Home Page vs Forum Page

[Mark The Homer]

As I mentioned to Boone in a PM, this site is very smooth, it has a nice feel about it. Reminds me a lot of ES, especially the earlier ES. Great membership. Friendly. Respectable. Seems to be self-moderating which is a goal not easy to achieve, I think. I like the changing photos in the right corner. I can just sit there and stare at them. Brings back memories. All that info in the right margin is fun.

The following is not a suggestion, it's more like an observation from a noob. I find the Home page to be a bit overdone from a noob's perspective. If you look at it, and you've never been here before, it is a lot of information coming at you all at once. And it's hard to get a gauge on what you want to read first. Or where you want to go. Maybe it's because I am used to ES.

It took me a bit of time to see the line below the BGO icon - Home, Forums, What's new, etc. My eyes skipped over that line to see all the other stuff below it which was in bigger fonts.

Once I found that first line and clicked on Forums, then I saw the layout that reminded me of ES! Yes, that is what I want. I could see exactly where the various forums (such as Stadium, Tailgate, etc) were located and organized. And even sub-forums to those forums. which makes things even better!

If you're a vet here, it probably wouldn't be noticed, but for a noob, I think the Home page as it is now is a bit overwhelming and scattered. But this is just my humble opinion.

Considering there are probably a lot of ex-ES members out there looking for a place to chat, somehow making the Forum page more visible or more apparent or more in-your-face might be something to consider.

This is a very nice site. Thank-you!

 

[Boone]

Mark,
this is really great feedback brother. So - our Home Page is built with an add-on because, believe it or not, Xenforo does not have it's own 'Home' page capability. The add-on works but it's kind of clunky and not very adaptable. It 'is what it is'. We kind of went back and forth early on about whether to have the Home page or our Forums page be the first thing new visitors saw. And actually, the original ES had a Home Page set as the landing page. It did have at 'Top Discussions' section on it so you could see what was being talked about (and our Home Page has that too), but the ES url did not take you to the Forums page.

I absolutely get your point though and it's a good one I wouldn't have thought of on my own.

What I have done is flipped our landing page. When you come to BGObsession.com now, the first thing you'll see is the 'Forums' page, not the 'Home' page. I think you are right that the heart of every forum site is, well, the forums. I don't think there is any major downside to that change even though it's a big one.

I would like to hear from some of the staff and owners here as to their thoughts on the change.

 

[Chris]

I was actually going to suggest that very change. I went to a different browser and accessed the site from the main url. But it was already magically in place. 👊🏼

Personally, I never go to the home page.

 

[Mark The Homer]

I have this weird habit of clicking on the site icon at the top, and then expecting to be whisked to the home page - or what I regarded as the best opening page. Believe it or not, I actually commented on this way back in the early days of BGO (I was a member back then, but then I didn't post much, then not at all, so I got culled I guess, my bad). I mentioned that the BGO icon was dead - it didn't take me anywhere! And I remember that you, Boone, didn't seem to like my comment. You said something like "Why is that an issue?", or something like that. Anyway, that was maybe just my problem. But as I recall, I used to click on the ES icon and it would take me to the page where the forums were laid out nicely. Similarly, the Weber site, which we talked about, works the same way. No matter where you are in the site, just click on the icon and shazaam, you are back to the index of all the forums. Not that the Weber site is as good as this one - it is not. https://tvwbb.com/

Well done. Thank you!

 

[Boone]

That must’ve been extremely early on when we were on vbulletin. Since we moved to Xenforo clicking on the BGO logo has always taken members to the home page (which up until today was literally the ‘Home’ page). Now when you click it from anywhere on the site it takes you to the ‘Forums’ page.

 

[Boone]

One thing we lose when the Home page isn’t the landing page is the ‘Latest Discussions’ block. I may look to see if I can add something more condensed that would sit above the forum list that shows the last 5-10 threads posted in.

 

[Mark The Homer]

That must’ve been extremely early on when we were on vbulletin. Since we moved to Xenforo clicking on the BGO logo has always taken members to the home page (which up until today was literally the ‘Home’ page). Now when you click it from anywhere on the site it takes you to the ‘Forums’ page.

I have a weird habit of not deleting emails. I don't remember the exact date I joined BGO early on, but just for fun I just searched my emails for bgobsession and there's an email from BGO indicating a private message between you and me dated Oct 2010.

 

[Boone]

Okay guys. I took a hard objective look at our Home Page as a result of Mark The Homer's suggestion today - and decided it served little purpose. There were only a couple of things located there that weren't also available on the forums page. I do think it's nice to have a list of new content somewhere (Latest Posts, Latest Threads, etc...) so I've added those below the Forums list. My original thought was to have the Latest Threads at the top, but that kind of defeats Mark's primary point - people are looking for the forums first and foremost as they should be.

So I created 'Latest Posts' and 'Latest Threads' widgets and put those BELOW the forums. I added a few other things. And I hid the Home Page completely.

If folks never want to scroll past the forums list, they don't have to. But those auto-updating lists are there if they want to view them.

Feedback please?

 

[Mark The Homer]

I like it. I like it a lot. The word "perfect" comes to mind.