One thing that really bugged me about the way this site runs is that, whenever you use the "back" button in your browser, the page re-loads. This isn't a standard thing - if you go to, say BBC.co.uk and click a link at the bottom of the homepage, then use the back button to go back to the homepage, you'll still be at the bottom of the page and you won't have to wait for it to reload. On UPSU.net, every time you visit a page it re-loads; this is great for making sure you see the latest version of a page, e.g. the homepage or the forums, but it's terrible for our bandwidth and your page load times.

Because one of the main things I'm aiming for with UPSU.net is to make it as fast as possible to navigate around, I've decided to try turning off the code which tells your browser to reload the page each time you visit it.

Another thing we've added is the "sign in" box in the navigation bar of every page; now, if you need to sign in to the site, you can find a username and password box at the top of the page. Fill them in and click "sign in" and you're automagically signed into the site. At the moment, you're also returned to the page you were just browsing, but I think it will be better to send people to their profile homepage since this is where you can look after your account; I've been trying things out the former way for the past few days, and I'll be deciding later whether to try it using the latter method for a while to see if it's a better way of moving people around the site.

As always, I can't test each page on every type of browser, so your feedback is always welcome - just add your comments below as normal - if this post is greeted with the eternal sound of tumbleweed rolling across the comments box, I'll assume that everything's gone to plan and no-one's suddenly found UPSU.net isn't working for them anymore... ;o)

Not much to report on the site's surface at the moment, but two little things I think need a brief mention:

• The search in the "Best bet" links box has been moved from the bottom to reflect the fact that more people seem to feel most comfortable searching the site than clicking our "best bet" links. It's also had a bit of a refresh and I'll probably adjust the layout more in the coming weeks as we gear up for the homepage redesign proper.
• The homepage's most important links are now being anonymously click-tracked, so it should help us to build a relatively complete picture of peoples' browsing habits as they step through the site's front door.

Why bother with all this? Well, knowing how people are using the site - clicking mainly on text or mainly on images, titles or smaller text, and so-on, helps us work out which parts of the page are catching peoples' interest most effectively. From that we can work out if there's useless fluff on the page that we can do away with (or work out why it's not meeting it's intended purpose and do something about it in a more constructive way than deletion...).

Ok, so it's "only" a students' Union website. But with over 10,000 members and around 100,000 visitors a week, it's nice to make sure the content we're providing can do it's job properly.

I have to admit, I'm a bit late in realising what flickr (the massively popular photo hosting website) can offer anyone and everyone who can be bothered to sign up for an account, for free. Possibly the easiest and most noticeable feature of the site is the ability to "tag" your photos (add keywords) and then show all photos from flickr with matching or similar tags. The other very clever toy is "tag clouds", which shows a list of the most-used keywords in a group of photos, sorted alphabetically, and sized proportionally to their occurrence on the site.

To be honest, it's easier if you just read their explanation on what flickr is/does, or take a browse around some of the (often absolutely stunning) photos on the site.

So I've been sitting here wondering if we can adopt some, if not all, of the great ideas they're using to make it easier to browse around UPSU.net's photo galleries, or even being able to allow every single member of UPSU.net to have their own photo galleries (possible), tagging system (also possible), and photo groups (uhhm, probably possible...?).

Of course, like the forums, there's no point to it all if no-one really uses them, so starting next term we need to do a bit of fairly ruthless marketing.

That said, I'd like to increase UPSU.net's usefulness to members a lot first - the homepage redesign, for example, should mean UPSU.net can be used as your homepage if you like a homepage that...

• lets you carry out a Google search straight off
• lets you create and categorise an unlimited list of links to your favourite websites - no more having to remember your favourites every time you change computer on the University network (although I'm told your web browser history now follows you around the Uni's computers... spooky)
• helps your studies by providing links to free research tools (if you trust the internet as a research resource - for those of us that don't yet, maybe we could find some links to sites that help guide people new to online research?)
  
• lets you see the latest news headlines from the UK, the World, or various Sport feeds (and remembers your preferences)
• lets you quickly go to your student portal account

... and from a UPSU.net point of view...

• lets you see your latest forum posts, diary entries, news articles and anything else you contribute to UPSU.net
• and lets you see the latest Union news, photo galleries, forum posts, and what events are coming up at the Union.

That's a good list to begin with, but I want more - more things you can customise, more information, more usefulness (although not necessarily in that order of priority). Oh, and I want it all to load in a flash.

The question is, what would you like to see on your homepage? What can't you live without on the www, every single day? And what - if anything - could we do to make you consider setting UPSU.net as your homepage? (If that's not too ambitious a goal.)

This year's been a record-breaker for the Grad Ball - apparently (and I'm happy to be proven wrong on this...), the Grad Ball has never sold out before. Not ever.

So, for tickets to sell out in under two days isn't bad going by anybody's standards. Which just makes my next bit of non-news all the more likely to turn my hair entirely grey; this afternoon while playing on the decks, Boss ('Angry Ginge' - a term of endearment believe it or not...) saunters up and announces that I'm allowed to warm up for the Scratch Perverts at the Grad Ball "if I want to".

Honestly, I considered my reply for all of half a second... ;o)

So there's going to be a threesome of scruffy, unshaven chaps scrambling around behind the decks before the threesome of Scratch Perverts come on stage at your Grad Ball this year - Ben "Gonzo/Rane" West (I wish he'd make his mind up what he wants to call himself), Adrian "Professa" Testa, and myself (I'm still trying to come up with a better name than Exhale - suggestions on a £20 note as usual please...).

Along with Pure:FM dealing with the after-Pervert deck duties, this Grad Ball is looking better and better as we approach the day.

The only downside is that, unless I can get myself sacked between now and then, I'll have to work all day in the run up to the ball before I can go on the decks - exciting stuff, but being of a naturally lazy persuasion, I'm less than keen on doing anything even vaguely resembling effort. Still, you've got to take the lows with the highs... Or words to that effect.

As for UPSU.net, I'm trialling a basic mailer script as an extension to our news system which lets us add a basic form to any news article or web page asking for things like e-mail address, age, name, comment/suggesion, etc - fill it out, hit "send" and it (should) fire off an e-mail to us with the information you tell us. This is interesting for two reasons - it means we can quickly and easily ask for your feedback on a range of subjects - great for those of you who reckon we could do things better, or just differently - and it also means we can also tie some survey functionality into the site without sending you off to a massively complex survey tool when we only need to ask you a couple of questions.

I've also listed the various projects and work I've lined up for myself over the summer; finishing the blogs, the RSS system, updates to the galleries, "Ask UPSU a question", making page URLs more logical, tidying up the design of the forums, rebuilding the JobShop system, rewriting the search engine, and extending the NUS Registration system to handle the new NUS Extra and NUS Democracy cards, should see my workload pretty constant until... About 9pm on September 24th.

If anybody'd be so good as to send me a card for my birthday on September 5th, that would be lovely... :o)

Enough rambling for one day. I would have gone back and added a load of links but, to be honest, I'm sure you wouldn't be bothered about clicking them any more than I am about creating them in the first place - feel free to disagree, but it would just prove you're really bored, aren't you?

I always thought AJAX was some kind of Americanised Domestos thingy, but apparently it's not... It looks like a very useful way of letting us create more interactive webpages on UPSU.net, so I'm off to do some reading.

As always, we're keen to get your views and suggestions on how we can improve UPSU.net - do you want to write news stories? Design pages? Or just have a 5-word suggestion for us to take on board? Add your comments, below, or e-mail us and tell us what you're thinking.