Check out the Place Pages Beta!

[Jo Yardley]

Another day another topic

So now that our 1920s Berlin place page is sort of done ( https://places.secondlife.com/parcels/3422/the-1920s-berlin-project-weimar-republic-role-play-sim  ) I decided to try and test the search engine.

I searched for 1920s Berlin.

Nothing.

Well nothing except a whole bunch of spam!
And not just totally unrelated advertisements, but advertisements that look like links and they might confuse visitors who are new and looking for a place to go and come to the conclusion that the place page search engine only is there to give them links to advertisements.
AND the spam comes before the little message saying 'no results'!
See image below.

But besides the advertisements that really shouldn't be there, it is quite odd that this search does not help me find my 1920s Berlin place page.
Even when searching for just Berlin, nothing shows up.
I have both 1920s & Berlin in the description of my place page.
I search while being logged in.

When I search for 1920s I finally get a hit.
But none of these are related to the actual 1920s Berlin sim.

There is both a parcel place page and a region place page for 1920s Berlin.

Also, most of the suggestions that do pop up when I search for 1920s bring me to pages that won't load.

For instance, when I search for 1920s, one of the results is for sonatta morales her shop;
https://places.secondlife.com/parcels/46874/8-sonatta-morales-8-1920s-1930s-1940s-1950s

That link does not work.

Here is the actual page;

https://places.secondlife.com/parcels/3438/8-sonatta-morales-8-1920s-1930s-1940s-1950s

So then I search just for sonatta Morales.
Two hits.

https://places.secondlife.com/parcels/46874/8-sonatta-morales-8-1920s-1930s-1940s-1950s

Page not found.

https://places.secondlife.com/regions/46933/time-portal

Page also not found.

Finally, I also think the search results aren't very appealing.
Would be nice to have a slightly larger image and a clear title with description in stead of what the result looks like now.

 

 

[Jo Yardley]

Spend ALL night working on place pages... so here is another thing I noticed.

It turns out that some people get all the parcels in MY region in their list of editable plots, my plots were all editable to him.

I'm not too keen on that as you may imagine.

So how do we give (or remove) the powers of people to edit the places in my region?

Is this a group permission thing?

As landowner, I want to be the one who decides who gets to edit which page.

It would be absolutely FANTASTIC if I could give tenants the option to change their own parcel page, but I don't want them to have that power with other parcels.

 

[Whirly Fizzle]

You may edit and embellish a Place Page for any parcel or region you own, or for group-owned parcels for which you have the Toggle 'Show Place in Search' and set category group ability.

Ref:

 

[Jo Yardley]

Thank you, I'll probably leave that on so shopkeepers can tweak their own pages.

Although I'd probably prefer to have the option to set that per place page.

[Evangeline Arcadia]

I've posted this in another thread because I hadn't seen this one yet, but I updated place page today and am also not getting any search results for my place (which has been listed in Search for years). I did a search for Parks and got 7 results (only one vaguely relevant to parks) and my place wasn't in it. What's going on?

[Claireschen Hesten]

3 hours ago, Evangeline Arcadia said:

I've posted this in another thread because I hadn't seen this one yet, but I updated place page today and am also not getting any search results for my place (which has been listed in Search for years). I did a search for Parks and got 7 results (only one vaguely relevant to parks) and my place wasn't in it. What's going on?

Don't worry i got the same typed in the exact title i'd put for my location (that is shown in search) nothing showed up typed in my region my location is in nothing showed up then typed in the group that owns the parcel i rent and no results out of those shown in search for the group came up on the first page out of the group owned parcels that come up for me in "my places"

[Evangeline Arcadia]

Thanks Claireschen. Seems like PP is pretty useless then!

[Jo Yardley]

I noticed the calendar button now shows up when editing, maybe it always has but I only just noticed it.

Look forward to being able to use this, it could be the place pages most useful thingy.

