Suggestion

[YellowFinned]

The new design for laoches.com is great, and the species index is very useful. I have a suggestion to make it even more so.

Currently when I try to identify a loach that I have seen, I have to browse through a hundred odd pages to see the pictures, until I find what I have seen. It would be useful to have one page, with an identifiable picture and name of all the species, preferably with a link to their respective description pages.

If not one long page, then two or three pages with groups of similarities.

As many people write in to this forum to identify loaches, I am sure this would be a welcome and well used facility.

I know the loaches.com web site is not run directly by the same moderators as on this forum, but I think you all know each other.

Thank you.

[brett_fishman]

i havent run into this problem, but i can see where it'd be a PITA..

one suggestion i have is to have the option to change the species index (list) to go by common name...right now it goes alphabetically by scientific/latin name, but being able to change it to go by common name would be very benificial to some users, people who arent good with remembering latin names (me)

like look at planetcatfish.com, their index ('Cat-eLog'), you have the option to go by latin or common name..im not asking for everything else, but those two options..not even the whole 'pick the beginning letter' filter..just a big list is fine..

i know it'd take alot of hard work, but im sure it'd be appreciated,
brett.

[Martin Thoene]

One thing we talked about in the early concept discussions was a sidebar with generic "type" pictures that would allow someone who home in on the ID of a particular species they had seen in a shop.

We tried to keep away from "common" names as far as possible because for the vast majority of Loach species there are no "commonly" accepted names. Because of the truly international membership of LOL, "common" names tend to be different locally and vary based on original exporter. The export trade is notorious for coming up with fancy names to try and promote a species and make it sound "exotic" in some way.

A for instance.....the first time I ever saw Homaloptera orthogoniata, they were being sold as "Black Orchid Loaches" Weird, but exotic name that I've not heard of since, although I have heard "Orchid" applied to this species.

Where there is a generally internationally, or at least majority accepted "common" name it is actually included in the profile title. This allows someone searching for info on Yoyo Loach for instance, to hit Google and quite possibly get a direct hit on LOL's species index profile. We put the common name first for Search Engine identification because we want LOL to be the primary source for information on Loaches. We want people coming here because the profiles are a distillation of all the huge number of posts and personal experiences from many years by our members and represent the best information available. We want people to have that info so their fish may benefit.

Putting in a picture-linked species identifier is still something I would like to incorporate. It was my suggestion to begin with because I would like to see as many user-friendly ways possible for a newcomer to loaches to be able to ID something they saw in a shop.

Human nature being what it is, some people are searching for info after the fact of buying the fish. I think it's important that they can access information as easily as possible and by multiple routes.
Visual ID has to be one of the easiest methods because it takes out all the irregularities of naming that can confuse the viewer.

Any way you look at it, creating such a search facility is a lot of work. I had already worked out the design basics. I'm no computer programmer, but the Plone software we have on Loaches Online makes it easy for even an idiot like me to create stuff.

It would be a multi-layered series of pages. I've already done certain parts in the Telling Tigers Apart page.

That kind of idea could be streamlined by breaking up the composite picture near the bottom into separate photos that could be clicked on to link to the profile.

I may look at this as a future project because doing it for the whole species list is a BIG job.

Martin.

[YellowFinned]

Yes, I did realize when I started this thread that it could be a lot of work.

I have just been looking at the species pages for Sidthimunki and Nigrolineata. This has been useful. However I saw another loach at the market that I liked and want more information on. So I will have to plow through many (not all) the pages.

FYI the common name of loaches locally translates as pig.

[worldrallynut]

Perhaps a page starting with all loaches and then some defining characteristics of the different genera with links to sub-pages of the genera and a list of those species...

[mikev]

FYI the common name of loaches locally translates as pig.

Wow!

Do you know any local common names for particular local loach species? They could be interesting.
(I know that the Chinese local name for some hillstreams, at least for Beaufortia's, is "Rock Climbing Fish"...what about Thai?)

[brett_fishman]

ok martin, yes, alot more beginners are going to google search 'coolie loach' than come on here and know its 'pangio khuli'

worldrallynut's idea of having a page, distinguishing the various generas of loach, maybe some 'typical' pictures/diagrams that tell you what you have..then each genera name (when clicked) links to another species index of just that genera...thats a good idea...afterall, this IS the GREATEST loach site anywhere!!

-brett.

[Martin Thoene]

Thanks Brett. That idea is not really worldrallynut's.

As I said, it was discussed months ago by the moderators and the webmaster. It's just a feature that has as yet not been incorporated.

Also, when we wrote the loach book, I came up with the idea of line drawings of the typical family shape to be used as header pictures for each species section. The artwork was all done back in 2003, but awaits TFH taking up the option of using it for the book which will hopefully be published this fall.

Should they not wish to use my artwork for publication all that can be incorporated into the site. We have some fantastic information in the book that we can't even put on-site because of copyright issues. TFH have owned the manuscript since 2003, so we have to restrict certain information.

I can create such a page with relative ease, it's just a lot of repetative actions, plus subdividing of the species index into sub-lists of grouped families. Time basically.

Martin.

[chris1932]

Its funny I was just paging through every Schistura and Noemacheilus and going right to the pictures to try and ID two very odd fish that came in with my Rosy loaches.
I use the Planet Catfish Thumbnail pages alot. I dont do web design or anything like it and I figured it was a pain, but man is it helpful.

Here is a great example.

http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/ge ... genus_id=1

http://www.planetcatfish.com/catelog/ge ... enus_id=49

I was going to start a thread asking what my oddballs are. I have some pictures but I havent uploaded to Photobucket yet.