Redesigning the home page

[herpguy]

Will the portal ever be redesigned to feature news more?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Hopefully. The main page really needs a major change at the moment.

[ecoli]

It's not too bad... but when you guys decide to change it, I beg you to think more of functionality then flashiness. I don't like websites with a lot of frills.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

If you have ideas for what you'd like it to look like, you might as well post them here.

 

Personally, I think the sidebar needs rejigerring (the navigational links don't look good--smaller font size?) and the news needs to be first rather than active topics. And the news items need a different style to them, I think.

[herpguy]

This is how I would like it:

News where the new posts are right now.

New posts where the user CP, poll, and stats are.

The poll below where the users online is.

Take the stats and user CP off.

Put the stats as a link on the top of every page, like where it says SFN chatroom and calender.

 

 

I also think that the navigation should also be on the forum index if that is possible.

[5614]

I think that maybe the News section at the bottom of the homepage should be just links to threads, and not the first post. So it's more like a bunch of headlines rather than actual articles.

 

We could cut the main new posts list down to 10 instead of 15, but then again if visitors look at that then maybe we should leave it up at 15.

 

Otherwise I like the layout.

 

I don't think we should move News posts up. As important as they are IMO the actual forum as a whole and all new posts are more important.

 

I like the user CP as it says how many new posts and how many PMs (that's repeated at the top, but still).

 

Maybe we could lose the stats thing. Although I think we should add the Todays Birthdays to the stats and then keep that stats box for the bdays.

 

Navigation box as a whole could be a bit smaller, but it needs to be kept in alignment with the the online users section.

[herpguy]

I think that maybe the News section at the bottom of the homepage should be just links to threads, and not the first post. So it's more like a bunch of headlines rather than actual articles.

Perhaps if we make simple guidelines for the News Forum that people must follow (with the first paragraph as an introduction), then we could only have the first paragraph and title.