Discussion
One of the cricitisms often levelled at the design of PH is the home page. It's basically trying to be many things to many people and in the process failing some of them.
• Regular users simply want to know what's new today
• Less regular users want to know what's been happening in the last week
• Newbies want to find their way around the site easily
I'm constantly battling to find a design (or designs) that meets those criteria.
Despite some things being large and on the home page (classifieds section is prime example) plenty of people can't see the wood for the trees and ask me where certain things are.
Inspiration is required!
Has anyone got any bright ideas or can point me at other sites that suffer the same issues and have found a way of dealing with it?
I'm also interested to see home pages that make full use of whatever size screen is in use. Seems such a waste having the fixed with design that I employ currently.
Help!
• Regular users simply want to know what's new today
• Less regular users want to know what's been happening in the last week
• Newbies want to find their way around the site easily
I'm constantly battling to find a design (or designs) that meets those criteria.
Despite some things being large and on the home page (classifieds section is prime example) plenty of people can't see the wood for the trees and ask me where certain things are.
Inspiration is required!
Has anyone got any bright ideas or can point me at other sites that suffer the same issues and have found a way of dealing with it?
I'm also interested to see home pages that make full use of whatever size screen is in use. Seems such a waste having the fixed with design that I employ currently.
Help!
How about looking at the membership cookie and customising the home page to suit the user. That way you can issue a simplified home page for "noobs" and long-standing members can spec all sorts of additional gubbins.
You can detect page size in JavaScript - we use the technique in our web-based app - and so could build a page that fitted the screen "real estate" available...
You can detect page size in JavaScript - we use the technique in our web-based app - and so could build a page that fitted the screen "real estate" available...
Don said:
You can detect page size in JavaScript - we use the technique in our web-based app - and so could build a page that fitted the screen "real estate" available...
I do a crude version of that already (that's why the back button doesn't work on the home page). A more friendly solution would be an elastic design.
It's funny you said that. About a year ago, when I first started visiting, I thought that the front page was a different website from the forums! I visited the forums from google or something. I bookmarked the forums, and then when I came back I couldn't figure out where the forums had gone!
I don't think it's as bad as you might think it is. I guess if you're an advertiser, you have a slightly different view of the world. The hard bit is getting people to visit, and you've done that comprehensively. An update may well be in order, but it isn't bad now.
>> Edited by dilbert on Tuesday 24th January 17:03
I don't think it's as bad as you might think it is. I guess if you're an advertiser, you have a slightly different view of the world. The hard bit is getting people to visit, and you've done that comprehensively. An update may well be in order, but it isn't bad now.
>> Edited by dilbert on Tuesday 24th January 17:03
Ted, although much smaller the PH I like the home page of www.octane.ie. All the lastest threads on there to few and the forums are easy to jump to. I think you can drop the sections below the search box on the home pages and perhaps replace with latest thread. Just my 2 cents!
Don said:
You can detect page size in JavaScript - we use the technique in our web-based app - and so could build a page that fitted the screen "real estate" available...
works until a user has turned off javascript.
could also use CSS to scale the page size to the maximum available with %age based margins.
neil.b said:
You could always copy an existing successful one.
Eh Matt?
Swine...
Less is more perhaps on the design front Ted
The classifieds and roadtests latest control/box things are good but do appear like menus in certain scenarios. Perhaps have the homepage as a list of rich links (if you will) like the roadtests and classified but add news and forum latest in the same format and drop the news as the main body completely or focus on the news and articles and drop the latest classifieds and roadtests.
Just idle thoughts really.
Irish said:
Ted, although much smaller the PH I like the home page of www.octane.ie. All the lastest threads on there to few and the forums are easy to jump to. I think you can drop the sections below the search box on the home pages and perhaps replace with latest thread. Just my 2 cents!
Mmmm... not much info to cram on there though is there. That's the dilemma I'm struggling with.
I've been looking at news sites like CNN or www.cnet.com to seek inspiration (but failing).
Could you go for a more advanced front page that makes heavy use of Java, and have an alternative for those that don't run it.
Obviously if you went for the heavy java route, you could go the full microsoft hog, and drive it from a tree control, or something similar. I suppose you'd end up with soemthing more like a client side application, than a web page.
Once you've gone there, you're far less constrained about what you can do.
Edited to add;
Another thought would be to have a dedicated, downloadable application, that runs the pistonheads website. You can minimize server load, by just updating the client application with the changes, rather than having to refresh the whole thing every time. Obviously, there's nothing to prevent the HTML site running in parallel.
>> Edited by dilbert on Tuesday 24th January 17:16
Obviously if you went for the heavy java route, you could go the full microsoft hog, and drive it from a tree control, or something similar. I suppose you'd end up with soemthing more like a client side application, than a web page.
Once you've gone there, you're far less constrained about what you can do.
Edited to add;
Another thought would be to have a dedicated, downloadable application, that runs the pistonheads website. You can minimize server load, by just updating the client application with the changes, rather than having to refresh the whole thing every time. Obviously, there's nothing to prevent the HTML site running in parallel.
>> Edited by dilbert on Tuesday 24th January 17:16
PetrolTed said:
Advert Real Estate isn't a big factor in the design.
I'm looking for layout inspiration from other sites really (not programming solutions
Ahh well then, how about....
www.thefwa.com/
Edited to add;
No Oinking microsoft hogs there!!
>> Edited by dilbert on Tuesday 24th January 17:24
dilbert said:
Could you go for a more advanced front page that makes heavy use of Java, and have an alternative for those that don't run it.
Obviously if you went for the heavy java route, you could go the full microsoft hog, and drive it from a tree control, or something similar. I suppose you'd end up with soemthing more like a client side application, than a web page.
Once you've gone there, you're far less constrained about what you can do.
Edited to add;
Another thought would be to have a dedicated, downloadable application, that runs the pistonheads website. You can minimize server load, by just updating the client application with the changes, rather than having to refresh the whole thing every time. Obviously, there's nothing to prevent the HTML site running in parallel.
>> Edited by dilbert on Tuesday 24th January 17:16
You really are Dilbert, aren't you...
yertis said:
Could you go for a more advanced front page that makes heavy use of Java, and have an alternative for those that don't run it.
Obviously if you went for the heavy java route, you could go the full microsoft hog, and drive it from a tree control, or something similar. I suppose you'd end up with soemthing more like a client side application, than a web page.
Once you've gone there, you're far less constrained about what you can do.
Edited to add;
Another thought would be to have a dedicated, downloadable application, that runs the pistonheads website. You can minimize server load, by just updating the client application with the changes, rather than having to refresh the whole thing every time. Obviously, there's nothing to prevent the HTML site running in parallel.
>> Edited by dilbert on Tuesday 24th January 17:16
You really are Dilbert, aren't you...
Scary really.
On the other hand, I'd quite like a little toolbar thingy that sits on the desktop, and just tells you what's going on. Even if it launched the browser to view a thread, it'd be quite usefull.
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