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cswake
11-20-2010, 01:50 PM
I'm dedicating this thread to my effort to pick-up the baton from other sites that initiated the effort to catalog Ron Paul's efforts over the past several decades. I originally was convinced of the soundness of Paul's positions, and subsequently became dedicated to this cause, thanks in part to ronpaullibrary.org. Thirty second soundbites are not enough to convince someone that liberty is what has been missing in this country for decades, and hence, in my eyes, the Ron Paul Library was invaluable. To my disappointment, the site closed:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=264476
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?t=268847
Frankly, I'm not impressed with the other options available -[http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/] and [http://paul.house.gov/] - for a combination of reasons that ultimately amount to usability and completeness. Thus, I have taken the initiative to push beyond their individual efforts and model an archive along the lines of ronpaullibrary.org, with some improvements. :) Up to this point I've created what I think is an ideal site structure and populated it with all of Texas Straight Talk and a few speeches and interviews. Before I take the time to add all the additional work Dr. Paul has done (it's a ridiculously large amount), I'm posting here to receive any feedback and recommendations on how to improve the site's usefulness. Suggestions are gladly welcome:

http://www.ronpaularchive.com

Nate-ForLiberty
11-21-2010, 10:28 PM
this is f---ing awesome! totally bookmarked! I love the layout, color scheme, and navigation (especially in the "by date" area).

Two very nitpicky suggestions. On the homepage you have Ron Paul's latest additions, GREAT!, how about a short description under the title of each one. So instead of...

Interview: John King
[tags here]

you'd have....

Interview: John King
TSA pat downs, naked body scanners, abuses
[tags here]


And also, shouldn't the "<--older" button be pointing to the right?


You've done a phenomenal job here. This will be an invaluable resource in the coming year.

THANK YOU!

cswake
11-21-2010, 11:08 PM
Music to my ears. :D


Interview: John King
[tags here]

you'd have....

Interview: John King
TSA pat downs, naked body scanners, abuses
[tags here]Are you suggesting to use the TSA pat downs, naked body scanners, and abuses as tags? Or do you just want a small description of the video?


And also, shouldn't the "<--older" button be pointing to the right?Fixed on the main page... need to go through the rest.

Nate-ForLiberty
11-21-2010, 11:17 PM
Music to my ears. :D

Are you suggesting to use the TSA pat downs, naked body scanners, and abuses as tags? Or do you just want a small description of the video?

Fixed on the main page... need to go through the rest.

fixed. keep the tags that you have, those are great. But to search quickly, it'd be nice to have a short description.

Interview: John King
[tags here]

you'd have....

Interview: John King
Ron Paul talks about TSA abuses.
[tags here]

cswake
11-21-2010, 11:54 PM
^ It's in-place now. The other issue will be to add description and tags to everything that's already in the database, plus all new additions. Thanks for the suggestions and feel free to let me know of any other thoughts you have.

Nate-ForLiberty
11-22-2010, 12:01 AM
^ It's in-place now. The other issue will be to add description and tags to everything that's already in the database, plus all new additions. Thanks for the suggestions and feel free to let me know of any other thoughts you have.

yeah, that looks good. Sounds like a lot of work ahead for you :D. I have one other suggestion that you may want to think about. On the homepage have a "Featured" section first. Here you will have a youtube or whatever of Ron Paul talking about something topical. For instance, the "Enough is Enough" vid. That way people won't have to dig for it or remember what day it was posted. Right underneath the "Featured" section would be your "Recent" section which is what you have now. Doing this will encourage a bit more traffic to your site since there will be regular and obvious changes to the index page.

If that is not the direction you want to go, that's cool to. A static archive is just as valuable.

cswake
11-22-2010, 01:14 PM
I'm not worried about the traffic as much as just having the resource for current/future liberty people. That said, I don't want to be too over the top and and lose focus on what the purpose is here ... however, I have included something small on the right-hand side to show the most popular articles over the past week.

