How do we find updates of older stories?

[Curtis]

I see that the site is being overhauled, but losing the recent story postings is not an improvement. You can still find new stories posted by date, but if an old story gets updated, how are we to know?

[BDSM_Tourguide]

... when a story is updated, it appears on the newest page of stories as an "Update" rather than a "New" story. I'm not sure what the problem is exactly.

[Curtis]

Okay, the site just changed again. When I entered earlier this evening the first page was only pull-down menus and announcements with no stories. Now the stories are back. As usual, I have no idea what's going on.

[Tiger]

The pulldown menu is helping people navigating different areas of this site. As you may have noticed that this site has more than just stories. But if you want just the story, simply bookmark this page:
http://www.bdsmlibrary.com/stories/

I don't think I will change that.

[Curtis]

Okay, I found out what the problem was. I had bookmarked that page when I started coming here over a year ago, but instead of being taken to that page my browser would take me to the orange "Let Me In" page.

Last night when I came in through the Let Me In, all that I found were pull-downs and the site news. I was still able to search for new stories by having the Library arrange all stories in reverse chronological order, but couldn't find any way to search for recently updated stories.

I entered Jinn's new bookmark and it took me where I wanted to go, so the "Site Update" page still exists, but when I just tried going in through "Let Me In" again, Site Update doesn't appear on any of the pull-downs. That's because you have to pull down "Story News", which doesn't take you to a story news page, it takes you to the Site Update page.

I understand it now, but it seems unnecessarily complicated. Thanks Jinn. I'll erase my old bookmark and use the new one.

[BDSM_Tourguide]

I tried navigating the site last night, too and I have to say, I much preferred the old way of doing it. The drop-downs and lack of previous story updates make the site hard to follow and get around.

This is a story site and I think people want to see the stories first, not a bunch of menus telling them about services and such.

Sorry, Jinn, but the other way was easier and, in my opinion, looked better, too.

[Tiger]

Hmm, I didn't realize the new pulldowns can give people more trouble. I thought it's a good idea to organize all contents within the limited space. I thought visitors might want to know what's on this site besides the stories. Too bad people don't appreciate it at all. I got some complaints already. If no one likes it, I will change it back.

The overall look is not changed at all. So the pulldowns look ugly, aren't they?

[BDSM_Tourguide]

If you go into the site from the orange welcome page like I did last night, then yes, the site is hard to navigate and the pulldowns don't offer a lot of information unless you know what to look for.

However, if you go into the story site from the BDSM Library banner link here in the forums, then the page viewed is basically the same page as the old story updates page, so it's easy to do a side-by-side comparison.

The site navigation was just way easier on the old page. All the stories were laid out right there for people to see and so was the search engine. You can't even search on the new page.

I think some kind of combination of the two would be good. A way to keep the dropdowns and site info, but also to keep the search engine and story updates on page one.

It doesn't look bad, by the way, it's just not easy to get around.