Front Page Layout

bug

Mrs McGee wrote: »

There seems to be a lot of posters, who quite possibly are female who like the clouds. It probably matches their curtains.

Might as well just go for a Powder Puff Girls skin.

:pac:

.

Clouds are universally calming.

I like the clouds and I have curtains, and they don't match them.

The top menu is a bit bogus looking. Its "dropping" into the background.

And the "pog" looking images on the top right; suscribers, forum posts, blog posts, wiki wiki, web don't work on the blue background or the resolution of the pics is wrong. I don't know what the problem is.

Either way they look like the've been cut out with a rough edged scissors and stuck on.

Other than that its grand.

And I like the clouds, very Spoilt Child as someone else said and I love their designs.

Rancidmaniac13

I think the right column is far too big. Looks very off when scaled down.

Daithi McGee

bug wrote: »

Clouds are universally calming.

I like the clouds and I have curtains, and they don't match them.

The top menu is a bit bogus looking. Its "dropping" into the background.

And the "pog" looking images on the top right; suscribers, forum posts, blog posts, wiki wiki, web don't work on the blue background or the resolution of the pics is wrong. I don't know what the problem is.

Either way they look like the've been cut out with a rough edged scissors and stuck on.

Other than that its grand.

And I like the clouds, very Spoilt Child as someone else said and I love their designs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Podgpel8_h4

copacetic

Apart from the annoying missing poster information the really big issue for me after a day of the new look is that the new front page is a lot slower to load. It has made going direct to boards.ie unusable from my phone and significantly slowed down the access from my PC via mobile broadband. I haven't got the quickest connection but have gone from 2-3 seconds to 10-15 seconds which is obviously very annoying.

Have had to save off internal links so will be avoiding the front page altogether from now on. It will be straight to usercp and newposts search for me. Front page was the only one I saw ads on too. Would imagine a lot of people will bypass the front page, or maybe they won't bother and just get pee'd off with the speed at which it loads now. Or maybe we will all upgrade to proper broadband speeds.

randylonghorn

Bit cluttered, I would like to see the last poster column restored, and the google ads on the right look very out of place, imho, mainly because the background doesn't match.

Sorry to be so negative!

I do like the top with the clouds background though.

Adyx

I don't spend a lot amount of time on the front page so it's not a huge deal but it looks ridiculous on an ASUS eeePC because of Google Search and ads.

Boards1.JPG

Boards2.JPG

Tar.Aldarion

Looks good. Niggle; spacing is bad between forum, thread title and post date. Too much blank space yet. I think 'post date' should be changed to 'post time' and the date removed, the space not yet used going to poster name.

Sherifu

I like it, could just be because it's finally something different though

Malteaser!

I like it.

Only problem I'd have with it, like others have mentioned before, is that you can't see who the last poster was. It's no big deal but I liked having it there.

Villain

Bring back the last poster line!

Vain

Why does mine say boards.ie mobile at the top?

Vain

If I use my normal browser it runs on the mobile boards site. if i run it on google chrome its on the normal boards .. weird

Vexorg

The day as usual is not turning out as planned so tweaking the page may not happen today.

IMHO - the most important issue, the page should not be taking much longer to load - this will have to be looked at - for me it loads faster than index-old.

Next the "Last Poster", I have to admit to being surprised that would be missed, given the sheer volume of posts and the chances you might see a poster of interest rather than a topic of interest, cleearly stalking is importmnat to some people:) We will see how this can be incorporated and if it proves difficult, we can see if it can be enabled through a user control panel option.

V.

Vexorg

In relation to the slow page load can anyone affected by it do a check against www.boards.ie/index-old.php also - a bit of a sanity check.

At vain, no idea why you see the mobile boards site, could you have selected it in the quick style chooser? its at the botton of each forum page?

seamus

I never use the front page, so my input is probably useless. I do like the filter though.

I noticed others mentioning that the last poster is gone. An idea may be to include the last poster in the TITLE attribute of the thread link. So when you hover over it, you get the full title of the thread as well as the last post, so for example it appears as

Front Page Layout; Last post: 11:05 by seamus

Two other small things;

I would recommend increasing the number of character in the truncated thread title to 50, or 40 if that's too much. 25 characters will just cut off almost every title; looks messy and personally irritates me a lot.

Also, another cosmetic issue on the thread titles - use the ellipsis only where it's required. When a thread title hasn't been truncated - don't use an ellipsis.

<?php echo (strlen($title) > 50)? "..." : "" ?>

Boston

Vexorg wrote: »

Next the "Last Poster", I have to admit to being surprised that would be missed, given the sheer volume of posts and the chances you might see a poster of interest rather than a topic of interest, cleearly stalking is importmnat to some people:) We will see how this can be incorporated and if it proves difficult, we can see if it can be enabled through a user control panel option.

V.

For me, its not a case of stalking posters but rather threads. When I see a thread I posted on the main page I tend to look for the last poster so I know whether or not a new post has been added since the last time I looked at it. Quiet handy is a fast flowing thread.