I did have to remove that fancy date scheme that you liked since it was too big a hit on the database and timed out the website... :( I've replaced it with something that is not quite as pretty, but easy to use and straightforward.

Nate-ForLiberty
11-22-2010, 01:23 PM
I'm not worried about the traffic as much as just having the resource for current/future liberty people. That said, I don't want to be too over the top and and lose focus on what the purpose is here ... however, I have included something small on the right-hand side to show the most popular articles over the past week.

I did have to remove that fancy date scheme that you liked since it was too big a hit on the database and timed out the website... :( I've replaced it with something that is not quite as pretty, but easy to use and straightforward.

too bad on that. What you have now is functional, but can become difficult on people with poor vision. (I'm thinking of the older generation). I'd recommend having something like this...

2010
January | May | September
February | June | October
March | July | November
April | August | December



of course you'd want to line up better so it looks nice. (hard to format in a post). If the page becomes long, then have links to each year at the top of the page that will bring the view down the page (forgot what it's called when you do that)

Todd
11-22-2010, 01:39 PM
This is great. I miss ronpaullibrary.com

It was about the only reference there was to find his work based on subject.

Todd
11-23-2010, 04:59 PM
bump

romacox
11-23-2010, 05:37 PM
This is so helpful...Thank you so much for doing this. This is especially essential if he decides to run for President in 2012 because there is so much misinformation coming from the media and some of Ron Paul Supporters. Having it in his own words (especially videos) is absolutely the way to go

If you have not already done it, you might want to add his voting record which shows he is one of the few politicians who votes like he speaks (honest)
http://www.ontheissues.org/ron_paul.htm

http://www.votesmart.org/voting_category.php?can_id=296

P.S. I have bookmarked your site.

specsaregood
11-23-2010, 05:42 PM
thanks for picking up the baton cswake!

Did you get the .zip I made of the old archive?

romacox
11-23-2010, 05:47 PM
P.S.

One recommendation: You might want to put a link to the original source so that if we show this to someone who has been misinformed about Ron Paul, we can document that it is his words not mine.

I say this because there are misquotes out there. CATO institute was caught misquoting Ron Paul during his presidential campaign, and it caused him a great deal of trouble.

cswake
11-23-2010, 05:52 PM
^ You hit it on the head with the misinformation. Can't tell you how many times I went to the library and systematically showed not only Paul's positions, but that Paul was consistent in his delivery of the message.

I do have a problem with ontheissues.org and votesmart.org - to understand a lot of Paul's votes you have to understand why. (That's been sitting in the back of my mind... some sort of summary to explain why Paul voted the way he did) His votes have to be judged in the context of the actual legislation and the Constitution, and Y/N or summaries don't quite do him justice. For example:

Voted NO on requiring lobbyist disclosure of bundled donations. (May 2007)
Voted NO on decreasing gun waiting period from 3 days to 1. (Jun 1999)
Voted NO on establishing "network neutrality" (non-tiered Internet). (Jun 2006)

cswake
11-23-2010, 05:57 PM
Did you get the .zip I made of the old archive?

Yes, thank you! They are already imported into the database and waiting for me to read, tag, and sort them... made my life a lot easier to have them. I'm shooting to have them done by year end, but they are already accessible (Uncategorized) and pop-up in the search.

cswake
11-23-2010, 06:05 PM
One recommendation: You might want to put a link to the original source so that if we show this to someone who has been misinformed about Ron Paul, we can document that it is his words not mine.I've thought about this and I'm not sure how to approach it. I can't link to Congressman Paul's website since the links will break next time they redo it. (Which is why ronpaullibrary.org went offline) Anything he writes/speaks in Congress goes into the Congressional Record, so I could reference those - catch is that's a ridiculous amount of time that I just don't have. No idea on how to handle Texas Talk.

cswake
11-24-2010, 09:16 AM
too bad on that.I was able to reintroduce the original fancy approach by preventing sample articles from showing up. (And instead just having links to the dates) :D