Users have been asking us for simpler lesson lists that include lesson IDs. Our current channel archive format contains a lot of information for each lesson, and not many lessons per channel archive page. So we have developed a new, briefer lesson list format. It lists as many as 50 lessons per page, and for each lesson includes only: (1) lesson ID, (2) lesson title, (3) topic tags. Here’s a sample from the Intermediate lesson listing:
And as long as we’re linking to the lesson tags so prominently, we decided to spruce up the tag listing pages as well. Here’s an example of the new “culture” topic tag page:
Because the new listing fits so many lessons on every page, we’ve dubbed it the “full list,” even though for most channels you can’t list every single lesson on one page. The link to the different levels’ “full list” page is a bit out of the way (it’s on the right side of individual channel pages’ archive page), because these list formats are still a bit experimental. We also realize that with a bit of work on our tags, this will become a much more useful tool for navigating ChinesePod content.
We’d like to know what you think. It’s possible that this format type could replace the existing “channel archive” format, or that some fusion of the two would be most ideal. Please let us know what you think!
Here are some links to get you started:
- Channel Full List Pages: Newbie, Elementary, Intermediate, Upper Intermediate, Advanced, Advanced Media, Qing Wen, Poems with Pete
- Some Useful Topic Tags: business, culture, food
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey John,
congratulations for this huge improvement.
I sincerely love the browsing through the tags.
And, of course, thanks for tagging all the lessons for us.
A further improvement now would be indicators like “lesson studied” and buttons like “add lesson” and a small spell-check on the lesson tags (Beijing vs Bejing, transportation vs transpotation, stuff like that, otherwise some lessons will stay orphans – a probably unrealistic case with such a rich lesson portfolio )
Matthias,
Thanks! You’re totally right. We’re cleaning up tags now, and I agree that a few little indicators on the lesson lists would help a lot.
-John
Now that you’ve made the lessons more accessible, how about a torrent, or an option to download a group (say, a whole page of lessons, or all intermediates, or something. Whatever happened to the torrents, anyway? I think they stopped at lesson number 500.
“as many as 50″? I would really prefer the whole list on one page, no matter how long. It’s darn irritating to have to click Next, , Next, , Next …, and then if you want to go back and check a previous listing it’s Back, , Back, , Back …
I have this same complaint about many websites. The option is so commonly *not* available that I have to wonder if it presents some sort of difficulty in coding the web page that I’m just not aware of (not my field of expertise). Anyway, for what it’s worth…an option to list *all* results would be VERY welcome.
Note that this also applies to Vocabulary lists!!
Thanks,
-Grant
I second the request for no limit on the number of lessons in the list. You aren’t saving us any time if we have 1000 lessons on the list and we want to do something to all of them, and you aren’t saving us very much time if we don’t. The same applies to “Manage my archives”.
Grant and Dan,
I hear your request for more lessons per page. Makes sense to me too. The limit was made with database requests to the server in mind. I will look into this.
-John