Hi All,

Been working on a small side project of redesigning sajha in order make it easier to access all info in sajha and upgrading few things there.

Would like to get some suggestions from the sajha community at large. Here is where it is right now... (only one tab working right now)

- http://www.sajha.com/sajha/html/tabbedindex.cfm

Please post here or if you prefer you can send to admin@sajha.com

Thanks!

Hmm Sure, will try!

I like the tabs that you have placed on the top. It will definitely ease the navigation.
The color combination should be something that could easily blend with others. (sample page has sharp color contrast and also check the white edges of the rounded boxes ).
Keep the page simple and clean (as google!).

Good luck!

So, you want a revamp?

A couple of suggestions:

Imagine you're a retailer. Would you consider yourself a local seller of goods and services for the ethnic-culture at large (Nepali store that sells mostly Nepali goods, a boutique store selling specialized merchandise for a target audience (BEBE stores, GAP) or more mainstream/upscale (Walmart, Saks Fifth)?

Obviously, you'd choose the first one, and rightly so. Now think when you walk into an ethnic store- what attracts you? The same jar of achaar you bought a couple of weeks ago, of course. You look around and what do you see? Yes, bunch of cluttered ad displays from Marlboro stands to Heineken beer stacks to that latest Nepalese film coming soon poster, etc. Do these bother you? Of course, not. Will it ever bother you even if they cluttered the whole space with junks of ads? Never. You just ignore them and get on with what you came there for. Now, relay this tiny phenomenon into your web site.

I believe the revamp (status quo via the given URL) you're about to launch will make no difference for the current audience. It may make somewhat easier to walk around the isles as you'd in the store but the content will be the same- kurakani (your flagship product). I assume the rest of other conent will not change and you're only wanting to restructure the layout.

There is another twist to the little case study above- I might never get tired of having to do an obstacle course over those isles in the store and the ever increasing ads to get to my achaar. However, if I see another Nepali ethnic store with same/similar achaar I might just end my loyal patronage and shop there instead (common sense 101).

Net business etiquette isn't much different than brick and mortar...really...

Something to ponder while you revamp.

Cheers ;)

Hey San, i have some suggestions for ya,

I am not gonna argue abt Coldfusion coz I know u like it.

The new beta or proto whatever you want to call it looks good,

The kurakani or the forum looks good, liked the way you are using lots a css, that’s make the site clean and fast,

Some things I did not like is that the ads look cluttered, putting some space might be a good idea and your advertiser will appreciate it,

You can remove that time and weather thing from the left side I don’t know if anybody looks at it, at all.

Need to make forum search better, it’s really hard to find anything using the current forum search.

Can you take out that starting Capital character image from the discussions? That will make the site load faster.

Keep updating and I will keep posting comments

hey San bro..hehe

anyways im a lover of tabs..so in my opionion(which wasnt corrupted by anyone ;oP hehe) its a real good idea..and if time permits..shud be implemented asap ;o)..and of cos on ever page?;oP ..guess u just were tryn it for the main page..."tabs" for me anytime to the "Menu" thank u ;o) hehe..

and when i checked the http://www.sajha.com/sajha/html/tabbedindex.cfm
saw that on the right side of the page..it was so empty!:o| u thinkn of makin it empty?takin off the ads and etc?dyam!bloodyv waste of page if there is nothn there!if u ask me!!!!hehe

well guess i shud be empathising others here..esp those with a slower speed access..and those who do check the ads ;oP hehe..duh!i do look at the ads..but pretty much dun have use for them :oS..but i thot since there were quite some ads there..the more the better?esp if it doesnt affect the overall page so much..in terms of aesthetic?and of cos speed?..are those ads that huge in size?;oP hehe...

and oh...new gradient background?and some minor new design?shadows effects on tables? looks pretty good ;o)..

anyways always nice to see ur tryn to make the site better for all of us..and of cos takin ppls opinions too..i still crack up when i get sent to that 'empty' intermediate page where we have to click to continue our 'journey' in sajha...seriously!wahahahaa how hard is someone gonna try to please everyone?;oP hehe..good luck in that..but yeah...such a waste i tell u!!!so empty!!!few ads would have been great!i mean would have been nice to see space not goin to waste :oD ..oh well opinions differs i guess..

anyways..lets see if teh TABS are implemented..or some other new things?hehe..

good day!:oD..

San,
I agree with cyberdude on the search forum. The search forum we have now, is not quite convenient for sajha users. If there could be search by author and by topic, it would be a lot easier to go back and acess certain discussions . I often have hard time recalling who the author was or the starting and ending date of the topic. Just a thought!

Jyotsna

Hi all, thanks for your suggestions.

Sunrise: I will be working on the colors..

JavaBeans: Nice analogy :) Kurakani is definitely the achaar. It's time to diversify the ethnic store to be more than just an achaar place. I think info will be more accessible thru the tabs..

Cyberdude: Thanks for your comments. the weather thing is definitely gone. It doesn't even work most of the time. BTW you don't like CF? Love to hear what you prefer.

Anonymous: I'll be filling in the space. Right now it's just a shell. I do feel that the tabs make things easier to access. I got the idea from sulekha.com :)

Jyotsna_manorama: Will try to incorporate a more robust search capability in the near future. The database size is so large that many times the searched encounter time outs.. will try to see what can be done.

Keep your comments coming. Sajha is there in order to provide us a cyber home and your input is very important. Enjoy your weekend!

San bro,

following things pop up in my mind when it comes to redesigning sajha.

1) i think it would be hell lot easier and better for users to post their message if you can incorporate html facilities through " buttons" rather than having to write codes by themselves. For instance, normal operations, like Bold, Italics, Underline, Font Color, Font Size, Hyperlink can be incorporated in the message box itself as buttons, if you know what I am saying, like they have in MS words.

2) is it possible to have a fixed font size for the title of the threads? I see that html codes do apply on the title box and users take that as an advantage and sometime post a rather inconvenient looking big font titles. Please put a check on that, if possible.

23 somebody already mentioned about the search engine, i too strongly feel that it could be made better. is it possible to make it working for searching with just the author name, or some or all words of the thread title, without having to put the start and the end date?

3) the party pictures in the homepage look cheezy at times, especially when the site has to be browsed from office. Is it possible to have a separate tab for party pictures and make the homepage more sober looking?

that's all I can think of right now. will suggest more if needed.

thanks for the wonderful service!!!

Adios

Loote

typos as always...plz bear with me.

23--->3)

3)-->4)


Chow!

Loote

>>The database size is so large that many times the searched encounter time outs

If you're maintaining the site as a one-man show therefore wearing a hat as a DBA among others I suggest a couple of things for this problem:

The problem isn't the database size; this could be related to a number of issues but usually can be solved using one of the solutions below :

-The first thing I'd do is to check whether your tables utilize indexing and clustering properly; this is a common problem among searches that take too long...

-If that doesn't help I'd look at the connection_timeout variable (set it to reasonable amount of miliseconds); make sure you're pooling your connections- makes things a lot faster after the first invocation. The pooling should have enough buffer size (closer to maximum allowed for greater performance)

-If that doesn't take care of it then your SQL queries may need re-working; try to optimize them, i.e. try to use inner joins instead of sub-queries, you could possibly use col numbers instead of fields, decrease the number of views to a minimum if you use any...

-If the above three dont' do it then the culprit could be the RAM in your physical machine (install enough of it)...

-If the above four suggested solutions don't cut it then I must say you must have upwards of a million records (which I doubt) and truly need some other alternative- if you are willing and have time you could enrich your site using AJAX architecture; the amount of records really wouldn't matter in this case...

HTH.