About the new EN World front page - I LOVE IT!

[TerraDave]

It looks better...I guess the question is it a static "about" page, or something updated regularly (with news in this case).

I also guess I get the whole bookmark, compiler, technical discussion, but am not 100% sure that should drive what happens when people go to -www.enworld.org-

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Yeah, it looks much better now. I still prefer the old format, but that red on black crap...yech!

 

[Wasgo]

I really don't like it. It looks like someone's GeoCities pages from the mid-nineties. I don't understand why the main page wouldn't include the news. I can understand how many people directly bookmark the forums, but if they're not going straight to the forum, the news is the thing they'd be logically coming here for. Why make them click through a pointless boxy page?

 

[Morrus]

I really don't like it. It looks like someone's GeoCities pages from the mid-nineties. I don't understand why the main page wouldn't include the news. I can understand how many people directly bookmark the forums, but if they're not going straight to the forum, the news is the thing they'd be logically coming here for. Why make them click through a pointless boxy page?

See this post for the explanation.

 

[Plane Sailing]

No, you misunderstand me. Many people have bookmarked www.enworld.org/index.html, not www.enworld.org.

No, you misunderstand me!

The technical issue is this:

you could have index.html as you have it now (for those who have bookmarked www.enworld.org/index.html) and yet set index.php as the default page so that people coming to plain old www.enworld.org get the index.php page.

Now it may be that you want everyone coming to the plain www.enworld.org page to get the grid based introduction page, in which case it isn't an issue - but that isn't what you said in the post I quoted.

So, to summarise - at the moment the apache server is set to give priority to index.html pages over index.php pages when a browser request doesn't include the exact url of the page, but just a generic url. It is a change to a setting to alter the priority, so that the apache server gives priority to index.php pages when both are available. This would mean that most people would see the index.php page, but anyone who had bookmarked index.html would get the index.html page.

Cheers

 

[Mistwell]

I think the front page does not look good. It lacks focus. It lacks prioritization.

EnWorld is essentially an online RPG magazine and RPG user communication tool. Almost all things that are important to the site fall into one of those two categories. The front page should reflect that focus. How to contact the owners, or messing with your account settings, should not get as much screen real estate as things like news.

Your front page is the most important tool you have to push new users to your most important content. This front page...does not do that.

 

[Wasgo]

See this post for the explanation.

you could have index.html as you have it now (for those who have bookmarked EN World - D&D / Dungeons & Dragons / RPGs) and yet set index.php as the default page so that people coming to plain old EN World - D&D / Dungeons & Dragons / RPGs get the index.php page.

Now it may be that you want everyone coming to the plain EN World - D&D / Dungeons & Dragons / RPGs page to get the grid based introduction page, in which case it isn't an issue - but that isn't what you said in the post I quoted.

Exactly. I understand the technical limitations, but I'd prefer http://www.enworld. org to go to http://www.enworld. org/index.php. Also, can't you just do a server-side redirect so that http://www.enworld. org/index.html goes to http://www.enworld. org/index.php? That way the bookmarks would work, but there would only be one main page.

 

[Oni]

Not to poo-poo your hard work, but I'm not digging the layout/look.

 

[Morrus]

I think the front page does not look good. It lacks focus. It lacks prioritization.

EnWorld is essentially an online RPG magazine and RPG user communication tool. Almost all things that are important to the site fall into one of those two categories. The front page should reflect that focus. How to contact the owners, or messing with your account settings, should not get as much screen real estate as things like news.

Your front page is the most important tool you have to push new users to your most important content. This front page...does not do that.

That depends on what you judge as the "most important content"; which isn't, necessarily, "the bits you read".

Back in the day, sure, we had a news page and a rudimentary messageboard with 4000 members or so (by comparison: not much larger than CM is now). Nowadays, EN World is much, much more than that. It has 80,000 members, and those members are writing reviews, making blogs, joining groups, searching for gaming groups, and all sorts of things. These things, while more recent, are not less important than the news page.

In fact, given the deficit of interesting news these days (the buildup to 4E was fun, but it's over), I'd argue that those other aspects are more important.

And I'm not talking about my general opinion: I use Google Analytics to analyse site traffic. And some of those post-medieval elements of a modern community website do - believe it or not - generate high levels of traffic.

The days of thinking "news page plus a forum" ended years ago. It's 2009!

 

[Morrus]

This may be of interest: overall traffic since the new front page went live. It appears - thus far - to be serving its purpose very well.