Alex Harries's diary

(This is another really, *really* boring blog entry. Why not Google for "noodle mining" instead of reading it?) 

I've just made my first bit of Ajax - I feel so proud! Ok, it's sad and geeky, but I'm happy 'cos I just (a) learnt something new, and (b) it worked.

When I tried to get onto the UPSU homepage earlier this evening, it wouldn't load. It was working fine for everyone else, so I figured it had something to do with a piece of code I was loading for myself, meaning the only suspect was the weather box, which only loads for me (as I'm still testing its reliability).

To fix this, we need to have a way of preventing content which relies on other servers or websites, or which is either bulky, not critically important to UPSU.net (or both) from slowing down page loads. Lots of websites use JavaScript to load content into a DIV after the rest of the page has loaded, for example the BBC news homepage (which loads the "Your local news, weather and sport here" box after the rest of the page has loaded). This means that the non-essential content can be as badly behaved as it likes without breaking the rest of the page, even if it never loads. Google Ads also works on this basis to prevent their adverts from slowing down the loading times of the pages displaying the adverts.

Not really having a clue where to start though, I went off on a Google wander and found DynamicDrive.com's excellent cut-out-and-keep guide which does exactly what I was looking for. So, one quick modification (to let me load the EuroWeather module outside of Mambo - it's not a core component and certainly poses no security risks) and we're up and running.

I'll also be using this technique to load in BBC News headlines onto the homepage in the near future, and I'm already trying to think of other ways we can make use of this. An ideal application would be to use it to load additional homepage content, for example my original but not-very-evil plan of converting the hero advert (the big 450x200 box) into a tabbed area which can show either the hero advert, or two or three other boxes of content - "my forum discussions", "my blah blah...", or "my settings" - etc. While it opens the way for us to put a lot of new toys on the homepage we haven't been able to because of size and space restrictions, I'm going to have to be careful not to fall into the trap of piling crap on top of crap just "because it's nice" ;o)

Over on the SUSU forums, I spotted this discussion claiming that SUSU is the best students' union website in the country. Not sure I agree with that, but it's certainly a good site (as I've mentioned before).

I want to see UPSU.net kicking everyone's backsides as a student website - we need to focus hard on improving the content, features, usability, usefulness and looks (in that order), and since we have a potential base of 16,000 students, that's a lot of different needs and levels of computer ability.

I reckon we also need to start taking a much greater interest in what people would like to see. To that end, tell me!

• What do you think?
• What does UPSU.net need?
• What would you like to see on the site?
• What would keep you coming back to the site?

Answers in the boxes below. Thanks! /al

Just a quick entry to congratulate Bloc-Online for coming 2nd in the Guardian Student Media Awards for Best Student Website.

Two things about their site I really, really like - one is that it runs on Mambo - same as UPSU.net - which is a scarily-customisable content management system. The best bit about that is that it's free of course ;o)

In a slightly-less geeky way though, the aspect of their site I like the most is how everyone is encouraged to submit articles, and the site is updated regularly with this new content. In Geek-speak, it's (I think?) a very refined and effective Web 2.0 model for a student magazine, and it's something I really, really want to see on UPSU.net, but before we can see that happening, I need to take some of the fear and confusion associated with working on UPSU.net out of the equation.

Put simply, it's a daunting task to add an article, news feature or web page on to UPSU.net. I want to change that, and I want this change done yesterday. The problem for me is that there are loads of other things I also have to be getting on with, so this job keeps slipping further down my to-do list until it's merely a speck in the distance (yes, I know what time-management is. I just don't like the idea of having to expend any more brain power than is absolutely necessary on trivial gumph like - oh, I dunno - thinking. And stuff...).

Thankfully, with my latest toy - the toolbox - created and alive, I can start adding little toys onto the site now without having to hack existing code about - now I can make my mistakes all in the same file. Woohoo... I think... ;o)

Pugwash magazine's print deadline is coming up, and with it looms the first episode of Pugwash online. Fraggy's just sent over an e-mail containing all the articles to go into the magazine, so now it's up to me to figure out what order they're going in, put them online, add some pretty pictures, and make up a front/index page.

If any of the Pugwash team would mind terribly offering a hand, I'd be really, really grateful... Hint hint, nudge nudge... ;o)

Anyway, back to my original point. Check out Bloc Online. It's rather superb :o)

Update: I've just been (jokingly) told off by Fraggy for singing Bloc's praises since UPSU.net didn't win anything this year. Credit where credit's due to Bloc, so this article stays :oP