, I really like the possibility of scheduling the lessons. I joined cpod only quite recently, and have used this feature to combine the newest lessons with interesting old lessons. I make a schedule in the weekend, print the lessons etc, such that in my office during weekdays I only had to login and click the lessons I selected.
In fact, the possibility to organise the lessons in a schedule was the second main reason for me to go from “free” to “basic” (besides the pdf transcript).
Best,
Michel
Jon Brown Says:
August 16th, 2007 at 8:35 am
I’m fully on board with scraping the calender for downloading lessons in favor of all bookmarked lessons being immediately available.
Seeing the few comments here in favor of the calendar system though, I wonder if a calender system could be retained for scheduling lessons that was independent of downloading them.
mfalkoff Says:
August 17th, 2007 at 10:44 am
Ack! You’re not going to eliminate the calendar entirely, are you? I really hope you don’t- being able to arrange lessons for a set schedule ahead of time has kept me consistently completing lessons and moving through the CP “curriculum”. It’s one of the reasons why I bought the Premium subscription!
matthiask Says:
August 17th, 2007 at 3:05 pm
Please keep the calendar, it’s very useful. I recently joined Chinesepod and since I found out how the agenda works, its great fun to use it.
Taking it out is a very wrong signal.
yan'ou Says:
August 17th, 2007 at 6:01 pm
It will be great having the download links for bookmarked lessons right there on the first page. It’s been cumbersome having to open each lesson separately in order to download what I wanted.
Good on ya’, guys!
Bob Mrotek Says:
August 17th, 2007 at 10:54 pm
I would like to publicly acknowledge the help that I received from Eileen in straightening out my problems with a subscription to SpanishSense. She took the initiative to contact me regarding my above post and she took care of everything. She is a wonderful gal and I can’t tell enough how much I appreciate her dedication to customer service and quality assurance. Thanks Eileen. You are the best!
Bob Mrotek
Popular Science Says:
September 6th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Popular Science…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…