Home Page Redesign

Dav

Hello all,

I've got a couple of images to show you of what we're planning for our home page. First of all, the logged out visitor's Home Page:


(click for full size)

First of all you'll see that we're showing a "Trending" panel as the first listing of site content. The idea being that if someone comes to Boards who just wants to have a look around, they'll see something that piques their interest and click. This may feature options for "Today," Yesterday," "This Week" as you can see.

Below that you'll see the normal "Latest Posts" that we're familiar with and you can split that by Category.

We've also taken some space on the right to include a Login / Sign up widget as well as one for the Announcements

However, the "Logged In" page is probably the one you're mostly interested in seeing:


(click for full size)

The "Trending" panel from the logged out page has changed to include the existing functionality of "My Threads," "My Forums," and "Latest" as we already have. There's a tab labelled "My Boards" and honestly, we're not sure if that's something we'll put some work into - in theory it's covered between Forums and Threads, but it might include things like visitor and private messages - it hasn't been finalised, but we thought we'd leave it in the mock up to see how it looked.

Below that is "My Threads" which would mean that we could take it out of the tab listing in the first panel and maybe the page loads showing your forums on the top and your threads on the bottom. I'd love to see these as being user configurable, so you could ideally set those 2 panels up to show what you want (and maybe even only show one of the panels). That's not been discussed in any sort of detail as far as I know though, so maybe the lads will be cursing me for evening mentioning it

Finally, there's the Suggestions panel beneath the My Threads panel. This is pretty self explanatory, it'll offer you links to threads/forums elsewhere on the site that are similar to threads/forums you're already following or posting in regularly. How the algorithm to determine this will work I'm not sure.

Similarly the space on the right has the Announcement's Widget as above and if we think of some cool ideas to fill up the remainder of that space, we'll try them out.

So I'm happy to answer any questions you might have about this. We don't have a time-line in place for when this will happen, but it's likely to be sooner rather than later.

Praetorian Saighdiuir

Ohes Noes!

I think I will stay permanently logged in. The "trending" thing is a put of for me because an idiotic Dublin radio station use it in every sentence. They also call the Minister for Finance - "The Minister for Money"............reeeeeeeeeetards!

Other than that, looks good man.

Everything looks good, but I hate this "trending" thing. Kinda seems like jumping on a buzz word bandwagon. Other than that, it does look good and crisp.

MugMugs

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Everything looks good, but I hate this "trending" thing. Kinda seems like jumping on a buzz word bandwagon. Other than that, it does look good and crisp.

Twitter is probably bigger than boards could ever aspire to being.

People can relate to "hashtag" and "trending" and "like" as they use these sites daily and understand what it gives you.

To a degree, Boards needs to get with the times and if options such as trending are that then do it. Our thanks button is effectively Facebook like and is used as such by most Boardsies

Amirani

Looks good.

Shield

RopeDrink wrote: »

I prefer the current one

Good work either way but I'm an old Boards Warhorse who is very much at home with how it looks right now...

I'm from the same camp. Will there be an option to revert back to the old main display and layout? If not, would it be possible to consider implementing an option in our UserCP to 'Revert back to old layout'?

Don't get me wrong, it's clear that some hard work has been done here but it's always nice to have the option.. the choice to use the 'new' layout, or stick with the 'current' layout because it's where you feel the most comfortable.

Even though I would love to have that option, I still feel that a 'Thank You' is in order because this was done for the benefit of the boards.ie userverse©, so to all the staff who worked on the front end and back end of this - please accept my sincerest Thank You for all your hard work and efforts to make this a more user-friendly site for all.

nesf

Take us back Dav! Only you have the power!

http://web.archive.org/web/20010401193812/http://www.boards.ie/

OldGoat

I'd suggest that you make each entry on the trending and current panels to be 'forum unique' so that you'll never get more then one thread from each forum showing at a time otherwise the busier forums may overshadow the smaller ones.

nesf

OldGoat wrote: »

I'd suggest that you make each entry on the trending and current panels to be 'forum unique' so that you'll never get more then one thread from each forum showing at a time otherwise the busier forums may overshadow the smaller ones.

Surely that'd defeat the whole point of trending topics?

dr.bollocko

My homepage gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.

