The Front Page

[Sayonara]

We'll be discussing the SFN front page (or "portal", as the kids are calling it these days) at the staff meeting next week, so if you have any suggestions now is the time to make them.

 

Is there anything that should be on there and isn't? Anything that could stand to be removed?

 

If any of you have access to the vBulletin members' areas, and can recommend specific plug-ins or modules, so much the better

 

(It would help if you could keep your suggestions within the realm of the possible. From past experience, we've often been given ideas that would take fifteen coders a month and a tonne of chinese takeaway to complete.)

[YT2095]

can we have the Search function a little more prominent, or a special "In-Yer-Face" box with it?

 

"how do I make Sodium" or "My new perpetual motion idea" "Does God exist" etc... has been done to death already, and would provide hours of reading for those willing to search, and save us the Nausia of pointing this out constantly.

[Sayonara]

Something tells me the sort of people who start those threads aren't going to use the internal search feature no matter how big the box is.

 

Not that that makes it a bad idea.

[Dak]

Nowhere does it say what SFN is, or have a link to an 'about us' page.

 

I know its pretty obviouse (the name of the site kinda' gives it away), but i always like to have a little statement available saying what the sites about, and stuff. sorta like 'hey, we're a science site populated by people of a variety of ages/skills/etc, so dont feel that you cant join just because you've not even got your gcse's yet. cum talk aboot science, from random stuff your curiouse about, to help with your homework. etc. or just a 'hi'.

 

also, there seems to be a link ('SFN', under 'community') that points to the homepage, which is a tad bizzare and usless as the link itself is on the homepage.

 

maybe a link to a quick forum tutorial, for the computer illiterate?

 

maybe a 'donate' button would make people more inclined to donate if they joined up and stayed; kinda raise the profile of the fact that this site needs money for bandwidth etc.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Indeed.

 

A welcome message would be great, like Faf's original one.

We ought to use a favicon, something like the SFN logo.

The left navigation bar should be prettied up--perhaps the links could be made a bit smaller, to provide contrast vs. the headings. Maybe use a bit of CSS to make them look more interesting.

The "topic icon" column in the latest posts thing is kind of annoying. It's so rarely used that it creates a mostly empty column, with only a few icons, so it looks rather dumb. I'd prefer we only saw the icon when we viewed the thread, or something.

The top box, the one containing the navigation tree, could be rejiggered a bit to make it look nicer. It doesn't fit in with the "rounded" background and icons.

[ecoli]

how about a link for the forums highest posters. It might be interesintg for newbies to see how many posts some of the "dedicated members" make. (not that it's a competition or anything).