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SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:13 pm
by mrchad9
Here is a proposal for layout of the SP Home Page. I took Josh's mockup and just rearranged things. Easy changes for me to make! Nothing earth shattering here except for the 'Photo of the Moment' addition. I'll get to that.

The main theme is just to move things around. Most things I switch from left to right column and vice versa. No real need, other than to get people's eyes moving around after so many years.

Also...
1. Newest members is at the top, since this is dynamic and always changing. We should encourage these folks, not bury them at the bottom.

2. Added a 'Photo of the Moment'. I got this idea from some of Dow's earlier comments. The idea here is that it would be constantly changing. It should show the most recent photo added to the site that has some minimum criteria... a low one. The threshold is very low to make it almost random, basically showing the most recent photos added but with some criteria so it isn't just garbage. Often this photo might not be present very long, maybe just minutes, sometimes hours, depending on site activity. It isn't the highest scoring photo, since it is replaced as soon as a newer one meets the criteria. This also shakes up the POTD process until we can get adjustments there (there becomes some advantage to submitting photos mid-day as opposed to 1:00 - 4:00 AM). I don't know how easy this is to program, but if Matt can do it this will be very cool.

3. POTD and POTW just under POTM, but moved POTD above POTW since it changes more often... it is less stale. Matt- I don't know if it is easy to change POTD so that it is updated to the highest scoring photo in the last 24hrs when you hit the home page (instead of the highest in the previous calendar day), but if that is an easy change, I would do it. That also changes things a lot, and can result in POTD changing a few times within a day... a good thing! And opens it to newer members who don't know you have to submitt a photo in the middle of the night for it to have a chance. If you can make this change, I would go ahead and do it while we wait on other changes in this area. What I really like about this idea, and Pic of the Moment, is they are maintenance free for the elves.

4. If we can't implement my Pic of the Moment idea, I would move the 'new members' into the top right spot and have an additional featured page on the left.

5. Tried to keep 'recent forum posts' relatively high up since this is always changing

6. Under 'best new stuff' at the bottom left, I added 'best routes' and reordered them. I also show 7/30/90 days instead of 1/3/7 for all but photos.

7. To truely make the home page dynamic, we need to implement new features that have nothing to do with the layout shown here. Things like rotating featured pages through more frequently. Aat least 2 featured pages should change daily (could do this by automatically randomly selecting a previously featured page). Similarly at least 1/3rd of the featured articles and TRs could change to a historical one daily.

homepage.jpg
Proposed home page layout
homepage.jpg (573.59 KiB) Viewed 8073 times

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:21 pm
by Brian C
I do like the addition of the photo of the moment. I think the layout changes look a bit cluttered compared to the current one. Not sure why, but that is how it appears to me.

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:26 pm
by Bob Sihler
Things like rotating featured pages through more frequently.


We've already begun that process, and I'm stepping in to help there. By yesterday morning, I had changed all six featured selections.

The goal is to change every other day. Right now, we're working out a schedule for that so that we're not stepping over each other or looking as though we are in disarray.

I'd rather not change it every day because I'd like to see everybody's featured page stay up for at least 24 hours, and with work schedules and different time zones, that's hard to achieve if we do things daily. But every other day is certainly doable.

On days that I feature pages, my focus will be on newer and lesser-known members, with an additional emphasis on variety of subject type (mountain, hiking, scrambling, rock climbing, ice).

I may start a thread to encourage members to recommend these types of pages. This would be done in spite of the existing one because it would be a fresh start and it would be harder to get people's attention through the old thread.

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:30 pm
by Bob Sihler
Added a 'Photo of the Moment'.


How about making all three slots for POTM?

Benefits:

The people who like voting on pictures would get a lot more variety and could continue to enjoy that pursuit.

Those of us frustrated with the POTD/POTW system would like the variety.

More reasons to look at the front page and participate in the site.

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:33 pm
by mrchad9
Montana Matt wrote:
mrchad9 wrote:Added a 'Photo of the Moment'. I got this idea from some of Dow's earlier comments. The idea here is that it would be constantly changing. It should show the most recent photo added to the site that has some minimum score.

Love this idea!
mrchad9 wrote:I don't know how easy this is to program, but if Matt can do it this will be very cool.

Shouldn't be hard at all once we determine the criteria. Which might be better kept private to try to prevent cliques and questionable voting behavior?

Great Matt! I hope to see this soon.

Agreed on keeping the specific criteria undisclosed. I edited my original post to take out the specific criteria, and will take the specifics offline.

Bob Sihler wrote:
Added a 'Photo of the Moment'.


How about making all three slots for POTM?

Benefits:

The people who like voting on pictures would get a lot more variety and could continue to enjoy that pursuit.