OldGoat

nesf wrote: »

Surely that'd defeat the whole point of trending topics?

I suppose it's really down to the question of why we need a trending page. Is it to highlight the most popular threads/forums or to show the range of forums available to potential users.

I guess I'm afraid that Boards will just be seen as a site where funny pics/videos and photographers pictures of the week are the only reason for venturing into the site. If AH or Politics threads dominate the Trending page to the exclusion of all other forums then thats what all of Boards will be seen as by potential new users.

nesf

OldGoat wrote: »

I suppose it's really down to the question of why we need a trending page. Is it to highlight the most popular threads/forums or to show the range of forums available to potential users.

I guess I'm afraid that Boards will just be seen as a site where funny pics/videos and photographers pictures of the week are the only reason for venturing into the site. If AH or Politics threads dominate the Trending page to the exclusion of all other forums then thats what all of Boards will be seen as by potential new users.

Read the tagline:

Trending: Join in on board's[sic] busiest forums!

Dades

I like the look of it.

Although I spend zero time on the homepage... any changes to the way the actual forums display?

Boards.ie: Rónán

Dades wrote: »

Although I spend zero time on the homepage... any changes to the way the actual forums display?

Moving the forum / thread pages off of vBulletin and over to the API powered framework is the ultimate objective.

The redesign detailed above will hopefully see us move the first "core" aspect of the desktop site (bar the TalkTo's) over, so we'll see how this one goes and take it from there.

Given almost 70% of all site traffic moves through the homepage it should hopefully let us know exactly where we stand in terms of API / UI stability. The amount functionality provided on the HP is minuscule compared to the forum / thread views however, so serving a forum / thread page over the API framework is still quite a long term objective!

Dravokivich

Not too sure with the shots above, can you still do the "thanks," trend and the search for "Virgins"?

Dav

UPDATE!

We're running through the bug list on the first iteration of the home page redesign right now and we're hoping to push these changes live some time this week.

I've attached some up to date screenshots of what it'll look like - you'll see there are some differences from the initial design. Please click on the images below to see them full sized.

Logged In


Logged Out


The Suggestions functionality is still a work in progress, so it won't be included for the moment. It's a big piece of functionality so may be a separate project entirely and it's something we could use in several locations.

Toto Wolfcastle

When I click on the Boards.ie logo to get the home page I see the regular home page but when I go to the home page by typing in boards.ie I get the logged in image above but only from View All Announcements downwards.

Boards.ie: Rónán

Bobblehead Panda wrote: »

When I click on the Boards.ie logo to get the home page I see the regular home page but when I go to the home page by typing in boards.ie I get the logged in image above but only from View All Announcements downwards.

The Talk to ad placement isn't specific to the new design, which is what I think you mean? Would you mind sending on a screenshot if possible, just to be on the safe side. Thanks

Toto Wolfcastle

Boards.ie: Rónán wrote: »

The Talk to ad placement isn't specific to the new design, which is what I think you mean? Would you mind sending on a screenshot if possible, just to be on the safe side. Thanks

There's a thread in Site Development about the same issue here and he's going to post a screenshot there. (Saves me having to do it!)

Creamy Goodness

Looks good from the screens.

Few points

- From the screens it looks like the blue header for talk to's "get all the answers" is a slightly lighter shade of blue than the rest of the blue headers? Is that intentional?

- The login/register tabs are a different style than the latest posts tabs.

- The header in logged out mode the wording for register action is "sign up", in the login/register tabs it's register.

Dav

So the tech team tells me that it's likely that this redesign is getting rolled out today.

If you spot any bugs or problems, I'd ask that you please report them on the Site Development forum as that's where the tech team hangs out and it'll make sure that anything you report gets picked up much more quickly.

General feedback on what you think of it is of course always welcome here.

partyatmygaff

I don't see what's so wrong with the current table of threads with forum, thread title, last poster and post date.

There's an awful lot of padding between every thread and it's much more difficult to quickly scan through than the current design.

CSSE09

partyatmygaff wrote: »

I don't see what's so wrong with the current table of threads with forum, thread title, last poster and post date.

There's an awful lot of padding between every thread and it's much more difficult to quickly scan through than the current design.

