PJRC Website Changes & Blog

Status
Not open for further replies.

Paul

Administrator
Staff member
I'm about to make a long-planned change to the PJRC website, replacing the out-of-date static home page with a blog.

Robin & I are planning to post twice a day showing people's projects. I used to post project on this page, but as you can see I fell out of the practice years ago, partly because hand editing the static html was tedious and a task I couldn't realistically delegate.

I've created a forum for submitting any project built with Teensy you'd like to see on the homepage & blog archive.

https://forum.pjrc.com/forums/9-Blog-Project-Submission

There's no requirement for projects to be fully finished. Often work-in-progress is more interesting. Posting links to public pages with projects is perfectly fine too. Robin is planning to take the lead with editing, in hopes of showing a few sentences about what each project actually does, using words accessible to people without engineering background.

I also have a few hundred projects in emails and saved links people have sent me over the last few years, so we'll slowly work our way through posting those in addition to posts from the forum.

I'm planning to write an in-depth article about once a week, as I have occasionally done at my blog on the DorkbotPDX website. So much of the stuff I do here never gets shared, and it really should...

Many other website changes have also been long planned. In particular, the plan is _still_ to migrate this forum from vBulletin to XenForo, and add a wiki which can integrate with XenForo. There's still no time-frame on these, and honestly it could be 2018 or later. However, this blog change is a step towards those goals, especially transitioning some of the table-based HTML (created in the days of NN4 & IE5) to modern HTML5+CSS, and hopefully moving towards a more flexible system that helps us keep the website more up to date.
 
A really cool addition would be a blog for every project, where users can ask questions and get answers - something like a sub-forum for every project!
Or will be the new new "Blog Project Submission" something like this ?
 
A really cool addition would be a blog for every project, where users can ask questions and get answers - something like a sub-forum for every project!
Or will be the new new "Blog Project Submission" something like this ?

I guess more important than user projects is a 'living blog' that addresses the myriads of 'did I brick my teensy' or 'cannot comunicate with teensy' etc.

by "living blog" I mean, continuously edited to reflect common problems.

At the moment, I know that a particular problem was handled some time ago, but I do not remember in which thread or under which problem it was solved.

I find it very cumbersome to read all the threads, that a search will present.
 
I guess more important than user projects is a 'living blog' that addresses the myriads of 'did I brick my teensy' or 'cannot comunicate with teensy' etc.

by "living blog" I mean, continuously edited to reflect common problems.

At the moment, I know that a particular problem was handled some time ago, but I do not remember in which thread or under which problem it was solved.

I find it very cumbersome to read all the threads, that a search will present.
You mean a Slack :cool: .
 
At the moment, I know that a particular problem was handled some time ago, but I do not remember in which thread or under which problem it was solved.

I find it very cumbersome to read all the threads, that a search will present.

I agree with this sentiment. The forum isn't well suited as a repository for frequently asked questions, hints and other reference material. It's painful at best.

Unfortunately:

In particular, the plan is _still_ to migrate this forum from vBulletin to XenForo, and add a wiki which can integrate with XenForo. There's still no time-frame on these, and honestly it could be 2018 or later.

How about we start with a GitHub-based wiki and migrate to whatever the forum ends up being when it's available next year?

I'd be happy to start contributing to a wiki today!
 
The new website is live. Hopefully it's an improvement over the old site with stale stuff on the homepage!

There's much more to be done. At this moment, I'm going to catch up to the many threads and emails I've neglected while working on this change. Then my plan is to merge a bunch of contributions and fixes and investigate several recently-reported issues, leading to 1.83-beta3. As much as I'd love to do so much more right now, all this other stuff is really important too.
 
You mean a Slack :cool: .

I don't think Slack is a good fit for this. The fees for reasonable storage are very high. Also, Slack is more like a collection of chat channels than a Wiki. Slack is better for coordination across geography and content that isn't meant to last.
 
The new website is live. Hopefully it's an improvement over the old site with stale stuff on the homepage! ...

I walked around a bit - it seems the good stuff was easier to come across - at least as far as current products. The left frame of links at a glance was there more - at least when I looked Reference (schematics, etc) was at hand. Having to find the correct main page for a useful left frame link list was a chore - and still can be . . .

The left frame from here shows reference and as the "Main page" is a good summary: https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/index.html
Coming from "Home" : https://www.pjrc.com/ - it takes a couple clicks to get to that page.
 
I don't think Slack is a good fit for this. The fees for reasonable storage are very high. Also, Slack is more like a collection of chat channels than a Wiki. Slack is better for coordination across geography and content that isn't meant to last.

Whatever it is, the PJRC web site still misses a clearly visible FAQ that handles all the repeating questions, is authoritative and cannot be hijacked by users.
Problem with forum based answers is, they may be misleading, may have misunderstood the problem, but may be correct. only experienced users know, but someone who looks up FAQ typically does not have the knowledge to pick the right answer.

My suggestion is to add a now tab to the right of the form link that points to a list of FAQ's similar to list of Blogs.
 
I also believe the new website is going in the right direction.

I do think the main page you go to, to get information about a teensy: https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/index.html
needs to be updated. For example there is a table giving links to T2, T2+, 3 and 3.1 where the 3 and 3.1 are obsolete..
Likewise it has information on a graphic LCD which has been sold out since I think 2014?

I also like the idea of having FAQ page, which hopefully gives the user additional information, like how to program the Teensy when it is new and does not have USB Serial. And more hints on troubleshooting. ...

Edit: Forgot to mention, it would be great if the reference sections and the like were maybe split up or the like to hopefully show which pages apply to T2.0 boards and which apply to the T3.x boards.

But again it is nice to see the main website being updated!
 
Last edited:
I wonder why I have to click three or four times to buy a teensy from the home page, https://www.pjrc.com? Is this just a place holder? I feel the pjrc web site seems kinda stuck in the 90's in the graphic design arena, though thats one's prerogative. Also concerning the Home Page, I don't see the Teensy LC featured, might want to get that in there too.
 
A really cool addition would be a blog for every project, where users can ask questions and get answers - something like a sub-forum for every project!
Or will be the new new "Blog Project Submission" something like this ?

The idea is to link to the forum thread where the project info was posted.

But right now we're working through about one hundred projects people have sent me via email over the last few years, since I stopped updating the old page. Those don't have forum threads.

Hopefully in the future all or most projects will be submitted via forum threads, so people can discuss and ask questions.
 
@PaulStoffregen. I sent Robin a email with something you might be interested in as well. Mike
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top