The New PsiWorld

[jedikaren]

That's right people, PsiWorld has a completely new look. Thanks to Apollo we have a better main site and a really cool, active forum. We very very recently added a chatroom back on and had a great opening empathy chat. There will be more chats in the future, so I encourage you to take a look and be a part of this great community.

thepsiworld.net

[leodragon]

Isn't your link thepsiworld.googlepages.com/ . The link above isn't working. Not for me, at least.

[jedikaren]

That was an old, temporary version.

[Fearn]

Sept 14, 2008 16:56:22 GMT -5 leodragon said:

Isn't your link thepsiworld.googlepages.com/ . The link above isn't working. Not for me, at least.

Yes, for some reason the site was down for a little while. It works now.

If you look at the temporary site, you'll see that its not even really finished.

[leodragon]

Okay I see it now.

[The Devil's Advocate]

The site loads very slowly (admitedly mostly the main graphic and I DO have a slow connection but not everyone has hugely fast connections). The blog look is off putting, and the text is dark enough to be hard on the eyes after a while. Your mission statement makes me a little nervous. You're not telling us what your goals are... You're telling us that we should take you seriously. That's not a mission statement. Why should we believe you are credible? Why should we believe you are a serious site not just another piece of fluff?

The main articles page seems to have rather broken formatting from my connection, might want to look into that. The Empathy articles page seems to fix the formatting issue.

You might want to work on formatting your articles. They are NOT in what I would consider a 'serious' format. They are presented more as anecdotes, and without establishing your credibility or the credibility of your authors, the presentation and professionalism of presentation is all you have to ESTABLISH that credibility. As an Empath in that section, I rather want to pat you all on the head and go "You think it's bad now, you should see what happens at my range." I had to stop reading your 'dealing with negative emotions' thread, to avoid loosing my temper. You had a few good points, but you seemed to make things at once very general... and absolute. It has the frame work of a very professional article, but it still needs alot of polishing.

Over all it does look better than the first one you advertised here, but there's still a long way to go... also I wouldn't go near your empathy chat with a 10 ft pole. I've got enough overload as it is. The general trend of your site that I am seeing, especially from a scientific and writing perspective is that there's alot of potential but you NEED a lot of polishing. I didn't touch your Astral section as that's one of my sore spots and I know my limitations. Ask me for a more balanced view of that section sometime in mid to late October.

~The Devil's Advocate

[Kami]

Devil: Not everyone is as......err. Hard. As you are.

You have some points about it being hard to read, but other than that it looks like an okay site

[wolfdancer]

It does have a more improved look. I would like it if the gray text on the main page were a little bit lighter. It is definitely a stepping stone site for beginners as you state on the first page. I can see a lot of potential and a lot of ways that it will help new people who are completely clueless. Though once they have more of a clue as to what things are and how they work..*shrugs* I haven't read through much of the articles because I didn't have time and the screen was giving me a headache. But yeah, definitely a starting point if nothing else.

~Wolf

P.S. The forums were much much much easier to read, in my opinion.

[leodragon]

Reading the articles, I am noticing coding issues. In between the contractions and apostrophes there is a box of code or an odd character. That is due to incompatibility issues with the fonts. More than likely you used a word processing program and then copy and pasted that into the code. The font issues between the two formats causes that code issue. You can fix that by downloading and opening up the page in notepad, copy and pasting the apostrophes from the word processing program into the Replace section (go to the top right by File there should be edit button), and clicking replace all. Go to the Find part of Replace and put and paste the copied apostrophe there. Hit the apostrophe key on your keyboard in the Replace With section (the two character fonts are different). Click replace all, and it will fix that problem. Save it and then upload it back to the server.

If you use a remote FTP program you can alter it directly through notepad that way. I am seeing it a lot in this article. I am not sure if it is an issue throughout the other pages.

thepsiworld.net/viewarticle.php?id=13

I also noticed that you use the <br /> tag in between paragraphs. Most people use the <p> tag. The <br /> or <br> tag typically separates two lines with a limited spacing, and if you have text indent specified in the CSS style sheet, it does not come into play, so there is no indentations between the paragraphs. The <p> tag acts as a mini <div> tag and can allocate blocks of text to a specific format and adds extra spacing. You have a <p> tag at the beginning of the text and then one at the end (which makes it one big section of text), and you seperate the spacing through the <br /> tag. You could also have used the <div> tag and then broken up the sections with the <p></p> tags and used the <br /> tag to seperate lines of text on a singular line. These would have allowed for a better control over the format instead of having one long block of allocated text.

I am curious. I am trying to figure out how you integrated your forum post into your front page. I noticed that it the first page is in php which allows for script that allows people to post things that are written on the server and manifested on the web page, but doesn't that require a CGI? I am looking at your <div> section for that and looking at the that section and I can't seem to find the php coding. I am having problems with that myself, so I am interested in how you did that.