I hope it will allow us to easily add events, add regular events without adding each one separately (this would give you something even facebook doesn't have) and that it will give you a nice clear page that shows all the events in the region in one spot.

So that anyone visiting the, for instance, Time Portal Place page can see all the events happening in the region that month right away and in which parcel they are happening.

[Jo Yardley]

I've been trying the calendar feature.

I love the idea of people seeing all upcoming events when they visit a page, this will make the page also interesting for regulars and locals, not just as a tool to lure new people to the sim.

So I'd like for it to be more prominent.

I don't think most, or even any of the page visitors care about the parcel information that is now the first thing you see on the page, as far as I'm concerned this can be moved all the way down, after everything else.

The calendar might be a good thing to place in that spot.
I think that besides a description of what is happening in the sim, the events are the most important part so it needs to be right up there.

Also perhaps make dates when events happen red on the calendar?

Here is one of my pages, you can see 2 event at the bottom;

https://places.secondlife.com/parcels/3422/the-1920s-berlin-project-weimar-republic-role-play-sim

One thing I don't like is having to go to the community events page to set each event up.

I would much rather just do that right there on my place page.

And, PLEASE add the option to do repeated events!

I have DAILY events in my sim, do I really have to copy paste these 365 times into the SL community events section?

That is not going to happen.

I realise that until community events can be set on the place page itself, this is more a case of a seperate jira so ; https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/BUG-134240

Another big thing that would make this all even better would be to add ALL events in a region to the Region place page.

Here is my region page;

https://places.secondlife.com/regions/3484/1920s-berlin-project

It only has one place because I don't want people to directly teleport into one of the many other places

But this region page would become a lot more useful if it showed ALL the events in ALL the places/parcels in that region.

Because then people would check out the region page and see that today we have a movie at the cinema, then dinner at the restaurant, happy hour at the bar, school for kids, rp event by the police station, etc, etc.

In short, calendar deserves more attention on parcel and region pages.

 

[Chic Aeon]

Just noting that I hate those ads that come up also. As far as I can tell those are "ad words" type ads put there by the search engine. I BELIEVE that is an opt in opt out kind of thing. I can't get too excited about Places Pages until they get rid of those (which have nothing to do with SL) and actually get search to come up with something (mine didn't either) although it WAS in there before I edited it (who knows).

 

[Whirly Fizzle]

5 hours ago, Chic Aeon said:

Just noting that I hate those ads that come up also. As far as I can tell those are "ad words" type ads put there by the search engine. I BELIEVE that is an opt in opt out kind of thing. I can't get too excited about Places Pages until they get rid of those (which have nothing to do with SL) and actually get search to come up with something (mine didn't either) although it WAS in there before I edited it (who knows).

 

Hmm I'm not seeing any ads on the place pages, even with adblock disabled.

[Chic Aeon]

16 minutes ago, Whirly Fizzle said:

Hmm I'm not seeing any ads on the place pages, even with adblock disabled.

Then you are lucky.  Going to check again.

 

^^ and now they are gone! 

MAGIC!    LOL. 

Works for me. 

Good to know they fixed that. Thanks. 

[Jo Yardley]

You get ads on the search page when you get the results, I think that is the only time.
This is of course rather annoying and something I can't understand.

We are on a LL website looking for a SL sim, I don't get why LL would bother visitors with ads here, it gives new visitors such a bad but also confusing first experience.
Look at this search result.
I look for Berlin and ads about hotels in Berlin even before the results.

What if someone clicks those, ends up on some Berlin hotel website, thinks the whole SL website is some sort of spam scam and decides to give up and do something else?

If for some reason this ad revenue is essential for LL, at least put it at the bottom of the page, not the top!

Search results first!

And perhaps we can make the pictures for each place page a little bigger so you can actually see whats on them?

 

[Chic Aeon]

19 minutes ago, Jo Yardley said:

You get ads on the search page when you get the results, I think that is the only time.
This is of course rather annoying and something I can't understand.