Those of us frustrated with the POTD/POTW system would like the variety.

More reasons to look at the front page and participate in the site.

Excellent idea. Basically we can have three POTM, with different criteria for each of them. One would be very low, as I originally suggested. The others could be more stingent. I will PM you and Matt thoughts on criteria later today.

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:34 pm
by lcarreau
Bob Sihler wrote:
How about making all three slots for POTM?



+1 ---- VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE.

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:34 pm
by Bubba Suess
I am not trying to drift this thread away from the front page but I am curious if the featured page selection is moving towards automation? If it is not, this thread has not had any impact on what gets featured in quite a while and it is nice for the community to have an opportunity to nominate pages that recently found useful or something. Perhaps a new, permanent forum category could be established for featured page nominations. When the elves want to change things around, they do not have to sift through the various threads to find the ones that contain nominations. Likewise, members would not have to do the same to find the thread so as to nominate pages.

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:38 pm
by Bob Sihler
mrchad9 wrote:Basically we can have three POTM, with different criteria for each of them. One would be very low, as I originally suggested. The others could be more stingent. I will PM you and Matt thoughts on criteria later today.


Okay, but here's one thought that I think is safe to share in public: one part of the automated selection process could be by image type. That way we might get more recognition of things like beta photos which are often not pretty but are highly useful. Talk later.

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:38 pm
by Diego SahagĂșn
Chad, your home page is very similar to the current page. You've only changed the blocks from left to right and reverse. And also you've added those yellow shadows.

Photo of the moment is a good idea mate

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:40 pm
by Bob Sihler
Bubba Suess wrote:I am not trying to drift this thread away from the front page but I am curious if the featured page selection is moving towards automation? If it is not, this thread has not had any impact on what gets featured in quite a while and it is nice for the community to have an opportunity to nominate pages that recently found useful or something. Perhaps a new, permanent forum category could be established for featured page nominations. When the elves want to change things around, they do not have to sift through the various threads to find the ones that contain nominations. Likewise, members would not have to do the same to find the thread so as to nominate pages.


See my post above. I am thinking of starting just such a thread to help me on the days that I feature pages.

I'll be updating the front page again tomorrow, so if I can get the thread up today, people could get involved right away.

Edit: I don't think a new forum or category is necessary, but if a lot of people think it is, it's easy for me to make that. The only real downside would be clutter. If I simply make it a thread, then I could always put a sticky on it.

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 7:43 pm
by Bubba Suess
Bob Sihler wrote:If I simply make it a thread, then I could always put a sticky on it.

I think that would work.

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 8:21 pm
by Josh Lewis
Mr. Chad, good job on the frontpage mock up! :D I think it's great. I especially liked the replacements of the links in "Best New Stuff". I was actually going to mention that to Matt. I don't like to overwhelm developers. :wink:

Although the Photo of the Moment idea sounds much better than the current system, I like Bob Sihler's idea. He proposed 3 featured images that change daily. One for climbing, another for scenery, and one for diagram/informational. The problem with making photo of the moment automated with a image category (as Bob proposed in this thread) is that many folks don't categorize their images. That would make a lot of great photos go missed. However, if you fail to pay attention to the current setup, you fail to get it Photo of the Moment. Some what fair enough.

@ Brian C: It's a drawing made manually. This means that it would of course be smoother.

@ Diego SahagĂșn: The yellow was from Matt and myself. :wink: The real version will have round corners on browsers that support it via CSS.

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 8:29 pm
by Josh Lewis
I like the sound of that. 8)

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 8:31 pm
by Matt Lemke
Photo of the Moment has proven to work on other sites very well such as on http://mountainproject.com/

I agree that making all three slots POTM is better than continuing the POD and POW.

Re: SP Home Page

PostPosted: Wed Jan 16, 2013 9:20 pm
by mrchad9
Yay! I am glad the POTM idea is taking off.

Diego SahagĂșn wrote:Chad, your home page is very similar to the current page. You've only changed the blocks from left to right and reverse. And also you've added those yellow shadows.

Photo of the moment is a good idea mate

True. Yes as Josh pointed out he created the yellow shading. I just modified his mockup. Simple chages on my part, just a little rearranging to try to draw more attention to certain areas. Nothing sophisticated other than the POTM addition.

Bob- as Josh pointed out I think it will be difficult to automate three different image types because the images categories largely are not used (and if using the tags were necessary to get your photo in the running a new member wouldn't know that and would be at an unfair disadvantage). I think at least one needs to be the recent photo as I originally described. If others are manual that is fine, though I tend to favor more automated and less labor intensive (and potentially accusations of favoritism) processes.