One challenge we face with having an enormous online archive of articles (over 1,400 at last count) is that finding information can be difficult — especially if you’re just beginning your journey in learning about web design.
For example, we have 35 articles on the topic of CSS alone — it can be confusing for beginners to know which article to read first.
As I’ve discussed previously, we’re aware of a number of improvements that can be made with regard to article navigation, and there are plenty of changes in the pipeline. The first of these is the SitePoint Guru Lists.
Every year the SitePoint Community Awards recognize those members of the SitePoint Forums who have made an exceptional contribution in helping others in their chosen field of expertise. I approached last year’s award winners and asked them to create a list of their favourite SitePoint articles for the category in which they were recognized. The result is an awesome collection of articles that have been hand-picked by experts.
The articles are listed in the order that they should be read, so if you’re tackling a topic for the first time, the first article in each list makes minimal assumptions about your knowledge of that topic. You might have noticed these lists also appearing in the left sidebar of an article or blog post — hopefully they’ll catch the eye of visitors who might have arrived from a search engine and are looking for a place to start.
A huge thankyou to all of our gurus for their time in putting these lists together. I hope you’ll find them useful in advancing your knowledge about the many topics covered here on SitePoint.
Visit the SitePoint Guru Lists.
March 19th, 2008 at 8:41 pm
How about just making a Wiki and repopulate/link the relevant content…
March 19th, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Hi LiQ. Thanks for chiming in.
I like the guru lists for two reasons:
We have a nice admin interface, so updating it each time the community awards come around is a no-brainer.
March 20th, 2008 at 2:04 am
They are also not time-less, what happens when one of the gurus get bored of updating or for any reason quits the team?
You could lock down the wiki and just let members edit. And from what I’ve seen the members here are top-notch in many cases.
Just being constructive, it’s a good initiative, just my input and question.
Thanks
March 20th, 2008 at 2:24 am
I think the section, “So You Want To Be A Hosting Guru?” is a bit misleading. It seems difficult to properly label this within the context of the “Guru” template, but to me the articles in the list should be teaching someone how to be a great Host not how to find one.
Maybe that’s just me. A great compilation either way.
March 20th, 2008 at 6:04 am
Brilliant idea!
Looking forward to working through some of those lists…
March 25th, 2008 at 7:40 pm
The guru lists are great. I’ve already read through many of the CSS articles.
September 9th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Someone has setup a codewiki, same idea as LiQ was talking about.
Seems people are just contributing to it. Cool idea.