We are on a LL website looking for a SL sim, I don't get why LL would bother visitors with ads here, it gives new visitors such a bad but also confusing first experience.
Look at this search result.
I look for Berlin and ads about hotels in Berlin even before the results.

What if someone clicks those, ends up on some Berlin hotel website, thinks the whole SL website is some sort of spam scam and decides to give up and do something else?

If for some reason this ad revenue is essential for LL, at least put it at the bottom of the page, not the top!

Search results first!

And perhaps we can make the pictures for each place page a little bigger so you can actually see whats on them?

 

This is odd as I certainly HAVE seen those before but when I just checked (through search) they didn't show up for me. 

I am in Chrome and haven't added any ad blockers or updated (they may be autoupdate). 

Whatever -- they really NEED to get rid of these. It pretty much (that and search not actually working) makes the Places Page of no use at all. I LIKE the idea and I think they are very pretty and if the products on the sim part would work much like it did say 8 years ago that would be great. Right now, I don't see much point in making the effort to make a page. 

[Jo Yardley]

Any news on when we can improve any updates/improvements?

[Chic Aeon]

Happily I have great news to report on this so looked up this LONG thread to add to. 

The Machinima Open Studio Project is officially opening at LEA6 this weekend. With that in mind I decided to make a Places page even though my attempts in September 2017 were not great primarily because SEARCH was AWFUL and didn't work at all. 

Amazingly even before making my pretty new page I tested by searching for "machinima" and there was LEA6's page with no text or photos of course, but still SEARCH found it and with none of that messy "Gogglishious" stuff included. Big clapping here.

All went well and there is now an option to add a YouTube video which I will do in the future. I don't think that was there last Fall.  The slide show is only three photos now but bigger and it worked well and easily -- as it did before really.

My only issue is that I can't get back to the page to edit as the drop down menu doesn't work for me in Chrome. Somewhere along the way I bookmarked the backend page so I can get there for changes via bookmarks. Likely there is another way but that should be looked at sometime.

 

Meanwhile here is my page:  https://places.secondlife.com/parcels/64518/machinima-open-studio-project-http-machinimasl-blogspot-com

 

That long title is taken from the land tab and apparently not editable unless I edit in the land tab. Also, a change -- you need to put your land in search if it isn't in order to SEE WHILE EDITING. Not a big deal; just a warning. And, I can see why the change :D.

This is the only land that I can have a places page on so cannot test further. My shop land is rental and not "mine". But since things were not searching well at LEA12 (also obviously Linden owned land) I doubt that WHERE I am now has much to do with it. 

So take a look and make yourself a page. It really is a much more interesting way to search as more folks use it. Now they can since it is WORKING!

 

 

[Rockridge Constantine]

Since place page parcel listings take the info from the in world parcel info tab, it would be nice if the limits were the same. 

Edited January 19, 2018 by Rockridge Constantine

[Claireschen Hesten]

Nice to see this bumped last time i checked out the places page nothing would come up in search very pleased that i can now type in my home sim or parcel/store name and my parcel shows up

[Jo Yardley]

So, how is this going?

Any progress?

When I look at the page for my Time Portal sim I still see a lot of room for improvement;

https://places.secondlife.com/regions/3482/time-portal

I'd like to see the calendar regardless of there being any events planned so people can see there's nothing on this month.
I'd also like to be able to set events right here in stead of having to go the events schedule thingy which by the way should also allow smaller parcels to set up events because in a realistic scaled city sim, some clubs, bars, etc. can be just a few square meters!

Also more additional images please, if you have a shopping sim you sometimes want to show more than just 3 shops, I have a time travel sim, I'd like to show at least 6 time zones.

Region information is totally uninteresting to 99% of visitors of the page, put it at the bottom and put more interesting things in its place such as links to our websites, social media, events calendar, etc.

The places need one or two lines each for us to describe them, just the name of the parcel isn't enough.

