Proposal for home page design

[Willy Tschager]

Guys,

I've put some graphics together to show you how I envision the new home page. Feel free to comment:



w.

[Chris Dee]

Nice.

[Philippe Hurbain]

Great, I like the two columns presentation (well suited to modern wide screens), the forum recent messages is a good idea too. Minor : Downlaod -> Download (twice...)

[Tim Gould]

Hi Willy,

I'd rather not have the forum discussion there and replace it by more news. As far as I'm concerned the website should reflect news and information, not chatter

Other than that I like it very much.

Tim

[Tim Gould]

BTW I've set up the basics. Edit the 'global content blocks'... 'getstarted' and 'partsupdate'

Tim

[Tim Gould]

PS. Having the four boxes arranged like you have is not really doable without having a scrollbar in them (since otherwise the height will vary depending on the text). Which I don't think is ideal.

Tim

[Willy Tschager]

You're quick dude! Love it. Is it doable with a table 2x2 (plus a small column and a small row to divide them) and fixed height? The text could be shortened and also the news thing could edited by hand without using the news module. As far as for the "Talk about" I would move it to the bottom.

w.

P.S. Tim, since you are there. I tried to move the donation button at the top but then there is no horizontal line between the donate section and the JJMA.

[Willy Tschager]

As far as I'm concerned the website should reflect news and information, not chatter

Then we should point to the tutorial section (we still have to set up somehow).

w.

[Allen Smith]

This new design is a nice improvement.

I would think the main benefit to displaying forum posts on the homepage is making it obvious that there is an active discussion community. It also gives the homepage automatic "fresh" content. Sometimes the news items get kind of old, and that could make new users wonder if the website is still "alive." These days, people seem to automatically get worried if something hasn't been updated in a few months.

It's nice either way, though.

Allen

[Chris Dee]

Search engines also like to see regular content changes.

[Tim Gould]

You're quick dude! Love it. Is it doable with a table 2x2 (plus a small column and a small row to divide them) and fixed height?

The text could be shortened and also the news thing could edited by hand without using the news module.

It's doable with divs (the better solution IMO). The problem is the changeable text. If we hand edit to keep it succinct all will be well.

As far as for the "Talk about" I would move it to the bottom.
w.

Noone will ever see them there unless they have a big screen. And given the move to laptops that's only a small fraction of users.

P.S. Tim, since you are there. I tried to move the donation button at the top but then there is no horizontal line between the donate section and the JJMA.

I'll swap them over.

[Tim Gould]

As yet we don't have a way to read forum posts so the 'Forum posts' box is empty. But I've now copied your four box format to the front.

I've put "Get Started" and "News" up the top since those are, arguably, the most important aspects of the website and should be what you see first.

Tim

[Orion Pobursky]

I'll see what I can do. I might be able to whip up a custom plugin.

[Tim Gould]

There are RSS reader modules for CMSMS so you might not have to do much.

Tim

[Willy Tschager]

To make you happy all I propose to use the forth box for tutorial and add (if doable) a latest forum post box to the right column below the JJMA. Just as the old LUGNET posts we had on PN.

w.

[Tim Gould]

I'd like this solution best

[Orion Pobursky]

Done! If you want to edit the template, it's under the CMSSimplePie module.

[Tim Gould]

Cool.

I'm trying to work out how to make it write only the first few words of the post. Until then I'll leave it to titles alone. The amount of text it grabs is too much for my tastes.

Tim

[Willy Tschager]

Wow! Looked for the template but cannot find the setting for the background color: f5f5f5 or f3f7f8

w.

[Tim Gould]

Frontbox is in "LDraw : Top menu and 2 columns" near the bottom.

News is in "LDraw : Text, fonts and magic" near the bottom

[Willy Tschager]

Nope! There is no #ccffff anywhere. What I'm talking about is:



background I wanna change to something more decent and in line with the rest.

w.

[Tim Gould]

There has never, as far as I know, been a #CCFFFF anywhere. The background colour of the boxes are set where I said above.

I've changed the forum posts to be the same colour as the front boxes (assuming that's what your arrow meant).

Remember I can't really see these colours properly Which means a picture labelled with the desired colours is vital.

Tim

[Mark Twain]

The change is good. Users can reach the latest discussion from the homepage directly, which reduces the number of actions to reach the destination than it was before.