With over 3,000 items now included in the Tom Nob database, the challenge for us has been to keep the site simple and uncluttered while giving users exposure and easy access to the growing mountain of content. While we would never discourage you from packing a lunch and spending the afternoon roaming the site, most of you would prefer to find some good humor as quickly as possible. Here are some tips you can use to avoid being overwhelmed by too much of a good thing.
When you visit the home page of Tom Nob you are presented with the most recent releases in the four main product categories: Film, TV, Books, Audio. These items are constantly changing with the most recently released item for each category listed on top. If you haven’t visited the site in a while, you can click on the link at the bottom of the list (i.e., More Film Releases) and see all the items that have been released sorted in chronological order.
You can also search for items based on when they were added to the site. If you click on any of the menu tabs for the main product categories (Film, TV, Books, Audio), you will see a list of the most recent additions in the upper-right box. These items are sorted by the date they were added to the Tom Nob database with the most recently added listed on top. As above, if you haven’t visited the site in a while, you can click on the link at the bottom of the list (i.e., More TV Additions) and see all the items that have been recently added in chronological order.
As you can see, there are up to eight different lists plus the blog you can subscribe to using at least three different RSS news readers (i.e., Google Reader, Bloglines, netvibes). If you are a user of a different news reader, click on the small RSS icon and you will be provided with more options. (If you don’t see your favorite reader, please let us know and we will add it.) If you are new to RSS feeds, you will quickly discover that they are invaluable and easy to use tools that allow you to stay up-to-date with new additions to a web site. In the case of Tom Nob, RSS subscriptions will enable you to easily track the new releases and recent additions plus new postings on the blog.
While RSS subscriptions have been added to help you with the new, other steps have been taken to make it manageable to sort through the product catalog to find something of interest. To briefly explain how the database is organized, every item that is added to Tom Nob is first assigned to a main category and then a sub-category. When you click on any of the menu tabs for the main product categories (Film, TV, Books, Audio) you will see links to all the sub-categories that have been created for that category. This provides you with the choice of either browsing through all the items in the category or breaking it up into bite-size pieces by clicking on a sub-category. Here is an example using the TV category:
You can narrow your search even further by typing in a keyword search in the upper right corner and clicking on Go. For example, if you like the humor of Mel Brooks, type in the words "Mel Brooks", click on Go, and you will see all the items where Mel Brooks is included in the title, as an actor, as an artist, as an author, or as a director. You can limit the results to a specific product category (i.e., Film) by selecting the drop-down menu before clicking on Go.
We hope these hints make using Tom Nob a more enjoyable and manageable experience.
See also: The Wonderful World of Widgets which illustrates how widgets are used on Tom Nob and the joy they will bring to your life.
and you will be provided with more options. (If you don’t see your favorite reader, please let us know and we will add it.) If you are new to RSS feeds, you will quickly discover that they are invaluable and easy to use tools that allow you to stay up-to-date with new additions to a web site. In the case of Tom Nob, RSS subscriptions will enable you to easily track the new releases and recent additions plus new postings on the blog.