I was going to say similar to the above and what's the purpose of adding the thanks counter on the right?

Basq

Kinda torn on this layout..

.. while I like that it's less busy than the existing layout, I think there's not enough information under Latest Posts.

Can we customize how many posts appear under each page of 'Latest Posts'? Can't help but think 12 per page is not enough on a quick glance. As it stands currently, there's 50 shown under Latest Posts on front page.. which may be overkill but 12 seems far too little.

Boards.ie: Danny

Basq wrote: »

Kinda torn on this layout..

.. while I like that it's less busy than the existing layout, I think there's not enough information under Latest Posts.

Can we customize how many posts appear under each page of 'Latest Posts'? Can't help but think 12 per page is not enough on a quick glance. As it stands currently, there's 50 shown under Latest Posts on front page.. which may be overkill but 12 seems far too little.

The front page at the minute doesn't paginate. The new one offers pagination and 5 pages of 12 posts for 60 posts total. It also has an additional benefit of standardising the number of posts with touch (which only shows 12 per page).

Newaglish

Can we fix the typo in the notice?

Hello all, we've got a new look homepage about to roll out today. If you've been following the Feedback forum you'll have seen the proposed layout's already, but if not, you can see them here.

Zaph

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

The front page at the minute doesn't paginate. The new one offers pagination and 5 pages of 12 posts for 60 posts total. It also has an additional benefit of standardising the number of posts with touch (which only shows 12 per page).

Having the current home page with 50 threads visible is far more convenient than having to scroll through 5 pages. Certainly as an admin I, and presumably the other admins too, spot a lot of spam and other stuff that requires attention on the home page that will probably be missed because it's buried several pages down. But even as a regular poster, anything that forces me to scroll through pages rather than having them instantly visible is less convenient and attractive to me. I often wander into threads that I see on the home page that I would never have come across otherwise, and that random aspect of Boards use will be lost. Other than for presumably technical reasons, I honestly can't see how pagination is better than what we currently have.

pickarooney

Looks awful. About 60% screen wastage and massive ads all over the place. Hope this won't be forced on everyone.

Basq

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

The front page at the minute doesn't paginate. The new one offers pagination and 5 pages of 12 posts for 60 posts total.

Yep, I like the idea of pagination but I wonder how many people will actually use it.. or at least have an customizable limit per page.

Dropdown with 12, 15, 20, 30

i.e

12 (5 Pages)
15 (4 Pages)
20 (3 Pages)
30 (2 Pages)

I would much rather more information at a quick glance than having to paginate though multiple views.

Maybe I'm alone there though?

Earthhorse

So you're adding logout functionality, interesting.

jaykhunter

Looks great! As long as boards forums use up the entire width of the screen it's all good. I imagine the short width is for the smartphone/tablet crowd.

nesf

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

The front page at the minute doesn't paginate. The new one offers pagination and 5 pages of 12 posts for 60 posts total. It also has an additional benefit of standardising the number of posts with touch (which only shows 12 per page).

Five pages of 50 or 60 is more useful than five pages of 12. 12 would only make sense on a much more tightly focused site where the average thread was on interest to the average user which is certainly not the case on here.

the_syco

No time/date of the last post, very little info, blergh. Looks like a stripped down version for a phone.

I look at the front page to see if there's anything on the latest posts view (only view I use), before I goto my "usual" forums.

LizT

There's too much empty space and I have to agree with the comments about only 12 threads, just don't understand the reasoning behind that at all.

Xavi6

Looks awful. Too much space and not enough info (last poster etc).

What's the reason behind the change? Don't see the need personally from an aesthetic point of view.

Xavi6

Yeah, just noticed that there is very little information. Any idea when the rollout will commence?

Xavi6 wrote: »

Looks awful. Too much space and not enough info (last poster etc).

What's the reason behind the change? Don't see the need personally from an aesthetic point of view.

It seems like they're trying to really push the Talk To... forums - that is pretty much the only purpose I can see.

quarryman

pickarooney wrote: »

Looks awful. About 60% screen wastage and massive ads all over the place. Hope this won't be forced on everyone.

Agreed.

Why is the homepage changing at all? It works fine.

Is this similar to the last change where advertisements were placed between posts in each thread (which was then reverted)?

