Created by spirituality (contact me)
I'm a webmaster and getting addicted to squidoo. In this lens I share my understanding of the new properties of the introductory module in squidoo.
Your fans are waiting!
Introduction, Contents and Discovery Tool
Squidoo recently changed the Introduction module. It suddenly has an inbuilt table of content and a 'discovery tool'. This lens is about the ins and outs of these new features.
Squidoo gives these options on all lenses, but the features don't show up yet in all designs (not on squidlit, squidwho and the ever-project for instance). You can already fill them in as you would want to - the squidoo design team is obviously preparing for a rollout of a design for these other squidoo-designs.
Introduction: Intro-text
Make sure you put enough text here, because if you don't your readers will be led out of your lens before you know it with the new stuff discussed below.
It's a good idea to upload a picture as well, because that picture will show up all over squidoo and make your lens look more attractive.
Table of Contents
First let me show you how the default screen looks with the table of content option turned off:
The same screen looks like this once you click on on:
Make sure you click on most of your modules here. But if you have several that have the same title, only have the first in the table of content.
Discovery tool
I'll show you the result in a bit. Here's what the tool looks like though:
Fill in three quality lenses that fit the theme of the lens you are making. If you don't have any of your own, you can also let squidoo choose.
Whether you add anything here or not, squidoo will choose a few lenses that are related anyhow. This tool just gives you a chance to choose half of them yourself.
You can also choose to turn the feature off, but I would advise against that. The advantage of the feature is that your lens possibly gets shown on other people's lenses as a link.
I've obviously turned the feature on on all my own lenses - which is the default state anyhow. In the case of this lens I've put in the most related lensography and my lens on squidoo modules.
How to... move the 'Contents at a glance' stuff down on the screen
The solution is pretty simple actually:
make sure you have a few paragraphs in your introduction module
The introduction module gets shown before the blue rectangle which has 'contents at a glance' and 'explore related pages'. So more text (and perhaps pictures) there, means they get moved down.
Alternatively - this is where squidoo may someday put a stop to this - you can:
use a very tall picture in the introduction module
I would not advise this beyond reason, because it just puts in more white on your page and while it DOES move the blue contents at a glance feature down - it also makes your lens look kind of empty if you overdo it.
Still, you can see it at work on this lens. My picture in my introduction module is taller than the text is, creating some white space and moving the light-blue in between stuff down.
Again: if this is misused often, squidoo could just decide to cut off pictures beyond a certain hight - still, for now it would work to move things down.
The end result: the new squidoo look as of April 2008
'content at a glance' is where your 'table of contents' ends up. In some cases the table of content module also ends up on this spot. I'm not sure what triggers that, but it's probably when you haven't added any text to the module.
'Explore related lenses' is where those lenses you added in the 'discovery tool' end up. You get to put in three lenses and squidoo brings up the total to six - if it can find enough related lenses.
So what do you think of this new Introductory module?
What do you think of the new introductory module
Fetching blurbs now... please stand byToo many features, I'm going crazy.
gurneywagon says:
I agree with you on the displayed area. I've seen other lenses where the display is further down the page and will be looking through the "how to lenses to find out how to do just that.
You've offered some very helpful information and links...5* and thanks.
Posted April 26, 2008
spirituality says:
I'm not sure I like having links out of my lens in the middle of the screen, before people have even seen the content of my lens.
Posted April 18, 2008
Love the new options
Rob3 says:
Being able to display Contents at a Glance is a welcome addition. Well done to you for highlighting this to those of us who had not found it yet. As already mentioned, when one had long lenses the Contents module was not ideal.
Totally agree on moving the bio to where it was before on the sidebar.
Great work! 5*
Posted May 05, 2008
goldenecho says:
I love being able to add contents at a glance--I have some really long lenses and this is great! The Discovery Tool is being ousted...and I am happy to discover that it CAN be ousted. When I first saw the changes I thought I was stuck with them.
I also wish they would move our bio somewhere else...I want to have it on the page, but I'd prefer people focus on my content, not me. It was much better on the sidebar...even down at the bottom would be preferred.
Posted April 22, 2008
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gurneywagon
Thanks for all the info you've compiled AND provided. Posted April 26, 2008 |
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I'm a lensmaster, webdesigner an oldest child, an eternal student, a former teacher and single. Most of you know me here on Squidoo as lensmaster 'spirituality' - but I've also got a life outside my interests in spirituality (though perhaps that's n...
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