I’d like to announce that We Got Served’s popular Windows Home Server add-ins section has been relaunched, with new functionality and a tighter integration with our forums.
Managing the add-ins page for the last year has been a difficult job with more add-ins, and add-in updates released every week. We’ve been looking for ways to improve this area of the site over the past few months to make things a little easier to manage, to provide better tracking of community ratings and downloads, and to improve our offer to readers.
The new add-ins section provides the following new features:
- Clear categorisation of all commercial and community add-ins, with sub-categories denoting the type of add-in.
- Any WGS forum user can submit/upload an add-in or an add-in update
- Full user ratings system (5 stars)
- RSS Feed available to be kept up to date with the latest submissions
- Version control - we can hold the last 4 versions of an add-in
- Ability to email links to add-ins to friends and colleagues
- Full community statistics - popular downloads, newest files, most viewed files etc
- View add-ins by title, submission date, file update date, ratings etc.
- Automatic forum updates with all add-ins& updates uploaded
- Larger screenshots
So, with the new section launched, I urge all WGS readers to do two things;
- Get rating those add-ins - we need to separate the wheat from the chaff for other users, so get rating all of the add-ins you’ve used.
- Stay vigilant and if you see any add-in updates, submit them on the site!
One other change to mention is that whilst everyone can browse the add-ins list easily, submitting and downloading add-ins requires registration at WGS Forums, which only takes a minute or so.
This is a big upgrade for us here at WGS, and I’m delighted it’s in place and live - feel free to let us know what you think of it.
More Info: Windows Home Server Add-Ins
July 27th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
I would actually like to be able to just list all the add-ins instead of browsing trough each category
July 28th, 2008 at 3:47 am
This is realy disappointing. The way it was before was much better.
July 28th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Glenn - if you click “View all submissions since your last visit”, this will give you a full list of the latest add-ins that have been submitted so you can keep up to date
http://forum.wegotserved.co.uk/index.php?autocom=downloads&req=search&code=last_visit
Cheers
Terry
July 28th, 2008 at 6:26 am
Can we get a “Top 5″ list to go along with the “Random 5″ panel? Having to click through multiple levels before seeing ratings is going to be confusing for new users/
July 28th, 2008 at 7:05 am
Sam,
Let me take a look - the stats link is buried a little down at the bottom of the page. Haven’t seen a Top 5 option to replace the random 5, but will keep looking.
Cheers
Terry
July 28th, 2008 at 7:14 am
Let me give you a little more context on the rationale for change - we’re now up to 50-odd add-ins available for Windows Home Server, and browsing these as just a single list was cumbersome, and was causing me a lot of headaches both keeping up with new versions of add-ins, and managing the list here in the blog. Managing the ratings system alone, manually was a big pain, and we could only update the ratings once a quarter as it was such a big undertaking.
We were also getting a lot of feedback that with the existing list, it was really difficult to see what had changed, or when new add-in updates were listed. The new add-ins section solves all of these issues in one fell swoop, with immediate ratings updates, full search capability, RSS/Forum/Email subscriptions available for add-in updates, the server automatically tracking updates that have been released since you last logged in etc.
Going forward, as we get to 75, 100, 200 add-ins available for WHS, browsing a single list would be madness - we have to start categorising them. As with all changes, it may take a bit of getting used to, but I’m really happy it’s the right route for us to go down.
Terry
July 28th, 2008 at 10:29 am
congrats on the new add-in section. Personally I would prefer a list of add-ons. I agree with 100s of add-ons a categorization is useful. But I would still prefer to just have a long list which is then broken into subcategories.
Having views that would allow me sort by , , are really useful.
The current layout does not strike me as intuitive. The screen shots are “too noisy”. It’s fine to have screen shots on the actual application page but I would prefer just text on the main page for add ins.
Finally - wouldn’t it be great if I as a logged in user could mark an application as used by me and then have a view that would list those add ins. That way it would be really easy for me to see of there are updates.
For additional inspiration for next iteration check out http://extensions.joomla.org/