Canis Lupus

I like the homepage as it is.

Mollywolly

As an old grouch, I like things the way they are. I'm not intolerant to change but the current home page allows me to "stumble" into forums and threads where I wouldn't normally venture, as mentioned by Zaph earlier.

The new home page is pretty much like the Boards App, and I tend to get frustrated with that.

Apologies if it's not what you want to hear, just my opinion that's all.

wnolan1992

I like that Announcements are now separated from latest posts.

I like the new tabs across the top.

I don't like the fact it only shows 12 threads before I have to click to the next page. That's fine with a small screen like a tablet or mobile, but with a full screen it just seems more awkward and more work for the user to skim the homepage to find something interesting. I can't be the only one who'll go to the homepage and randomly pop into a thread that could be down near the bottom. If I've to keep clicking through the different pages and constantly move my eyes up and down the screen instead of just focusing on the one spot and scrolling, I know I won't be browsing as much. I'll just stick to the forums I know and the ones that are at the top. Terrible idea IMO.

I agree with an earlier post saying that if ye're going to insist on this pagination thing, please give us a drop down to select a larger number than 12.


But really this whole redesign seems like progress for progress' sake. Has anyone ever complained that the current homepage is not user friendly? Why not just move the announcements out (that's the best thing about this redesign) and leave the rest as is?

Boards.ie: Nicola

Hi guys,

Firstly, thanks for all the feedback - it's an important part of our design and development process.

The first screenshots of the new homepage were posted back in April and the development team have been working on it for a good few weeks now. We're not changing things for the sake of changing them, there is method there

Why we're making the change:
- vBulletin is not built for Boards-sized sites so we'll eventually need to move onto our API in order to ensure that the site is stable and fast
- developing new features in vBulletin is difficult and moving off vBulletin means that future development will be faster and more flexible
- On the logged out version of the homepage we're exposing and (hopefully) encouraging people to login and register - the obvious aim here is to grow the community and make Boards a more vibrant place to be
- Likewise, we're aiming to expose more relevant content to logged out users who visit the homepage, so instead of seeing the latest post they'll see 'popular' content that people are actively discussing

Our design team have tried to balance white space with content whilst giving Boards a more modern look. This necessitated the removal of some information that we considered less critical, but we think we're got most of the main information relating to the threads which we're displaying.

We explored exposing more content on the homepage, but quickly ran into the problem of the homepage looking a bit like an Excel file (again!). When you load the homepage you'll actually be loading 60 threads (rather than 50 previously), but they're presented slightly differently; there's now the facility to scroll between five pages of twelve threads.

On a slightly separate note, Talk To forums are now #1 in the menu - the reason for this is quite simply that Talk To forums help pay for the site and we need to promote the fact that they're there

Please keep posting your feedback here, as always we appreciate any input we receive.

Toto Wolfcastle

Boards.ie: Nicola wrote: »

We explored exposing more content on the homepage, but quickly ran into the problem of the homepage looking a bit like an Excel file (again!). When you load the homepage you'll actually be loading 60 threads (rather than 50 previously), but they're presented slightly differently; there's now the facility to scroll between five pages of twelve threads.

That's fair enough but could you not give people the option? The five pages of twelve could be the default if you feel that that looks better and those of us who just want to be able to use the site like we've used it in the past could choose the option to see all 60 threads on one page.

LizT

Boards.ie: Nicola wrote: »

We explored exposing more content on the homepage, but quickly ran into the problem of the homepage looking a bit like an Excel file (again!). When you load the homepage you'll actually be loading 60 threads (rather than 50 previously), but they're presented slightly differently; there's now the facility to scroll between five pages of twelve threads.

Surely that's just making browsing more difficult for the user though? Instead of loading 50 threads, you can only load 12 at a time and have to click through to get the next 12 and then the next 12 etc, even if they're already loaded, it just seems like change for change's sake to me.

Sofiztikated

When I'm on the mobile site, and it's a busy time for posting, when I flick to the second page of posts, it usually contains the majority of the posts from the first page.

I like the main site as it is.

Rabies

No time? Its handy for those of us not on Irish time to see the time of day back home when posting.

Short front page thread count.