[jedikaren]

I'm afraid to say that I did none of the coding. Apollo did, so you'll have to talk to him about it. I teach newbies, manage forums, write articles, edit other people's articles and sometimes do a group lesson. But I don't do coding.

[The Devil's Advocate]

We do not have access to Apollo, you do. You can pass along the complaints. It's your site you, in some way have to take responsibility for all of it, even if it's only passing problems along to your support staff.

You might want to address the article issues.

~The Devil's Advocate

[jedikaren]

Please, calm down and do not get so offended. I had thought everyone knew of Apollo. I'm sorry if I assumed something wrong. Forgive me, I'm human. I am not a god at admining nor is anyone. I will notify Apollo of this thread and see if the error makes sense to him and see if he can fix it.

[wolfdancer]

Thank you, Karen.

Though many of us know Apollo through the forums, we have not been in contact with him outside of psionline. Thank you for passing the information along.

~Wolf

[apollo]

Ok, I'll address these one at a time. Please note, I am not the owner of the website - simply following directions on the coding:

The site loads very slowly (admitedly mostly the main graphic and I DO have a slow connection but not everyone has hugely fast connections). The blog look is off putting, and the text is dark enough to be hard on the eyes after a while.

The main graphic is quite large, so the first load time is a bit longer than I would like. After it is cached, it is fine though. The blog look is what we were going for, so thats fine with us. I don't find the text too dark, but I will change it if Jedikaren asks me too.

In between the contractions and apostrophes there is a box of code or an odd character.

Yes, this is due to font collisions. However, that is how Jedikaren put them into the database, so she has to fix those.

If you use a remote FTP program you can alter it directly through notepad that way. I am seeing it a lot in this article. I am not sure if it is an issue throughout the other pages.

If you noticed the PHP and ID tags, you will realize it is a PHP file that is probably (is) running off of a database. You cannot use an FTP program to change the database (there are admin tools (that I made) and coding languages for that).

I also noticed that you use the <br /> tag in between paragraphs. Most people use the <p> tag. The <br /> or <br> tag typically separates two lines with a limited spacing, and if you have text indent specified in the CSS style sheet, it does not come into play, so there is no indentations between the paragraphs.

Thanks for the lecture on HTML, but I know. We chose to use <br /> due to the lack of a large reading area (due to the wanted blog style). Again, not a problem, but wanted and requested as it is.

I am curious. I am trying to figure out how you integrated your forum post into your front page. I noticed that it the first page is in php which allows for script that allows people to post things that are written on the server and manifested on the web page, but doesn't that require a CGI? I am looking at your <div> section for that and looking at the that section and I can't seem to find the php coding. I am having problems with that myself, so I am interested in how you did that.

Magic. You can't (and shouldn't) see the PHP code, as it is server-side. Everything is running off of a MySQL database, so it is simply grabbed from there. Pretty basic - no CGI needed.

We do not have access to Apollo, you do. You can pass along the complaints. It's your site you, in some way have to take responsibility for all of it, even if it's only passing problems along to your support staff.

You might want to address the article issues.

~The Devil's Advocate

Good to see DA is still around! When I post my new site for recommendations, I look forward to your comments

Thank you, Karen.

Though many of us know Apollo through the forums, we have not been in contact with him outside of psionline. Thank you for passing the information along.

~Wolf

How you doin, Wolf? I haven't been around here in quite some time! Life goin' well?

[leodragon]

The articles seem to be really generalized. They explain a lot of "how to's", but they don't really look into the reasons as to why. Methods that people choose to use differ from person to person, and what works differs from person to person, so I think it is a lot better to focus on the underlying dynamics versus generalized methods, but is just my point of view. I am looking at the precog section, and I kind of don't like the "if it happens" point of view. It focuses more or so on recognizing it through dreams and feelings, instead of actually learning how to control it and work with it as a consistent thing.

I like the Getting Started section. I am looking at the Empathy section. As an empath, I am not liking the generalization concerning empaths in the article "The Cursed Gift". How an empath picks up, looks at, and deals with emotions varies from person to person and personality contributes greatly to this. I really don't like the "Traits of an Empath" section, and I read something similar about that on a New Age website when discussing empathy. The generalizations are really annoying me. I think your audience with the empath section are typically newer people who are trying to find some sort of balance if they are having trouble with their empathy, versus people who have some degree of control.

It may be coincidence, but I am seeing trends in what you are writing Jedi. I am not sure if you have read Robert Bruce's work when it comes to things concerning the astral and psychic activity, but your style parallels that in many ways. The traits of an empath also seem to be parallel:
healing.about.com/cs/empathic/a/uc_empathtraits_2.htm
I am not implying anything. It could be that you share the same opinion as a lot of other people, or something like that. I am just noticing similarities in the overall thinking process.

I also would like feedback on my library of few articles for right now, LOL. ;D I am still just getting it up, so I have only had time to put up the introductory articles.