Project Petaling Street Re-Born
Filed in: Malaysia, Weblog — August 31st, 2005
The Malaysian blog-tal — Project Petaling Street — is re-born on Malaysia 48th National Day. Changed website layout and added blog directory.
At first glance, I thought the page is not fully loaded. I actually refreshed PPS homepage for few times, then I confirmed that it is the new web design. (Frankly, I think PPS really needs a web designer now.)
The new PPS homepage shows the five division of PPS project: wiki, blog, pings, rss and directory. Below the buttons are the current latest blog pings, which retrieved from PPS Pings. Then, there are latest posts from featured blog. Currently only Titus blog being featured.
PPS Wiki
Currently a simple one page WIKI to let you know about each division of PPS. Will be served as PPS Documentation, I guess.
PPS Blog
One of the new addition to PPS lately. A group of local bloggers blog about various topics on PPS blog — blog of the blog-tal.
PPS Pings
The PPS we know, list of latest blog pings from local bloggers. Removed sidebar, latest pings with excerpts extended to 12 posts.
PPS RSS
Online feed aggregator. Was previously powered by lilina but broken, it is now using Gregarius. PPS RSS looks nice, but it doesn’t seems like remember what posts I have read or haven’t…
PPS Directory
This is only revealed on today. Now PPS has a blog directory to collect local blog sites. Each site can be fit under multiple categories, which is nice, especially for broad topics blogs.
I see there is rating system for the blogs listed under PPS Directory. Hot Blogs — blogs received most clicks. Top Rated Blogs — blogs with highest rating (votes).
Thought:
Though adding new features is great, but PPS is becoming very complex to newcomers. If I am new to PPS, I will stare at the page for 1 second, close it and no turning back again. Sorry, the PPS homepage is not friendly.
The PPS features are good but each division of PPS should have a similar design and inter-linked. Currently, the 5 parts of PPS look like 5 separated websites without relation with each others.
I believe PPS team is rather rush to reveal the new PPS face on Malaysia national day. Hopefully, it will get another new face(design) soon. Maybe Danny Foo can lend a hand? 
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August 31st, 2005 at 11:53 am
Just refresh a while ago… at least an announcement page has been added to the main page.
August 31st, 2005 at 12:06 pm
[...] I agree with him that the 5 main link pages should have somewhat similar look and feel to them. Looking at the front page though, I began to think back the reason I’ve visited PPS all that too often- to access the latest blog entries. Sure, many features were lacking, for example a blog directory (which exists now) or an archive (will there be?). With this new face, it seems like PPS is no longer only a ‘ping’-ing portal, but serves to promote itself… [...]
August 31st, 2005 at 12:49 pm
Oh, Danny and I speak the same thing.
August 31st, 2005 at 2:27 pm
interesting additions, but too bad about everything else *sigh*
August 31st, 2005 at 2:57 pm
LoL! Got here from andre’s post.
And yes, I’ve informed Aizuddin in my comments that I’ll try thinking up a new skeleton for the homepage and introduce a new layout if possible.
I’m not all that wizardry as Aizuddin puts it. I’m just a typical web designer that’s trying to change the Malaysian web design scene. *grin*
August 31st, 2005 at 3:09 pm
Great ambition, Danny.
August 31st, 2005 at 5:32 pm
Danny: Help is always welcome! As LCF said, the weak link is the intergration of all the services. A common design for all 5 services would be excellent, and is something definitely on my to-do list.
August 31st, 2005 at 6:06 pm
Aiz, sincerely, were you in a rush?
August 31st, 2005 at 6:48 pm
Not really, its been in the works for few months now. I’ll keep on plodding along. The breaking of the RSS was a unexpected hiccup, but that can be looked into over the next couple of weeks.
August 31st, 2005 at 9:36 pm
Liew - I agree on the not user friendly. ‘Cos it took me about 30 minutes to get used to it. And I am considered the techie non-techie user.
September 1st, 2005 at 1:57 am
live on.
September 2nd, 2005 at 10:44 pm
Can you share how much traffic you lose from this new ‘rearrangement’?
September 2nd, 2005 at 11:03 pm
Jim: you mean not being highlighted in the PPS sidebar? Well, I still get the same traffic. Most of my current blog readers come from direct link (bookmark).