General feedback
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Found things that work great?
Found things that don't work as they should?
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Project: Feedback on the NABUUR.com beta site

Found things that work great?
Found things that don't work as they should?
Found things that could work even better?
Leave your suggestions here!
We have 4 broken links in the Gamauli Gallery. If you click on the picture link it will take you to the actual picture and show it, but it shows as broken in the gallery itself. Any way to fix this?
Gamauli gallery is located here: http://www.nabuur.com/en/village/gamauli/images
Jennifer
Yes I've just looked at this quickly and the links are there but there is no thumbnail. This is because the images I checked are 'bmp' (bitmap) pictures - as opposed to 'jpg' or 'gif' or so forth. The image resizing code that the site has installed can't handle these. The 'bmp' format images aren't really very website friendly more generally either.
If this is a big problem it could be possible to look at converting 'bmp' images automatically into something else. Otherwise I can't see a simple way round it, sorry.
Mary posted a picture in the "Meet the Neighbors" section of the Kayole-Soweto village with a message that she left. This picture is showing up in the Kayole-Soweto gallery. If I click on the picture there is no way for me to remove it from the gallery and keep her post in tact. Clicking on the picture in the gallery leads directly to the thread where the post is rather than the picture uploaded.
Is there a way to unlink pictures that might be posted by volunteers that are unrelated to the village itself from the village gallery? I don't want to stop people from posting pictures because I think it's a nice way to help people get to know each other-maybe if we could create photo albums within the gallery these types of things could go there keeping them separate from pictures of the actual village.
Also, I believe Mary already mentioned this here, but when Bramuel is uploading new pictures, they are oversized and difficult to see the whole thing if you choose a specific picture from the gallery. Is there a way to add a resizing tool when uploading so pictures are all a uniform size?
Hi Jennifer
Feel free to delete it you wish - the snow in our local park doesn't really belong in the village gallery!!! Its been there since March so anyone who is interested will already have read the post.
I agree it would good if there was a way to be able to post pictures in discussion but remove them from the main gallery.
Mary
First of all - I've changed the default settings for the image content type so that the default size of the pictures is smaller when they are displayed - so when you look at the ones uploaded by Bramuel they should be displayed at a reasonable size where ever. If there are still some huge ones if you post links to them it's very easily solved.
Galleries. How would people see them working? It's true, at the moment, all the images that are posted into a group are shown in the gallery page. It could be possible, if it's desirable and a user friendly way can be designed, for pictures to be shown in different gallery categories; or for there a special box to tick for things to be in the gallery; or something else. If people can describe how they would see it working:- when people post pictures, when local reps/facilitators see the pictures, when people browse the 'gallery' - Frans, me, or someone else can work out if it's possible to implement easily.
Kester-looks like whatever you did fixed the problem. The pics I was looking at last night in the Kayole-Soweto Gallerly are now displaying at the correct size and not running off the page. Automatically changing pic formats to jpg vs. bmp would be ideal.
In terms of how would people see the gallery I'm not sure what you mean? I am thinking of something similar to a Flickr or Picassa format where you can create photo albums-for example for Kayole-Soweto maybe an album would be
Old Hospital Pics
New Hospial Location Pics
Raul and Barb's Visit to the hospital
Volunteer pics-for random pics submitted by volunteers to the project
As a facilitator I would prefer the ability to create albums if/when necessary. Some local reps post multitudes of pictures, others post very few, but it makes it much easier to get through them and see the pics you want if you have a method to organize them.
With Gamauli-I was actually able to view the bmp pics yesterday if I clicked on the pic description in the left hand column within the gallery itself. I can no longer do that today. There is also no way to remove them as a facilitator that I saw. We could change format and repost them I'm guessing, but I'll have to get them from the LR now that I can no longer see them.
Jennifer
Ah, there's not going to be an instant one for this.
When I changed the settings for image display to automatically resize the big images it will have broken the 'bmp' image display. So for this moment it's one of the other. This is because it's sending these to the resizing script before displaying them too. And as mentioned it doesn't do bmp.
