Blog Entry

This coming week, we hope to roll out a new site for hosting Novell Open Audio. It’s been a long time coming, and we’re really eager for the update. The primary change is that the site will now be hosted using WordPress, which allows us to shorten the distance between us and our listeners (which is an ongoing goal for the NOA team).

Benefits from the change:

• Faster posting of new materials
  The new site gives Erin, Mike and me direct control of the Novell Open Audio site, which means that we can post new episodes much more easily, as well as update other features.
• Open Listener Feedback
  I have always been able to review listener comments, but unfortunately, listeners don’t get to see others’ feedback, and we have not been able to respond to anonymous feedback. Now we can have direct interaction as an open process.
  
• Tough Questions & Upcoming Interviews
  Our upcoming interviews will now be an RSS feed, so our more avid listeners can subscribe to the feed through their favorite feed aggregator. Also, because each upcoming interview announcement will essentially be a blog entry, listeners will be able to post their desired questions directly on the announcement, and we will be able to flag which ones we will use in the interview.
• Categories
  We also get the use of categories for different episodes, which will allow us to tag each episode with topics that are covered in it. So, if you love “News from Support” or “iFolder,” you will be able to see all episodes that we have filed in that category. Each category will also be a feed, allowing people to subscribe to sub-feeds. We still don’t have listener tagging yet, but it is something that we would like to do in the future.
  
• Search
  Another cool thing is a search tool that is exclusively confined to the Novell Open Audio site, allowing listeners to find, for example, any show that includes the text “Martin Buckley.” (At some point we want to get transcriptions and make them searchable.)
• Topic Requests
  I hope to add a “Requested Topics” page on which we can keep a public record of what our listener community wants us to cover, and where people can request new topics.
• Better Layout
  Lastly, I have not been happy with the layout of the Novell Open Audio site. Mostly, it’s getting at the archives. This will be made much better in WordPress’ format.

Tell me your thoughts on these changes. What do we need to add?