Did you notice..

… that when you are not logged in you don’t see the ‘wishlist’ tab at the top of the site?

That’s a holdover from something I didn’t put in place here when I put the theme into place. I was doing a test blog to see how things would work and I put a ‘website lockout’ thing in place while I worked. If anyone viewed the site it would display a single welcome page and only allowed logged in people to see more than that single page.

Being that the family site is mostly just for us, would there be interest in me putting up the same thing here?

9 comments

  1. Oh, is that what it is?

    I had noticed that sometimes I saw the Wishlist tab and sometimes I didn’t. I really like the tabs – been trying to think of other things to suggest for tabs – like recipies, if we acually posted to that topic. Or book reviews. hehe. (not really)

    Anyway. … hmm … I don’t know. I really like the tabs. But it’s not like the content is hidden if you’re not logged in; it’s still there in the sidebar. I can see hiding ‘internal’ content from non-logged-in users .. but since this isn’t really hiding content, it’s just hiding a navigation option .. I don’t know.

    I like the wishlist pages, I use them quite a bit. Often just to kind of check in with a person and see what they’re currently interested in. I also just wander around and randomly read people’s Amazon wish list pages. It’s like a snapshot of current .. and sometimes ongoing .. interests.

    And I’m not usually logged in. I only log in when I want to write something, either a post or a comment. So most of the time that I’m on the family site, I’m not logged in.

    So … I like the idea that a tab can be visible or not to logged in or not users. But I think I’d like the wishlist tab to be available at all times.

    Now … I don’t know if you’re taking special requests …. but if there were a way to make a link from this page to the “Write a new post” area, that would be nice. If, when you logged in, there was a tab for “Site Admin Functions” or something … that had ‘Write new post’ ‘View Recent comments’ and stuff like that. Useful things that you can only get (now) by going through the Site Admin console.

    (and when are we going to see our family of south park avatars?) 🙂

  2. Speaking of Avatars, Ramona and I were working on one for Christina and i was doing the fine tuning on it last week when i had to stop and do other things. I have also started little ones for Aleah and Donavan, and thought about making one for Chris that has a camera around his neck… a current family man Chris, not intended to replace wild man Chris (who I like standing all alone at the top as creator of the blog), but to show a different side of Chris. Would you like it if i made you all avatars, Chris and Christina?

    As for the family site tabs, I had wondered why have a single tab when we have the menu at the right, but I like tabs. They would be different and having just the heading with a drop down if you want to see more is very neat and clean, in keeping with the rest of the new look.

    Are you asking about hiding all the site content? When we first started this, I would have said yes, hide us from all strangers! But i have gotten used to being out there in the open. It’s not like we tell deep dark secrets.

    If you are thinking of just hiding with tabs, past content and all the stuff on the side, that might make it a little more private without making it so we had to always be signed in to read… if you replaced the content on the side with tabs. If both remain, there is little point.

    I say, do with it as you will. So far I like what you are doing.

    Actually…. We could leave wild man Chris at the top, put tabs at the top, and line the family avatars up down the side. (note that “we.” My part being making the suggestion.) Or we could all include our avatars when we post so each post had a little guy.

  3. Ok, instead of trying to explain the thing itself… I’ll just turn it on.

    So, right now, if you are not logged in you don’t see anything. If you have a link to a specific article, I’m pretty sure you get re-directed to the “you not logged in!” page.

    The end effect is that you must be logged in to see anything.

    I even went as far as to remove the main Title/byline from the top of the page when not logged in.

    Check it out. Log out, log back in. See the difference, comment back.

  4. yes. that’s what I meant by:

    If anyone viewed the site it would display a single welcome page and only allowed logged in people to see more than that single page

    Anyone not logged in (ie, not one of us) couldn’t see anything more on the site than just that frontpage. (which, ok, is pretty sparse at the moment, but I don’t think it needs to be more for our purposes)

    This was just something I was messing with elsewhere as a way to protect/hide content that might be better off hidden away. Or we could just say “if anyone else finds this, meh. have fun reading it!’.

  5. On the security/convenience balance, on this one I say let anyone read it.

    I am content with the security level that doesn’t let anyone not logged in post things. That is a good level of security.

    However, I don’t log in as a general rule. I just check in, see what’s happening, and log in only when there’s something so compelling or interesting or fascinating that it demands a response. If I have to log on simply to view – well, I won’t check in very often.

    Right now the family site is my home page. When I open the browser, it’s just there. But if I have to log in …. I’ll mean to, I’ll intend to, and I probably will – but it won’t be daily.

    Which is fine; there’s nothing that says I must be able to see daily. If others are concerned about unrelated folks viewing the site, and it will make them more comfortable to see it more secured, then that’s fine.

  6. I like that you showed us, and like that one can do that now. Because I seem to be logged in most of the time (I guess because i always check that remember me box) i don’t think the members only thing would have much effect on me. I would just have to log in a little more often. But i have no strong feelings about our privacy. I would have loved the privacy a few years ago. 🙂 I guess that means have become comfortable with being open online.

    So I say put it back like it was so Ramona can keep it for her home page and have it easy to read all the time.