New feature: Customise your news

 

  • New feature: Customise your news

    Posted by Huw, 18 Jun 2010 14:25. Filed under Brickset.

    Earlier, I promised you a new feature, so here it is:

    Several people have emailed recently to say something like: "It's great that Brickset has expanded its news coverage and caters for people all round the world but, you know what, I'm in <insert country here> and I'm not really that interested in what's available in KMart on the other side of the world, so can I somehow filter the news to show me just what I'm interested in?..."

    Well, now you can. If you're logged in you'll see a new link in the title bar above: 'Customise your news'. It'll take you to a page where you can specify what categories of articles you'd like to see in this list. Cool, eh!

    As well being good for you, the reader, this feature will also hopefully encourage the admins to post more local news, safe in the knowledge that they are not boring people with no interest in it. [Note to admins: be sure to select the most appropriate category when posting so this feature works properly :-)]

    Not yet a member? Register now to take advantage of this and many other cool features. It's free and easy!

    As always, feedback is welcome...


    21 comments, latest one posted 36 months ago. (Commenting has ended on this article)
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Comments

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 18 Jun 2010 14:43

GRREEEEAT!!! Perfect! Already set-up everything! I won't be bored anymore :)!

BTW, "Site updates" has changed to "Brickset news", right?

Posted by legocity1 in United Kingdom, 18 Jun 2010 15:02

this is awesome :D

Posted by Alemas in Germany, 18 Jun 2010 15:09

Excuse me AGAIN: Can there be a "select all" and a "de-select all" in the "Customise your news" menu?

Posted by moop2000 in United States, 18 Jun 2010 15:19

Does this affect the RSS feed being served?

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 18 Jun 2010 15:24

@moop2000, no, as there's no way to authenticate you. It also doesn't affect the mobile site but it will do when I've tweaked it.

Posted by yellowcastle in United States, 18 Jun 2010 15:33

@Huw - great addition but then I never would have known there was something called a BEANO... :o)

Posted by jonbuddy in United States, 18 Jun 2010 15:46

Weird....I'm keeping it the same. Like yellowcastle said a few minutes earlier, you can learn about places all around the world! :)

Posted by Smallfryjon in United States, 18 Jun 2010 15:51

@yellowcastle - Yeah, I didn't even know BEANO existed=P

Posted by Superkalle in Sweden, 18 Jun 2010 16:11

Great feature. A first in the Lego community (that I'm aware of).
But I note that you have the english speaking countries as individual selections and then "Europe" and "the rest of the world". Is there a reason for this?

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 18 Jun 2010 16:25

@superkalle10, mainly because, unfortunately, the non-English speaking world is underrepresented here in terms of news. Maybe if and when we have more contributors from other countries it will be worth expanding the categories.

Posted by itsaturkey in United States, 18 Jun 2010 17:30

cool new feature Huw! pretty soon there wont be any new site updates cuz' the site already has them all! keep up the good work!
yellowcastle-well i knew of Beano, that is, the drug beano, not the comic!

Posted by absolutelylez in United Kingdom, 18 Jun 2010 17:30

most excellent! thanks!

Posted by Jarod98 in United Kingdom, 18 Jun 2010 22:23

I just used the feature, thanks Huw! Like Alemas, I won't be bored hearing about things on the other side of the world. :)

What an idea!

Posted by atkinsar in United Kingdom, 19 Jun 2010 03:36

Nice feature but not something I'll use, I want to know what's going on everywhere!

Posted by Cactus in Israel, 19 Jun 2010 03:41

great idea! bravo!

Posted by vynsane in United States, 19 Jun 2010 08:47

You didn't mention, though, that you can also filter results on-the-fly by clicking on the category name below the article title!

I see myself using this method more instead of shutting out a whole bunch of stuff automatically, but that's what I like about multiple avenues of customization! This way you can have your cake AND cookies and eat them both - if you're interested in learning about how weird British magazine names are, you don't have to hide UK news articles, but can click on 'Shopping News (US)' to get all the info for that category in one place without having to read 'Beano' all over the page ;)

Although, I could see now splitting RSS feeds into their appropriate categories - I presume the XML for the feed is dynamically generated, just add the same parameter filtering to RSS as you do to the /news pages now!

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 19 Jun 2010 08:55

@vynsane, you spotted that -- good -- thanks for the suggestion :-)

Good idea about the RSS feeds too, that should be fairly easy.

Posted by Leela in Poland, 19 Jun 2010 16:34

Thank you!!
That's really useful and I'm really glad you added this feature. I also wanted to comment somewhere on how annoying it is to scroll through the news I have no interest in. Plus I would get excited that there's something new just to see it's some local sale.

But it doesn't work at all for the news archive - for me it filters only what's on the home page - is this supposed to be like that?

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 19 Jun 2010 17:19

@Leela, you'll see everything in the news archive but you can filter by category from the menu.

Congrats on a 1-2-3 finish in the Speedway GP this evening :-)

Posted by wolfgang514 in United States, 20 Jun 2010 10:31

"Thanks Huw! But I'm going to keep my settings mostly the same because I think it's kinda neet to see LEGO news from around the world!"

Posted by DrathMaul1997 in United Kingdom, 22 Jun 2010 07:27

@wolfgang *agree*

Commenting has ended on this article.