How would you improve The Milelion?

The Milelion needs your help to improve. What would you change about The Milelion?

Hello everyone!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again- I have absolutely no clue how to do anything technical on WordPress. Therefore, I’ve always just chugged along and prayed for the best. The problem is, when things do go wrong (like some content disappearing with the recent site migration or the site getting suspended temporarily for excessive CPU usage), I often have no idea how to fix it quickly and it stresses me out to no end.

As the site grows bigger the demands will only increase, and it’s important that the UX continues to be as smooth and as hassle free for all of you as it was on day one. Therefore I’m going to bring on a freelance webmaster to help make some fixes and optimizations on The Milelion.

Here’s where I need your help- if you’ve observed any annoying bugs, issues or if there’s anything at all you think would make the site easier for you to use (features, arrangement, layout, whatever) please leave a comment and a detailed description and I’ll see what can be done.

Be nitpicky, please. If I’m going to bring someone on board I’d rather fully employ them than have them sitting around twiddling their thumbs. If you’ve always been enduring some minor annoyance in order to access the ramblings of The Milelion, now’s the time to say something.

For example, Eddy wrote in to let me know the site doesn’t appear properly when a wide screen monitor is used. I assume it will be an easy fix for someone who knows what they’re doing.

Other features I’m thinking about

  • Implementing a system that allows you to reply to comments via email. For example, I post a comment. John replies to it and I get an email notification. Instead of going back to the site to reply, I can hit reply in my email program and shoot a message back
  • Improving site loading times and minimizing webpage size. The site still scores quite poorly on Google’s PageSpeed Insights and I’m sure there are easy fixes

  • Making full use of page width. In the current theme there’s a lot of white space on either side of posts and this also compresses pictures so they’re harder to read

  • Improving the current comments system to make it easier for people to converse in real time, maybe like a chat (I thought of creating a forum but do we really need another? HWZ and Flyertalk should be sufficient for most miles chasers in Singapore)

This list is of course not exhaustive and I’d really value your input here.

So let me know what can be done better, what needs to get fixed, and I’ll put together a list and engage someone who knows what he or she is doing

Thanks
Aaron

Aaron Wong
Aaron Wong
Aaron founded The Milelion to help people travel better for less and impress chiobu. He was 50% successful.

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Chelsea Kang

Bikini pic gallery pls. Sliding gallery if possible.

jeff

cute jap girls please!

jeff

back to the subject matter, i just started following your page a week ago. initially felt clumbersome, but it is the content that matters. some minor tweaking will be fine, but think you might just focus more time on the content rather than the form. that’s only my preference – cos for me, I only care about the char kway teow and not the colour of the plate on which it is served…. =)

Yi Kai

To be honest, i don’t really like the layout of your recent articles. The 3×2 grid at the top under the main banner shows the recent 6 articles and the 7th recent article loads in full when i access your website from a desktop.

Can we let the most recent article load instead of the 7th?

Thanks!

P/S: i 2nd the bikini slider gallery

Yi Kai

Well, since you are doing an overhaul, might as well remove the 3×2 grid? I mean, it may be just me, but I find it weird to have full articles and preview of articles all on one page. Sorry if I am confusing you but I would rather see a blog that loads the most recent article in full, then the 2nd most recent on the next page. Or, simply just have preview articles in a list, with the most recent article at the top. It makes browsing easier. Again, it may be just me but I am always confused… Read more »

joq

Like wise would prefer not to have the 3×2 grid and then full article of 7th onwards on the main page. would rather have full article or summary lines of most recent 6 (or how many you fancy), and then a side bar on either left or right to display topic titles of other recent entries (amount up to you to decide).

Don’t really serve purpose to display 7th articles onwards in full as we would have already read them :p

Anonymous

I third this suggestion! It’s pretty counter-intuitive to have an “old” article on full display while the newest one is “hidden”

KW

Fourth!

bk

Agreed as well. Would be ideal to scroll through all headlines and enter the articles we are keen to read as it’s challenging finding older articles beyond the 3 x 2. On the other hand, is this your way of making people check back to Milelion more frequently? 😛

PL

I agree with this. The frequency of the posts (not complaining about this btw) makes it a bit difficult to locate articles as they get wiped off the front page rather quickly. This is a bit of a pain if I want to look through the comments to see if there have been updates since I last accessed the article. Scrolling through headlines would be great, or perhaps some kind of archive?

PL

I meant to reply to Aaron’s latest comment but I think the comment system doesn’t allow that many levels of threading. To clarify, I had wanted to check in on whether there had been any new comments to a couple of mid-Sept articles but they had been wiped off the top grid. The comments feed on the left only shows the last 10ish comments, none of which take me to the articles I had in mind (all of which were fairly recent). In order to access the articles, I would then have to scroll down to the bottom of the… Read more »

Anonymous

Like to have a feature with time stamp on the recent comments , and like to see all comments so that we can track where we left off. The “recent comments” get buried very quickly when readers are very active

Alvin Widjaja

is the comment feed still working? for the last 2 days clicking the comment feed only shows:

Not Found
It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search?

Spk307

I was thinking of having a list of last few articles that got comments, rather than a list of comments. In this way, even if there are 30 comments in a new article, the article that got comments before the new one can be reached easily.

Raeza

Just a thought…

A lot of the articles on credit cards or promotions are time sensitive (ie they will expire). Have you considered including in such articles some form of notification bar (with countdown or something) showing whether the deal is live or dead.

That way, if someone clicks a link to an older article, they won’t need to read all the way through to figure it out.

Also, you could then have a small section in the main screen listing what are the live promos going on.

Would be super useful for the casual browser.

XL

More tags, or let readers tag. I remember trying to find some of your articles, and couldn’t because they were not tagged with the right keywords. Can’t remember the specific examples, but it tends to be the ones about credit cards.

Do you recall those chat boxes where you could leave a comment on the person’s page? All the rage in early 2000s. Something along those lines. Then readers can leave comments on time sensitive deals.

Spk307

I assume most traffic might come from mobile browsing. Can we have a small link to share the link through whatsapp?

Gab

On the credit cards t&c’s which are very dynamic…. implement track changes (like in Word) so that the reader can identify what has been changed and when.

Kai

A comment on the formatting of the page.

Is it possible to centralise the page so that the content remains in the centre regardless of resolution of each individual’s device? I’ve noticed the left ident and the amount of space left on the right.

Kai

Adding on,

1. For the main site (milelion.com), is it possible to time stamp each article so that readers would know when the article is published?

2. I’d love if the main site won’t display an article in totality, Instead, a preview on your latest few articles would be nice. Keep the main page compact.

Kai

Well, this new comment tool ain’t that user-friendly, especially if the conversation’s getting longer. Look how “squashed” your comment got after a few rounds of discussions :/

KW

Could you tag the name of the author to the article, visible on the landing page? Would be good to see who the guestwriter is before clicking through. Currently all your guestwriters are simply tagged “guestwriter”.

keithmaxx

Editable comments section, please.

Sam

Can the articles be sorted based on their categories? Having different sections to house the articles with their published dates will make it easier to locate the articles. Thanks.

Sam

That would be great, Aaron! Looking forward to the revamped site!

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