Posts versus reviews?

[Liza]

Hi everyone,
Not sure if this has been asked already, but I thought I might start a new thread for this.

When I did my import to BL, all of my reviews uploaded pretty much OK (some formatting issues, but no biggie). They showed up on my blog with the book cover, my review, and a little banner on the side with my star rating.

I just completed my first review on BL, but it's showing up more as a general post (no star rating). You can see what I mean here:

http://liza.booklikes.com

Compare the first post to the others.

Any idea what the difference is? Or how to write a review, as compared to a regular post?

Thanks all!

[Becky]

I know that to write a "review" there's a checkbox you have to check on the right, and that differentiates it from a regular blog post, and shows the star rating.

[Liza]

Thanks Becky! Fixed. :)

I'm really feeling sort of lost over there at BL. It's definitely not as user friendly. I like that there is more opportunity to customize, but things feel a bit more hidden to me.

Side question...

How do you read the reviews for a book? For example:
http://booklikes.com/book/344788/the-...
There are a hundred something reviews, but only two show up for me and I don't see a place to see more.

[Liza]

Hmmm...the number of reviews I see is actually how many are posted on amazon (34, not 100, oops). But I'm still not really seeing a way to view other reviews from readers on BL. Not sure if my review is being added to the amazon list, or if it's BL exclusive.

[BrokenTune]

Liza wrote: "Hmmm...the number of reviews I see is actually how many are posted on amazon (34, not 100, oops). But I'm still not really seeing a way to view other reviews from readers on BL. Not sure if my re..."

Because BL currently has individual pages for each edition of a book, it might be that there are only 2 reviews for that particular edition, and that the other reviews are distributed amongst the other editions.

According to the posts on BL about improvements, it looks like BL is working on consolidated book pages for all editions.

[Liza]

OK, good to know I'm not completely basic then. Just things that BL is going to improve.

Back to exploring now. :) Thanks for the input!

[Kinga]

Also, because BL is still consolidating its bookdatabase and it's all a little messy I found that if I want to read all reviews and posts about a book I just put in in the search (which is on the right hand side on the main screen, ie. dashboard). You will probably have more luck finding things you're looking for that way (btw. your review is the first that pops up)

[Petra X]

It's a great site for blogging in a book community and the dashboard is nice to see all the reviews flowing past, but it's hardly a good booksite as yet. I think it will be though.

[Liza]

Kinga wrote: "Also, because BL is still consolidating its bookdatabase and it's all a little messy I found that if I want to read all reviews and posts about a book I just put in in the search (which is on the r..."

I hadn't noticed that search bar on the right. I just started (barely) using tags. So I definitely have a bit more exploring to do.

I agree with Petra though, I think they have a ways to go to make the site more intuitive. I'm thinking I may need to continue to use both GR and BL, just use them in different ways. GR is definitely more user friendly (for now) for exploring and discovering new books.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Not much help for specific book, but to see recent reviews from your friends/followeds — from regular dashboard down righthand column there's a choice to view "all posts" and one for "reviews" that will show you just the reviews.



Booklikes, mostly because of the goodreads friends who moved over, is stsrting to feel like "home" in a way goodreads used to.

But the book part of it (other than half stars and more shelf options including marking as private or wishlist vs. already owned) is still very lacking. So are groups but that's in the works.

I think most things we want are in the works.

In the meantime, I'm using goodreads for additional book cataloging and to keep up with friends who are staying; using fictfact to track my series reads; and in November I'm going to try something called ReadUps.com that's just for group/penpal/buddy reads to see if a good stopgap to use alongside booklikes until the groups are up and running.