Features that I would love to see on HubPages
HubPages is the best writing site available online in my opinion. And my opinion has become biased by the absolutely amazing user interface provided to write. The capsules that we assemble make the entire process of publishing hubs very flexible while maintaining the strict guidelines (e.g., no img tag in text capsule, after all you have photo capsule for that)
But off course after using the UI for publishing hubs for some time, I felt the need of some additional features. I tried to do some sort of survey via questions (another great feature) with fellow hubbers to know their opinions too.
Please try to participate in the polls below and feel free to add your desired features in the comments section. Note that, instead of 4 polls, I would have required just one if one or more features could be selected :)
Would you like Multiple Choice option in Poll Capsule?
Multiple Choices in a Poll
More than often I wish I could give my poll participants a choice of selecting multiple responses. If a checkbox is also allowed along with the radio button, it would be absolutely great. I asked a question regarding this, and few of my fellow hubbers agreed with me, they would love to have this feature too. Those who didn't want it, said that extra features might cause more glitches, but since it can be optional it won't harm those who don't want to utilize it.
Squidoo has a module which allows this, along with an optional comment for the poll specifically. I've not used Squidoo too much, but by looking at others' articles there, it can be said that it definitely improves the interactivity.
Would you per hub Accolades/Quality measure which is stable irrespective of traffic?
Per hub Accolades - which are there to stay
When someone writes a good hub, initially the traffic is good, but with time, even for a good hub the traffic may fall down. Especially when a hubber is inactive for some time, the hubscore for hubs dramatically decreases. The quality of hub is great, but how would a passerby know that? If the hubscore will decrease with traffic, what's the point of sorting the hubs by to different criteria "Hot" and "Best". There should be a different way to judge the quality of the hub, probably by the number of vote ups or downs and Useful/Interesting/Beautiful etc. feedback that the hub has received. But once that feedback is given and the quality accolade granted to a particular hub, it should not taken back (unless off course if the hub is edited and some malicious/copied content is added which would be flagged/detected anyways).
The hubber score also fluctuates with the amount of hubtivity, so a stable quality measure for hubs at least would really be worthwhile.
Would you like to color code your capsules which are left aligned?
Background Color options for capsules which are not right aligned
Background color coding is currently allowed for only right aligned capsules, but sometimes it might be helpful to make a hub more presentable if left aligned capsules could be given a different background color/border, especially if it's a photo capsule.
Would you like to follow writers for certain topics?
Option to follow Writers topic wise
The writers on HubPages have impressive talent of writing on completely different topics. While it's compliment to their versatility, it's also a problem for their followers who might be interested in one of the topics but totally repel the others. Titles in the email notifications by HubPages are also not always helpful - you can't always make out the category. How nice would it be to follow a favorite writer's work on topics/categories which are interesting? This kind of feature could be added for writers who have a good number of hubs on different topics.
Would you like to appreciate and/or read appreciated comments?
Likes for Comments
Sometimes Hubbers/readers post valuable comments. On a hub with large number of comments, it's almost impossible to even skim through comments, but if there were a system for liking comments, the number of likes for a comment would help the reader to judge whether the comment is a must read. What else, this feature could be accompanied by a 'sorting criteria' for comments - currently we just have new and old, the classic date criteria for displaying comments.
Would you like to be able to highlight comments by your readers?
Author's ability to Highlight a comment
I've seen this happening many times, with me as well as other hubbers. Some commenters leave comments which cover certain additional points in the hub. Say a 11th tip in a ten tips for doing something hub. An author can always add a reference to such a comment in the hub. But it would be awesome if this could be automated with a button - 'add comment to the hub as text capsule' or at least 'highlight comment', so that author can easily add easily add others opinions to their hub.
Hubpages @ Amazon
Blogs and Writing @ Amazon
Comments
Great suggestions and I hope the HubPages Team is listening!
Due to the recent changes, we have to make all capsules full width. I liked the earlier rule of aligning the pictures or notes, to a specific capsule, where we discussed more about it.
Thanks for sharing this article!
- AUTHOR
Thanks for stopping by and commenting Bill, it's such an old article actually, that most of the features might have become obsolete. I've checked it in a long time though, will try to update it with a new wish list.
All wonderful suggestions, my friend. Some appear to be fairly easy to implement. Perhaps the HP staff is paying attention to your suggestions. I hope so.
blessings always
bill
- AUTHOR
I'm sorry for replying too late to some of my readers.
@Giselle - Thanks, I'm glad you liked the poll attempt at making the hub 'interactive' :)
@Kevin - Great.. Actually that was the purpose of this hub, to find out if someone else wishes for same features.
@PegCole - True - Power could be abused, but a balance need to be found. Sharkye11 has a very good alternative in my opinion
@Maralexa - Thanks for your generous appreciation. I hope some of hubpages designers think like you too :D
@htodd - Thanks for stopping by and commenting
@CassyLu1981 - I'm glad we think alike for this feature :)
@forbcrin - Content has been and will always be the almighty of online writing :) Additional helpful features are just helpful aid to make presentation better. Well I'm amused that you find it amusing - since it was not my intention to make the hub funny.
@Sharkye11 - Assuming that I've the most recently added features already functioning @ HubPages - your comment is highlighted and added to the body of the hub with all due credit for the great alternative for 'abusable' background color feature and brand new humor category section idea :)
I would love to be able to align text and photos to the left as well as the right. It would add some visual interest to the layout. I like the idea of the left aligned capsules having background color, but agree with a previous commenter that it could be over-done. Maybe if they only allowed, say, 2 left aligned capsules to be highlighted?
What would really be cool, would be to have a humor category listed in each topic section. I see so many great humor hubs, but they don't seem to be categorized for easy search.
Ha, ha, ha, some of the hubs really need all these innovations, because sure as hell the contents does not do anything for the authors...
How about writing some good and interesting content? Do you think Hub pages can do that, or is it entirely up to us????
I would like to have it where we could post a capsule on the right side of the text, like picture on the right and text on the left, instead of it making the text always stay to the left. Excellent ideas! Voted up and shared :)
Thanks for the great post..nice
I particularly like this hub,anusha. I also agree that HubPages has made things easy for us to write and publish articles that look professional. And I think that your suggestions above are excellent and quite valuable to hubbers. Thanks for your thoughts and your hub!
I agree that HubPages is the best site! The way they have the capsules organized allows for ease of use and consistency. Background colors are good unless people start cluttering up their articles with too much color. It may detract from the professional appearance of the site.
The text flowing to the right is soemthing I had also wished for! Voted Up. Thanks, Kevin
Some well thought out ideas here. I'd especially like the option to be able to place a picture capsule on the left with the text flowing around it on the right. A pic size between 'half width' and 'full width' would also be a helpful improvement.
Anyhow, a great hub and I especially liked how you had the polls to let us have our say too.
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