Recently I posted about things that we’re working to improve on MakeFive. I’m not sure if you read it, but you certainly should have. It was riveting… Truly. I think that a lot of people called their friends and neighbors and told them all about it.

Okay, enough silliness… These are all really little odds and ends, but I think it’s sometimes hard to understand just how much goes into making sites like this work well. As such, I’ll continue to share this stuff. Please feel free to tell me if it’s too boring for words.  ;-)

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Item #1
Smoother transitions through areas

I get a fair number of friend requests on MakeFive. I find it frustrating that after I accept the friend request the system sends me to a blank page. This forces me to click around to find my new friend’s profile, just to send a note. As such, we’ve added a little more “follow through” as shown above. We think it’s nice when the most logical next steps are anticipated and made easier to access. (We’ll be adding this to topics soon as well.)

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Item #2
Twirl-downs and better scanning of opinions

Some people make lists of five items, and others make lists containing fifty. This is all fine, but the varying depth of lists makes quite a difference in terms of how you can scan around the different opinions. As such, we’re compressing each person’s selections to their top five, with a twirl-down to see more. We’re also working on a permalink page for every top-five you make, where you’ll be able to list your reasons for making the selections you made (and more).

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Item #3
Clearer indication of alerts and important content

Although we did create icons to represent when a new email message was in your MakeFive inbox, it just wasn’t that easy to spot. As such, we’re adding a simple highlight behind all unopened messages, which should make it easier to scan your inbox. We’re putting a lot of thought into these sorts of alerts throughout the site, and are using type size, consistent warning colors, and other visual cues to help make it more intuitive. Bear with us on all of this. It’s actually pretty hard to get this stuff working well throughout the entire site.

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Item #4
More props to the homies with the “illest jizzle”

Part of the fun of creating a new topic, is learning that others find it interesting. It’s a little like being out with friends and finding out that you’re the life of the party. As such, we’re going to start showing not only the number of voters and comments on topics, but also the number of views they have received. No one wants to be boring, and we think this will help bring attention to those users who create engaging content. (And take it away from those “lame-o-s” who post crap.

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Item #5
Better filtering of community members

We’re of the mind that the “People” tab in the main navigation is largely one of the most underused functions in the MakeFive system. Part of this is because it still sucks balls. It will, however, not be this way for long. In the future, you’ll be able to sort users and get more in-depth information on where they are from, how recently they were online, and what you have in common with them. Cool, eh?

Well, that’s it for now. We’re working on all of this, and will get it on-line for you as quickly as we can!