Is anyone else frequently frustrated with the number of pages that aren’t quickly accessible via either the top navigation bar of the website / that in practice are only accessible via some “secret” URL that you learned from someone else, or else are nested like 5 or 6 clicks deep into the website? Or is that just me?
Does the website have a human-readable and up-to-date sitemap? If not, is (or would) one being (/be) considered?
Are there any near-term plans to improve ease of navigation on the website? I know people are always talking about ways to add more to the identify page/modal – I’m talking higher level.
I was initially going to create a feature request to see if more could be added to the top navigation bar of the website, but (1) after collecting a dozen examples of hard-to-find URLs, I came to wonder how much more is out there, and (2) not all are best addressable via adding something to the top navigation bar. These two factors make a quick and easy, yet concrete and actionable, feature request a little hard for me to dream up – so I wanted to step back and what everyone else’s thoughts are and if there are any larger plans for improvements in this area.
I still may put in one or more feature requests if I can find some time to sit down and work through my own thoughts a little bit more. Maybe a feature request just for what I think could/should be added to the top navigation bar. And then maybe other feature requests for items I think better accessed via some other part of the website’s UI. If so, would appreciate any guidance from the staff on how to do so effectively? Would it be better to propose a comprehensive expansion of the topnav, or would it be better to do numerous feature requests and focus on one page each – e.g. one request each for “add page x to topnav tab A”, “add page y to topnav tab C”, etc.?
I also have a few forum posts - someone remind me where to find … The wiki for search URLs is good. 2 parts but the answer should be there somewhere. Has a list of contents which helps.
This for example is my bookmarked URL for Geomodel Anomalies. I use it every day with my own added location filter for Cape Peninsula - that bit I can do.
I hate editing the URLs with a passion! I am not techie, I can never remember where to find the info I need, it takes me forever to build a URL that actually works… sigh. And one of these years I will actually remember where to find journal articles/site wikis/blog posts etc., but I would rather be puzzling out violet identifications. Things have gotten better, and the project to index ID comments will be a huge help, but it would be lovely if they could develop a more intuitive UI. No suggestions here, just (overly emotional) agreement that this is an issue.
Yes! Even something like finding the blog was hard enough that I memorized the url before being told that there’s a link in the footer. So funny that the blog features prominently on the Android app and then it’s almost invisible on the website unless the latest post has a banner up on the homepage.
I would like Help to be at the top, not the bottom. I know it is there now, but that isn’t where I expect to look for it. Our Blog could also be at the top. Both are useful.
tiwane, I know you asked regnierda this question, but I’ll jump in and give a couple of answers from my experience:
No link to Ambassador page from iNat front page, nor from my dashboard
No link to Resources page from iNat front page, nor from my dashboard
And once you’re logged in, no way to get to iNat front page (e.g., when you’re doing a live demo)
On the website on the lower left hand side is a link for nearby observations which gives you all observations within a circle of 50km.
Given the density of obvervations we reached, i think it might be usefull to reduce that to a much smaller circle. I usually go for 10m / 20m to see if the blurry thing i am looking at, was observed before.
This is why I created a journal post (that I need to update) with bookmarks to useful iNat info both on & off the site. It’s always available since I made it public, even if I change devices or have logged into a different browser profile with different favorites.
I would like Help to be at the top, not the bottom. I know it is there now, but that isn’t where I expect to look for it. Our Blog could also be at the top.
Help is under “more” at the top. And the forum is under “community” at the top.
I totally agree! I love the creativity and skill people are able to use by editing the URL but I struggle to remember all the rules and figure it out myself. There are then too many specific links to save to go back to later, that I then forget about. I’ll stick to what I can access through the filters on the Observation and Identify pages. :P
Hey all, the topic of the discussion is not about editing search URLs, so please don’t discuss that here. This is about existing pages that are difficult to find.
The (lack of) findability for these kinds of pages was actually a discussion topic this week, we’re aware it’s an issue and are ideating on a solution.
Yeah, it’s really meant for new-to-iNat folk. I’d suggest opening an incognito/private window in your browser. If you go to inaturalist.org in that window, you can load it.
I wouldn’t call this a hidden page, it’s more of filter. So don’t think that fits the topic here. Personally I always use the header search if I want to get to the explore page for a Place, so that’s a quick workaround. I generally don’t like using the Location field, but it will always turn up more places than the Places field will, so it’s what’s presented to users.
I always found journal posts incredibly inaccessible. If you want to find a specific post, you might as well not even try. You have to know where to look to find a journal post, and in order to do that you must have either found it via a user/project’s profile, by somebody referencing it, or catching it as it’s uploaded. Unfortunately you cannot search for journal posts, which would be a great feature- there’s a feature request for this actually.
Wanted to chime in really quick to emphasize again how helpful it is to hear specific examples of the pages you’re having trouble finding/would be interested to have more readily accessible! Like @tiwane mentioned, it’s an ongoing discussion topic to figure out a sustainable solution for this :) Thanks all!