Etc, a few of these things have been mentioned before.

Would be nice if we could get someone involved with this to tell us if theres any work still being done on this and if we can expect any changes.

[Rockridge Constantine]

Yes, let's keep this going with updates and let us know how things are progressing.  I hope to return to working with the pages, but I need to see that work is being done on improvements. tyvm.

[Chic Aeon]

As far as I know these have been fixed. I have one for LEA6 and one for my store and they seem to be working well and search was way better.  When I searched with some words I would expect to turn up my pages, they did. I am pretty sure all those Google Adwords type things were gone (really, I am sure I would have noticed those.  

My store sight has all the items on the floor listed for sale so people can see what is there in the shop.  Now we just need more folks to make their pages PRETTY so that folks will use the feature. Most that I saw didn't even have a hero banner :D. 

[Daimon Ravenhurst]

I only just discovered Place Pages. In trying to set up some of ours, I have discovered that the teleports do not go to the parcel landing point as they should. People testing out the link are rezzing inside of a wall. Is there anything to be done about this? (And no, I can't move the wall, lol)

 

Daimon Silverdragon

(somagroup.resident)

Property Manager, Qoheleth & Seeking Wisdom

[Alyona Su]

20 hours ago, SomaGroup said:

I only just discovered Place Pages. In trying to set up some of ours, I have discovered that the teleports do not go to the parcel landing point as they should. People testing out the link are rezzing inside of a wall. Is there anything to be done about this? (And no, I can't move the wall, lol)

 

Daimon Silverdragon

(somagroup.resident)

Property Manager, Qoheleth & Seeking Wisdom

I have a Places Page set-up for mine and I'm pretty sure when you click on the teleport button (Visit this place) on that page, it basically opens the Parcel Info/TP widget (the same way that maps.secondlife.com does). So, either I'm misremembering or something has changed (there is the current plague of broken TPs across the grid right now.

Here's mine if you're willing to give it a go (as in: it's a different place from a different person, etc.): https://places.secondlife.com/parcels/105642/damnsim-cross

 

[Chic Aeon]

21 hours ago, SomaGroup said:

I only just discovered Place Pages. In trying to set up some of ours, I have discovered that the teleports do not go to the parcel landing point as they should. People testing out the link are rezzing inside of a wall. Is there anything to be done about this? (And no, I can't move the wall, lol)

 

Daimon Silverdragon

(somagroup.resident)

Property Manager, Qoheleth & Seeking Wisdom

I just tested mine --- or had a friend test the Places Page link.   MINE takes people to the middle of the sim (128 128) rather than the set landing point. Since I know that has been a map issue for-e-ver I  placed a welcome area at that point when I designed the sim.  

I SUSPECT that if you have the ROUTING set to the Landing Point ONLY -- that might fix it.   Doesn't work when tested.  It is likely important to know that it is not ONLY the places pages where folks might end up in your wall :D.   If you already tried the dedicated landing point, then there is likely no fix other than redesign. Again, not a new issue.  

 

EDIT:  I checked my STORE and had a similar issue as you did. It looks like the places pages defaults to the center of the parcel whatever size the parcel IS. I did change the landing point but it didn't help.  You could put in a ticket, but I suspect that they know this is an issue.  The Places Pages haven't been used that much but they may become more popular in the future. Meanwhile the folks coming to my store just fall though the floor a bit and end up in the prefabs room. Not horrible but certainly something for folks to keep in mind when designing their area.

Thanks for writing about this to remind us all. 

 

Edited April 2, 2019 by Chic Aeon

[Jo Yardley]

This has been going on since the beginning, I think we brought up that the landing point should be something we can change or alter in the place pages thing but nothing was done with it apparently.

Maybe it's just me, maybe I just haven't been paying attention lately, but it feels a bit like the places pages project has been neglected a bit.

Edited April 2, 2019 by Jo Yardley