42 replies to this topic

[Quiggin]

As a someone who has worked as a librarian, I've noticed that periodical name changes cause continuity problems for researchers as well as for occasional readers. The San Francisco Performing Arts Library & Museum, or PALM which was easy to remember, changed its name to The Museum of Performance & Design and now it's difficult to find the old name linked to the new one  - and from other library pages you often get broken links.

For research and citation purposes, for treating your archive as a serious resource, perhaps you should keep the old name somewhere on the title page with the spans of name changes. And design it in someway that Google and Yahoo and the rest will see a natural relation between all the iterations (the old and new Ballet Alert and not-for-dancers Ballet Talk) - and treat them as the same resource and bring up search results on the same page.

[Alexandra]

cubanmiamiboy, on 23 December 2010 - 11:13 AM, said:

Mel Johnson, on 22 December 2010 - 06:06 PM, said:

Now what happens to the former "Ballet Alert!" site?  It contains a lot of useful information.

I have the same inquire.  I've accessed that site a lot in the past, and have gathered great info from it.

I don't understand why this would be questioned, actually, which is why I didn't respond. I'm busy enough

The Ballet Alert! Site has remained up. I have maintained it since the newsletter with which it was associated ended, and through all  these years that this board has been called Ballet Talk. We have now changed the board's name back to....Ballet Alert!  What about these facts would raise the question that we'd take down the Ballet Alert!! site? (that's a rhetorical question!)

Quiggin, you're quite right, and I'm hoping that websites are different from publications. Pages seem to be redirecting nicely. I'm sure there will be some misdirections, broken links and dead ends but that will happen when you don't have full-time paid the people, I'm afraid.

[SanderO]

I don't know the history of this name thing, but I can't see understand the reason for reverting to an older name... or why it was changed in the first place.  I thought Ballet Talk was a fine name as it described what goes on here - "talk" about ballet.  The Ballet Alert sounds like it's a warning of some sort.  What compelled the name reversion?

If the content doesn't change, the name matters not. However, unless there was a compelling reason to change to the original name, I believe it should have remained as BalletTalk.  This reminds me of Blackwater becoming Xe and Verizon from NyNyx and Bell Atlantic.  The logo color / banner colors don't do much for me either.

It's water over the dam at this point, but what the heck... since you asked...

[Helene]

SanderO, on 23 December 2010 - 05:31 PM, said:

It's water over the dam at this point, but what the heck... since you asked...

Actually, we didn't ask   We asked people to post if they had technical issues or saw anomalies.  

That said, we fully expected members to comment about the change, and you have.


Re:  the Ballet Alert! site, here's the URL:
http://www.balletalert.com/

The link that Mme. Hermine posted above was from an internet archiving function, the Wayback Machine, not the site itself.

I think Quiggin's point was to be sure that search engines find us when people search for "Ballet Talk".  Unfortunately, that search match is what drives so much Ballet Talk for Dancers traffic to our site when they really want BT4D.

[Bonnette]

Instead of the small Amazon search link, there is now a tall vertical Amazon banner that has pushed the forum header to the bottom of the screen - this has just happened in the last half-hour.

[Helene]

Bonnette, I know this may sound like a silly question, but do you see an amazon search box next to the logo now?

[Bonnette]

Helene, on 23 December 2010 - 09:54 PM, said:

Bonnette, I know this may sound like a silly question, but do you see an amazon search box next to the logo now?

No, Helene, I just see the Ballet Alert header now; there is a small Amazon search box at the very bottom of the page.

[Helene]

This is really odd, because I can't see any amazon box at the bottom of any page on my browser.  This has been the case since before the logo and name change.

I've been trying various amazon.com widget code for the last 45 minutes or so, and I haven't seen any code appear on the page.  But they've appeared on your page and disappeared after I've removed them from the code.

[papeetepatrick]

Bonnette, on 23 December 2010 - 09:56 PM, said:

Helene, on 23 December 2010 - 09:54 PM, said:

Bonnette, I know this may sound like a silly question, but do you see an amazon search box next to the logo now?

No, Helene, I just see the Ballet Alert header now; there is a small Amazon search box at the very bottom of the page.

This is what I have right now too, the Amazon search box at the bottom.  It looks better than it did earlier when the box looked sort of crowded in at the top, although I wasn't paying much attention.  I don't remember an Amazon box at the bottom before, though.  It was always at the very top, wasn't it?

[Bonnette]

I see the small Amazon search box at the bottom of every page, on both Safari and Firefox. The Ballet Alert header is back to normal size, without the Amazon search box which used to be situated next to the words, "Ballet Alert."

[Helene]

The amazon.com search box was always to the right of the logo. It is a widget that has a text box to write in the name of the item being searched.   When we upgraded to this version, we also added a banner ad at the bottom of every page, long and narrow without a text box.  Neither is showing for me.

I just went to Ballet Talk for Dancers to see if I could see the amazon.com box there, and I can't.  (Screenshot attached.)  It should show on one side of the Zazzle ad, but I can't remember on which side.

This is on Firefox.  On Safari, I can see the search box, which must be there in place of the banner ad as a result of my noodling before.

I'm wondering if it's my "ad-blocking" add-in in Firefox.

Attached Files

•  BT4D.jpg   50.76K   2 downloads

[Bonnette]

Yes, before and immediately after the upgrade, the small Amazon search box was just to the right of the Ballet Talk/Ballet Alert logo; at some point, a very tall thin Amazon banner took its place, greatly expanding the blue field and pushing the logo to the bottom of the page. Now the vertical banner is gone, and I see just the Ballet Alert logo in its blue field (without any Amazon search box next to it).

I don't see a long narrow banner ad with a text box at the bottom of the pages; what I see is the small search box (with space for text) which used to be at the top of the page.

[Helene]

I'm pretty sure I changed the bottom widget from the banner to the search box tonight.  

It was my ad-blocking software that was blocking any amazon.com widget/banner.  Now I can see the search box.  However, the header is now twice the height of the logo, argh.

I'll try again to get the search box at the top and the banner at the bottom, now that I can see it appear.

Many thanks for your feedback!

[Bonnette]

It's looking good, Helene, even with the header at its present size, and I haven't noticed any functional glitches. This has been a remarkably smooth transition - kudos!

Edited to add: Looks like you've got the header adjusted now, and I see the small Amazon search box to the right of the logo.

[Helene]

Now if I could just get the logo to align with the box...