With every new front page design, the Boards mascots get less and less real-estate. So they have finally been killed off now Sad day.

Boards.ie: Danny

OSI wrote: »

The mobile site reloads the list every time you change page. The new one seems to load all the threads into the list when you first load the homepage, so changing page in the list of threads shouldn't have the same affect. Could be wrong though.

You're right

the_syco

Boards.ie: Nicola wrote: »

On the logged out version of the homepage we're exposing and (hopefully) encouraging people to login and register - the obvious aim here is to grow the community and make Boards a more vibrant place to be

Your plan to do so is by giving them less content? I'm confused.

Boards.ie: Nicola wrote: »

Likewise, we're aiming to expose more relevant content to logged out users who visit the homepage, so instead of seeing the latest post they'll see 'popular' content that people are actively discussing

I suppose this makes sense; always logged in, so won't be seeing that side of things.

Boards.ie: Nicola wrote: »

This necessitated the removal of some information that we considered less critical, but we think we're got most of the main information relating to the threads which we're displaying.

Boards.ie: Nicola wrote: »

We explored exposing more content on the homepage, but quickly ran into the problem of the homepage looking a bit like an Excel file (again!).

Not quite sure how this is a bad thing. I view homepage to see what's happening in other forums that I wouldn't usually visit.

Boards.ie: Nicola wrote: »

there's now the facility to scroll between five pages of twelve threads.

Not quite understanding the part about "scroll between five pages of twelve threads"... unless you mean clicking between five tabs of twelve threads? Which would suck.

Boards.ie: Nicola wrote: »

On a slightly separate note, Talk To forums are now #1 in the menu - the reason for this is quite simply that Talk To forums help pay for the site and we need to promote the fact that they're there

Hrm. Maybe an option to jiggle that section to the bottom if you're a subscriber?

=-=

Hoping you'll continue with the support of the Cloud theme, as it's very easy to my eyes

hardCopy

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

The front page at the minute doesn't paginate. The new one offers pagination and 5 pages of 12 posts for 60 posts total. It also has an additional benefit of standardising the number of posts with touch (which only shows 12 per page).

Why would the user want to standardise with Touch? The Touch design has to be compromised to account for the reduced screen size on phones. If someone is on a desktop, use the massive screen to it's full extent.

Boards.ie: Nicola

Bobblehead Panda wrote: »

That's fair enough but could you not give people the option? The five pages of twelve could be the default if you feel that that looks better and those of us who just want to be able to use the site like we've used it in the past could choose the option to see all 60 threads on one page.

LizT wrote: »

Surely that's just making browsing more difficult for the user though? Instead of loading 50 threads, you can only load 12 at a time and have to click through to get the next 12 and then the next 12 etc, even if they're already loaded, it just seems like change for change's sake to me.

The one thing we are really mindful of is current standards in design, we don't want to design something which has multiple configurations-this leads to messy development which in the long term won't make the site any better.

I'm not outright saying no or that we won't review this but I'd really like to convey to people that we're doing our utmost to build something which is really great for everyone. We are a community at heart and the last thing we want is to make changes which ostracize our core community.

challengemaster

It looks dreadful and Zaph hit the nail on the head IMO.

LizT wrote: »

Surely that's just making browsing more difficult for the user though? Instead of loading 50 threads, you can only load 12 at a time and have to click through to get the next 12 and then the next 12 etc, even if they're already loaded, it just seems like change for change's sake to me.

Bingo

Surely the most important 'rule' when designing any website is accessible content. The more page clicks it takes for the user to get access to the content they want, the more you're annoying them and discouraging them from using the site in general. And I don't think "trends" is the answer to that either.

I can understand the need for moving away from vB, particularly as boards keeps growing, however there's a lot of unnecessary design changes going on. Boards got to where it is by "looking like an excel file", and it's how 99% of forums in existence look - I'd imagine mainly because it works and works well. The latest skin design did vastly improve the look and gave the site a much needed revamp, but I don't think it needs to be "improved" on from there.

Between this and the removal of skins, it seems like the opinion of the community isn't being considered at all with regards to these changes, which is a shame considering boards was originally set up for the community aspect. I certainly wouldn't call it progress, though.

stop animal cruelty

dont like the new layout felt the old one was more straight forward