Suggestions on improving my ancient coins website

[kirispupis]

Hello everyone,

Recently, as part of cutbacks, my ancient coin budget was slashed, so I'm redirecting my attention to better detailing the coins I've been lucky enough to obtain these last few years. Every single one is already on my website - https://ancientcoinstories.com/

I'm looking for suggestions on what you think I should do to improve it. The following are things I'm already considering or have in progress.

Display a map for each city - This is already done. See here for an example.

Rephotograph most coins - I'm dissatisfied with the majority of my coin photos, and @Kaleun96 has been very helpful in working with me to design a new setup. However, the budget for that went away with the coins, so I'm just going to wait since I want to get them right.

Switch to a white background - This would require re-photographing every coin, since on many I used burn to blend the coins better with the black background. See above for why I'm waiting there. I do agree that a white background would aid readability though.

Add timelines - I just started on this today and was influenced by other discussions here. The idea is to generate a data-driven timeline for each page, then most likely have a consolidated one. The coding is easy here, but the data entry will take a while.

Support coin tags - The idea here is to enable visitors (and myself) to view all coins with eagles or Dionysos, etc. Some of the coding here is done, but I need to find a uniform set of tags to use, since there are many terms that mean the same thing. Would anyone know of a standardized list of tags for ancient coins?

Improve the descriptions - Many pages were done quickly and have few details. I want to go through all of them to provide much more info.

Add references - This feature is actually done already (example) but the UI sucks and I haven't added them to most pages. As I go through the descriptions I can add them.

City maps by region - As I mentioned, I have them per page and for all cities. I'm still trying to figure out how to update the region pages (example) in a way that can be automatically updated. For the full map, I currently autogenerate the database, then have to log into the site to update it. I'd prefer not to do that for each region.

 

Any other suggestions?

[AETHER]

Looking good.

Just clicking around and I noticed a small detail you can add, on your https://ancientcoinstories.com/people-timeline/ page, you have the timeline of people descending..

You can add a date after the name, right now you have to click on each to see dating. 

Small thing, but would be pleasing to the eye and you wouldn't have to click on each to find a time frame you are perhaps looking for. 

 

 

 

 

[kirispupis]

1 minute ago, AETHER said:

Looking good.

Just clicking around and I noticed a small detail you can add, on your https://ancientcoinstories.com/people-timeline/ page, you have the timeline of people descending..

 

Thanks! It looks like I'll have to clean up the navigation UI a bit, since the page you show isn't the actual timeline page. This one is.

The timeline itself I'm aware could use improvement. Part of it is struggling against WordPress who constantly want to add their own formatting...

[JAZ Numismatics]

I don't have time to look at it thoroughly at the moment, but I'm curious why you don't like the majority of the images. They seem quite good to me - exceptionally good in fact. What would you hope to improve? I suspect you've been scrutinizing them too long and too closely to be objective.

[Lelouch]

1 hour ago, kirispupis said:

Support coin tags

I mentioned this in my other thread where I asked about the websites, but I highly recommend getting the coin fields from Numista. I didn't have to think about my database fields at all.

If you look at the details section of any of my coins, they all have a link which is "Numista Reference" which is that coin type on Numista.

The additional details section is constructed from the data pulled from Numista (combined with my coin specific data like weight and size), which I then import into my database after pulling the initial info via their API. With that I have tagged my coins so I can use the filters at the top of my page to filter them.

https://www.lelouch.net/?issuerRegion=Syracuse (Sicily)&composition=bronze&order=id&direction=asc will give me all my bronze Syracusan coins.

Also just generally good for the wider numismatic community as I have often added or updated types that were missing on Numista.

Edit: Actually might not fully work for how specific you want, because for the actual details related to creation they are precise with the actual region/ruler/etc, but Numista doesn't have individual god level tags, they just have "Mythology". Or similarly "Marine Invertebrate" for Octopus.
But you can likely implement a text search which is what most others do https://www.lelouch.net/?reverseSearchTerm=octopus&order=id&direction=asc, https://artemis-collection.com/data-statistics/sibyl/?sort_key=id&sort_order=desc&obverse=apollo#

Edited October 15, 2024 by Lelouch

[Deinomenid]

Very minor suggestion but for the map, it might be better to use an old one. For example the link you use (Delos) shows the Super Paradise Beach Club (temporarily closed) right next to the pin, which detracts from the feel.

[Spargrodan]

@kirispupis Sorry to hear about the budget cut. I really like your website, it's been very helpful for me when I started my own collection in the same field. I think you've already done a great job with the categories and organization. If I were you, I’d focus now on improving the design and readability, making it easier to quickly find information. Feel free to reach out if you’d like some feedback on that!

[kirispupis]

19 hours ago, JAZ Numismatics said:

I don't have time to look at it thoroughly at the moment, but I'm curious why you don't like the majority of the images. They seem quite good to me - exceptionally good in fact. What would you hope to improve? I suspect you've been scrutinizing them too long and too closely to be objective.

With most of the bronzes, I just don't feel I'm bringing out the details well enough. I feel this is a matter of getting the right angle between the subject and the axial glass, and from my long ago reading of Light, Science & Magic the most crucial part of metals photography is getting the angles right. My new setup will allow adjustments more easily there. Here's a page with two examples that exhibit this. In terms of the silver coins, they're more hit & miss, but a number are a lot flatter than I'd prefer, such as this one. I believe the issue is the same.

18 hours ago, Lelouch said:

I mentioned this in my other thread where I asked about the websites, but I highly recommend getting the coin fields from Numista. I didn't have to think about my database fields at all.

Thanks! I actually keep my database fields simple because the site's focus is more on the history than the coins themselves. When I initially enter the coins, I normalize the attribution, then enter it as an entire field. Therefore, I currently don't track things such as weight and size individually. Perhaps someday I'll provide a better search for coins, in which case it would be valuable to allow width and size ranges to be selected. At that point I'll write some parser for the normalized attributions.

In the meantime, I'm looking for some "standard" list of coin terms. For example, scepter and staff are often used interchangeably, but I should pick one when tagging coins. I could do this arbitrarily, but it would be nice if there's already a standard list.

18 hours ago, Deinomenid said:

Very minor suggestion but for the map, it might be better to use an old one. For example the link you use (Delos) shows the Super Paradise Beach Club (temporarily closed) right next to the pin, which detracts from the feel.

Using an older map would be tricky since I'm really just embedding a Google Maps IFrame. I considered generating an image for each map, but that would require a geo-marked "master" map in the public domain. However, in my next publish I'm going to zoom the maps out, which should have a similar effect.

5 hours ago, Spargrodan said:

If I were you, I’d focus now on improving the design and readability, making it easier to quickly find information. Feel free to reach out if you’d like some feedback on that!

Yeah, it's probably a mess in terms of navigation and readability. As mentioned, I believe a white background will eventually help. I'll reach out for more specific feedback.

[-monolith-]

@kirispupis - check out Artemis's website at https://artemis-collection.com/ for some ideas. His site is one of the best that I have ever seen. Very well thought out, smooth flow between pages and a lot of interesting special functions.