Project Petaling Street Re-Born

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? :)