Columns vs Essays vs Tutorials vs Techniques vs Understanding etc

[Robert Boire]

Hi,

Is there a guide, a table of contents, a catalog,  a something other than searching that summarizes what is available and can be used to quickly find a topic of interest.  I am trying to catch up on some reading. On the old Lula there were tables of contents for each of the article groupings.  These seem to have disappeared. So far the only way I can figure it out is to scroll through, which is tedious.

BTW, many the summaries of many of the older posts are partially corrected...spaces missing between words, captions mixed up with text etc

[Jeff Griffin]

I used to like the alphabet grid for quickly finding things on the old lula.

[Robert Boire]

Exactly...it seems to have disappeared

[Kevin Raber]

When we converted to the new web site system we had some challenges.  First many articles over the last 15 years were written using a number of different and eventually obsolete editors.  Thus as time moved on new web editors were not able to display some type fonts and formatting properly.  There is nothing we can do about this except go in manually and make corrections when we find them.  This we do on a regular basis as the pages surface through our searches or a reader points them out to us.  So if you see an article that has bad formatting or seems to be missing something please let us know by sending a private message.  We then can get it to the top of the list for editing and reposting.  You can imagine that with 15 plus years of content and images as well as 5000 pages this is a big job.  For the most part articles at least more recent articles from the last couple of years come through just fine. 

Also, sometimes authors may be listed as Michael or myself.  The new editor has a data field for author.  This field corresponds to a database for our authors and contributors.   This database has the authors name, bio and photo.  Then this attached as part an article written by an author.  What this allows us to do is change information in one place and have it reflected across the whole site.  So, on older articles this field may be missing and thus an author may not be listed correctly.  Once again message us with the web address if you come across on of these pages and we will work with the author to update the database and thus all the articles for that author.  Once again these issues will show up on mainly older articles.

We appreciate your help spotting these pages.  When sending a message please copy the wed page address from your browser and paste it in the message.

Kevin Raber

[Kevin Raber]

Regarding the old index page.  Yes, when we switched systems this was no longer available.  Eventually we want to and will try to bring it back.  In the meantime we have an advanced search function.  If you want to see something in particular you can use our search box shown on just about every page.  You can type a word or words in the box and as you do the system will present a drop down box with some top choices.  You can scroll down and choose a choice that you want. 

If you don't see a particular article in the drop down list then click on the magnifying glass next to the search box.  The system will then give you a list of articles with the words used highlighted.  While in this list the search box now has a gear icon.  You can use this to narrow down searches by popular contributor and category.

We hope this helps you find what you are looking for.  We have a lot of ideas on how to improve this as we move forward and this section will be continually revised and updated.  Luminous-Landscape is a work in progress and with this new system we are using we can easily make changes and updates and we continually do this. 

If you have ideas and requests for something please send a private message and your request then can be properly logged into our projects list.

Kevin Raber

[MHMG]

If I understand the situation correctly, it is simply this: 15 years of Lula's past publications on the internet are exceedingly difficult to archive and maintain successfully on today's mobile device friendly internet. Migration is necessary, but it is hugely imperfect, and fraught with difficulties that require many man-hours of human intervention. Key functionality gets lost. Relevance ranked electronic searches are fast and often efficient, but they don't truly eliminate the need or superb utility of a scholarly based index or table of contents.

All of this is a sober reminder that the digital age has not yet replicated the archival properties of past methods of information dissemination and scholarship afforded by hard copy printed newspapers, magazines, books,etc., housed redundantly at many local bricks and mortar libraries. What the older method lacked in immediate accessibility, it made up for with longevity. 15 years of LuLa publications is a mere blip on the human time scale. Decades and centuries of retrievable articles is what we had achieved with older technologies. We need to insist on the same high bar with modern media, and IMHO, we have so far not incentivized the major companies of the digital age to share these concerns about this rapid obsolescence factor.

Please don't take my remarks in any way as a criticism of the Lula staff's efforts to maintain modern up-to-date functionality. I'm going through this very issue myself with a redesign of my website on a much smaller scale. I reluctantly conclude that much of my past and present website presence was ephemeral at best... there is no easy way I can migrate my past publications on my older website to a modern google-approved mobile "responsive" web design without losing something in translation

kind regards,
Mark
http://www.aardenburg-imaging.com

[Robert Boire]

I appreciate the difficulty of the conversion.

Regarding the old index page.  Yes, when we switched systems this was no longer available.  Eventually we want to and will try to bring it back. 

Searching implies you know what you are looking for, while the index page is sort of like browsing in a bookstore...you are looking around to see if there is something of interest.

Here is a thought... can you not bring back the old index page as a simple list of what is available for each category? Presumably the pages still exist in a backup somewhere. They do not need to be hyperlinked yet. At least that way one could see what is available and then use the search tool to find it.

And I always thought  tutorial, technique, understanding  series overlapped and the criteria for putting things in one or the other was always a bit vague at best.