Suggest some changes to the main page!

[jdavis]

Excellent. If I can find someone to Photoshop the image, I'm all for it. The real spear through the real head is problematic since my wife would probably object.

But seriously, the idea of using a little art isn't a bad one I think. Wouldn't want to get carried away, of course. Also, perhaps some "advertising" for hot story hours or PBP games? Something along the lines of: Check out this hot PBP game about blah blah blah blah by clicking here.

I think there are times my wife wouldn't mind spearing me through the head. (agree art is good by the way)

Maybe more links to good messageboard threads (Community News), maybe a thread of the day or storyhour of the week or something like that.

 

[LightPhoenix]

But seriously, the idea of using a little art isn't a bad one I think. Wouldn't want to get carried away, of course. Also, perhaps some "advertising" for hot story hours or PBP games?

Gonna play Devil's Advocate, even though I think they're good ideas.

The biggest problem the site is having right now is bandwidth costs. Additional art on the main page will definitely increase the bandwidth used, considering the number of hits per day ENWorld's main page gets. The optimal thing to do would be reduce the file size of the main page as much as possible.

Similarly, assuming that more people just hit the main page instead of checking the forums, funnelling people to threads there has the distinct possibility to increasing bandwidth loads by speeding up the rate of new active users.

I would be interested in seeing statistics for the top hit pages on ENWorld... I'm assuming the main page followed by the forum index get the most hits, but I could be wrong.

Something that could help bandwidth issues, but probably not drastically, is to have an extremely low-size news page. Basically a simple page that lists news, maybe a link to the main page of the site, and that's it. For instance, compare www.zophar.net, http://www.zophar.net/newsonly.phtml, and http://www.zophar.net/ultralite.phtml.
For the record, I d/led the main page, and it weighs in at 69.6 KB, with images adding 781 KB. The jpgs (products stuff, not the icons in the news) is 731 KB of that. So I think Lite and Ultra Lite versions of the main page might not be such a bad idea.

 

[Nifelhein]

I actually use the karate theme and something that annoys me is having quotes in yellow over a white background... (the same for postnuke style)

I also log in with the main page in old style and I ALWAYS change it to new style...

What would help is taking away covers, just leave the next month's books covers there, and also I believe that there could be some images every now and then...

Color change would be too far and I believe it is okay to have themes... just want them to be optimum...

I believe you could make the images on each news item a smaller image on its title, right before the text, it would lower the size and still deliver the message...

for the rest the site is great, at least the karate and postnuke styles are...

 

[garyh]

Maybe more links to good messageboard threads (Community News), maybe a thread of the day or storyhour of the week or something like that.

I'm all for that. I think a lot of good stuff goes on on the boards that newsreaders don't even know about.

 

[Mark]

Anyone have any ideas?

I'm not talking about rearranging the whole site, just making the odd change to make things a bit more interesting...

Indiscriminately exchanging the text "Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad" with the text "Four Legs Good, Two Legs Better" as a motto in bold letters atop the main page...

 

[Ghostwind]

Since this is a PHP driven site, open up the theme selection for both the main boards and the message boards to let the user choose the colors and layout arrangement. My personal choice is the Devina-Blue theme. Very good layout and nice on the eyes. To see an example, go to www.lklkreations.com (my Mom's business site).

 

[Staffan]

I'm thinking that the latest change leaves something to be desired. You know, the one where the page says

DB Error: getArticles: 1030: Got error 28 from table handler
SELECT nuke_stories.pn_aid AS "aid", nuke_stories.pn_bodytext AS "bodytext", nuke_stories_cat.pn_themeoverride AS "catthemeoverride", nuke_stories.pn_catid AS "cid", nuke_stories_cat.pn_title AS "cattitle", nuke_stories.pn_comments AS "comments", nuke_stories.pn_counter AS "counter", nuke_stories.pn_hometext AS "hometext", nuke_stories.pn_informant AS "informant", nuke_stories.pn_notes AS "notes", nuke_stories.pn_sid AS "sid", nuke_stories.pn_themeoverride AS "themeoverride", nuke_topics.pn_topicid AS "tid", nuke_stories.pn_time AS "time", DATE_FORMAT(DATE_ADD(nuke_stories.pn_time,INTERVAL 0 HOUR),'%Y-%m-%d') AS "storydate", nuke_stories.pn_title AS "title", nuke_topics.pn_topicname AS "topicname", nuke_topics.pn_topicimage AS "topicimage", nuke_topics.pn_topictext AS "topictext", nuke_topics.pn_counter AS "tcounter", DATE_ADD(nuke_stories.pn_time,INTERVAL 0 HOUR) AS "unixtime", nuke_stories.pn_withcomm AS "withcomm" FROM nuke_stories LEFT JOIN nuke_stories_cat ON nuke_stories.pn_catid = nuke_stories_cat.pn_catid LEFT JOIN nuke_topics ON nuke_stories.pn_topic = nuke_topics.pn_topicid WHERE nuke_stories.pn_ihome=0 AND DATE_FORMAT(DATE_ADD(nuke_stories.pn_time,INTERVAL 0 HOUR),'%Y-%m-%d')>DATE_FORMAT(DATE_ADD(DATE_ADD(Now(),INTERVAL 0 HOUR),INTERVAL -2 DAY),'%Y-%m-%d') ORDER BY storydate DESC, nuke_topics.pn_topicname ASC

 

[jdavis]

I'm thinking that the latest change leaves something to be desired. You know, the one where the page says

yea but it seems to be loading faster.