Weekly Edition
Return to the Front pageSponsored link
Vyatta –
Linux & Open Source
Alternative to Cisco –
Advanced Routing,
Firewall, VPN, QoS..
Free Download ->
| |||||||||||
A quick update on subscriber links
As we noted last week, the
"subscriber link" feature is now active on the site. With these links, a
subscriber can hand out "get in free" tickets to specific subscriber-only
articles. To do so, you need only pull up the article (if you are reading
it in the Weekly Edition, click on the "comments" link at the bottom to get
there) and use the "send a link" option in the left column.
Initially the feature was only made available to "project leader" subscribers. Based on the feedback we have received (and the original plan, in any case), subscriber links are now available to all subscribers. We will continue to think of ways to make added features available to the higher-level subscribers, but this feature did not seem like the right one to use this way. An unanticipated side benefit of this feature has already become clear. By looking at the list of outstanding subscriber links, we can quickly see which of our articles are considered sufficiently interesting to make links for. That is a level of feedback we didn't have before. For the curious, last week's winners were A study on free software in British schools and Sony, rootkits, and the escalation of the DRM war. Finally, we'll note that readers coming in on a subscriber link may now be presented with a tasteful pitch for LWN subscriptions. Happily, our initial plans for a Flash-based, popup ad were abandoned after a few milliseconds worth of thought. Hopefully the use of subscriber links will eventually lead to more subscribers for LWN. Meanwhile, please enjoy the feature, and we thank you for helping us to design it. (Log in to post comments)
Can we see the stats? :-) Posted Nov 10, 2005 3:20 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] I had never thought of keeping stats on how many links were made and how many visited. Any chance you could publish those once a week or so? It would be interesting ... well, to some of us. Even more interesting if you could track link usage over time, see which ones got more popular as they were passed around. I have visions of graphs showing usage over time ... but not that I am volunteering to write such code :-)
A quick update on subscriber links Posted Nov 10, 2005 6:51 UTC (Thu) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] Jon,Just wanted to thank you for an excellent resource. The money spent on my project leader subscription was worth every last penny. Quality writing, an editor that cares, and also sanity (comment about flash ads :P) - Chase
A quick update on subscriber links Posted Nov 10, 2005 8:25 UTC (Thu) by ekj (subscriber, #1524) [Link] It's a joy to be a subscriber on a website where sentences that included "flash" and "popup-ad" are automatically assumed jokes.
A quick update on subscriber links Posted Nov 10, 2005 19:20 UTC (Thu) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link] I would like to mention that a 'send a link' option to the left does not look prominent enough... Personally, I've had a hard time finding it, even knowing it was somewhere there. Chances are that the occasional subscriber who is not aware of the feature won't become aware of it, until he spots it accidentially.
Personally, I expected it to be somewhere at the bottom, beside the 'Post comment'. The logic is as follows: a reader who reads an article always gets to the bottom of it when he's done, and then he can either post a comment, or send a link if he liked what he read and wants to share.
A quick update on subscriber links Posted Nov 11, 2005 19:39 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Not to mention the fact that the link isn't there at all unless you click to read the comments. Desperately nonobvious.But I assume there's a deep technical reason for both -- having to click the comments (Jon calls it "bring up the article") and having the link in the left bar.
A quick update on subscriber links Posted Nov 11, 2005 19:46 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] There's nothing magic about the left column; it could go at the bottom of the article just as well.What would be harder is putting it inline in the weekly edition. The weekly pages are prebuilt and cached; the server would quickly melt into a puddle otherwise. Putting dynamic stuff into weekly pages adds real complications that I would prefer to avoid.
A quick update on subscriber links Posted Nov 11, 2005 22:48 UTC (Fri) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link] But Jon, to my understanding, the 'send a link' is quite static even now. All it depends upon is the article number, which never changes. The only thing to worry is that it should disappear once the article becomes freely available, and should not appear in the article brought up via an already made link, by a non-subscriber. I imagine these are not show-stoppers to a weekly pages being static and cached.
Well, I guess you certainly know the nuts and bolts of your own site better, just my $.02 :)
|
|||||||||||