I've just checked and there are 308 .bmp images over the whole site, so they will want converting (but this is compared with the 40,000 or so jpegs)
Sorry should have said there is still a way of directly getting to the originals without them going through the resizing script, the originals you mentioned are:-
http://www.nabuur.com/files/image/2008/07/image/doc_446c9b331f1b1_1.bmp
http://www.nabuur.com/files/image/2008/07/image/doc_446c9d0c91da1.bmp
http://www.nabuur.com/files/image/2008/07/image/doc_446c9d5cdd891.bmp
http://www.nabuur.com/files/image/2008/07/image/doc_44c10723e30c5.bmp
Hi Kester
As another one who mentioned the image size problem - they look a lot better now! Don't suppose its possible to change the code so that .bmp files are left as-is while everything else gets resized? Not a permanent solution I know but may be a 'quick fix' until something more permanent?
Any news on when missing pictures will get added back into galleries - I know Kayole lost a lot and others lost some too.
Is there a date for the various user guides for the site yet? Having been asked 'how do I post' yesterday, it would be great to be able to point people at instructions especially as I am not sure whether everyone (neighbour, facilitator, LR) sees exactly the same screens.
Mary
Dear all,
A lot has been said about the weaknesses of the new website. I will not post my list of grievances against the user unfriendliness of the platform; my fellow facilitators have done it already. Let me focus on organizational change and the way the Nabuur team is handling it. Nabuur needs committed volunteers, facilitators and local representatives to exist and the new website does not empower its audience to get the job done. The productivity in the villages is close to zero, commitments are fading. Nabuur team, I know you are trying to make the website better, but you are losing the more important battle to keep your volunteers passionate about their involvement. Waiting on feedback is not going to help.
Best and good luck,
Tanja, Facilitator for the very quiet Koliyonkulam
If I click on the title link for a post under My NABUUR, it doesn't direct me to that post itself; rather it seems to link to the first message ever posted on that thread.
Romina
Hi Romina
It seems to work for me - I am taken to the actual post rather than the top. I have my default view set to Latest Posts First.
Am I missing something obvious or is it currently impossible to tell who is the facilitator and Local Rep of a village? Apologies if this has been asked before but I haven't noticed it in discussion. It would be helpful if LR and facilitator name were shown very clearly on the Project Room page as they were on the old site.
Mary
Hi Mary,
If you go to the Neighbours tab of a village, you'll see the Local Rep and the Facilitator for that particular village. Taking Nyalebe as an example: http://www.nabuur.com/en/village/nyalebe/neighbours
The top box shows the LR and Fac.
Making the Fac more prominent has been mentioned a few times (it has been included in the feedback summary which you can find in this thread and in the news tab: http://www.nabuur.com/en/group/nabuurcom-website-development/news/2008/0...) and it's on the to-do list. Watch for it soon.
Have a nice evening :)
Romina
Hi,
Not sure if this has already been mentioned but when I try to find villages on Nabuur, the keyword search doesn't seem to work properly. That, or the villages aren't coded with the appropriate keywords. For example, I checked all the keywords that may be applicable to Kyomya - orphans, children, HIV/AIDS, education; and none of these bring up Kyomya. Do we need to add these keywords in?
Also, when searching for a village in a specific country, it is very hard to find specific ones. Now that they are no longer in alphabetical order, it is a bit more difficult. I tried typing in the name of the village in the keyword search, but it doesn't come up. So do I have to search the entire list to find the link to the village I am looking for? Will the list of villages be rotated or randomized so that the first five aren't always the first to display? As with the issue with being in alphabetical order, people are not very likely to go through 5 or more pages of projects. This isn't an issue in countries that have only a few projects, such as Peru, but in Uganda there are 48 listed. Those at the end are at a disadvantage as well.
Barb
One other comment.
I have noticed that when I go into a village, the country of the village doesn't appear, only the name of the village. When I am going through some recent posts in other villages that I am not a part of, I cannot tell what country the project is located in unless I search through the background information. Will this be added? It makes it easier when looking at multiple villages and when trying to see if there is possible opportunities for networking and so forth.
Barb