But also what others have said. When I see a certain someone has replied to a thread I rub my hands together with glee because I know its going to be something witty, cutting, funny, intelligent, ect ect.

*I don't actually rub my hands together.

copacetic

Vexorg wrote: »

In relation to the slow page load can anyone affected by it do a check against www.boards.ie/index-old.php also - a bit of a sanity check.

At vain, no idea why you see the mobile boards site, could you have selected it in the quick style chooser? its at the botton of each forum page?

hmmm, apologies, should have checked that before the whinge.
the old page is loading just as slow for me now. appears the change has just coincided with a slow period for my mobile broadband.

on the phone though, it appears the iphone doesn't like the new background image. or is that just me also?

r3nu4l

Vexorg wrote: »

The day as usual is not turning out as planned so tweaking the page may not happen today.

IMHO - the most important issue, the page should not be taking much longer to load - this will have to be looked at - for me it loads faster than index-old.

Funny, the new index page loads far faster for me than the old one.

Next the "Last Poster", I have to admit to being surprised that would be missed, given the sheer volume of posts and the chances you might see a poster of interest rather than a topic of interest...

Last Poster - I couldn't care less if it's there or not. Why not trial the pages for a while, allow people to choose 'old index' or 'new index' in their profile settings.

You could force all new registrants to use the new index page and track the take-up of the new index page amongst the current users. Just a thought.

I really don't see the pressing need to know who last posted on a particular topic. The front page refreshes so quickly that it can't be that important.

Dades

basquille wrote: »

I changed my mind about the bright background to the top-menu.. looks pretty odd. This might be better:



Whatcha think?

+1 for this, btw. It looks great I think.


Regarding the boardsie characters...



Maybe it's time to let go?
I think the ones on the footer are great - less... finicky.
That goes for the right hand links too.

Quick suggested mock up (using basquille's nav idea)...
(Right hand navs are shoddy example only)

copacetic

r3nu4l wrote: »

I really don't see the pressing need to know who last posted on a particular topic. The front page refreshes so quickly that it can't be that important.

seys u!

most people seemed to really like the feature, why take it away?

Basq

Dades wrote: »

+1 for this, btw. It looks great I think

Finally, some support!

And your mock-up looks great also.. definitely looks cleaner and fresher using the new guys at top!

Anyone have any thoughts on my other suggestion? Reducing the number of new posts to make Social.ie and Adverts.ie tables aligned.. as outlined here!

JohnK

Three things from me
1. I always found the last poster name useful so if that can come back great
2. The Google ad just looks too wide and unbalances the page for me. Couldn't you use the long narrow version?
3. The background image is appearing below the top navigation menu for me and doesn't matter what browser I'm using - ie7, ff3 & chrome. I'm guessing this isnt how is supposed to be based on the other screen shots posted?

Basq

JohnK wrote: »

3. The background image is appearing below the top navigation menu for me and doesn't matter what browser I'm using - ie7, ff3 & chrome. I'm guessing this isnt how is supposed to be based on the other screen shots posted?

This is the way it's being loaded at the moment.. the screenshots above are suggestions.

JohnK

thank **** for that, I thought I was going mad for a moment there

dudara

I often have an RSS sidebar open in Firefox and the boards frontpage resizes itself accordingly.

However, the Boards Events and the Google advertisement stay full width, forcing the list of new posts to become very thin.

I'd much prefer that the Boards Events and Google Advertisement were much smaller and/or below/above the list of new posts.

Hellrazer

Vexorg wrote: »

In relation to the slow page load can anyone affected by it do a check against www.boards.ie/index-old.php also - a bit of a sanity check.

At vain, no idea why you see the mobile boards site, could you have selected it in the quick style chooser? its at the botton of each forum page?

New front page is like being back on 56k for me(using Firefox)

Its grand on IE7.

Old page is the same on both.

Sully

Its probably a bit to much work, but you could always use a system like the Google homepage (customised) allows you to do - moving things around, removing features you dont want etc. instead of having everything "static" as such. Though, probably a good bit of work invovled.

Gandalf23

I've been living with the new front page using a variety of computers and mobile devices since the change. It is definitely slower to load than the old page on all of them.

TBH I dont like the new page. Personally, I dont care much about the omission of last poster, but the Google ad's are far too big and take away significantly from the look and feel of the page. I'm also not a huge fan of the clouds ... if they are being used on the front page they should be used all across the site (golden rule = keep corporate logos / colours consistent at all times and across all pages were possible).

I think the guys at digg have done a much better job with their front page. They have just as much ad space, but they have included it in a less intrusive way. Also the feel of the site (colours and navigation etc) are consistent.

Boards.ie has a great change to design a brilliant front page that may potentially significantly improve the site. This new front page is not it.

Im_No_Superman

Im firmly in the "missing the last poster" camp, so it would be great if that feature was brought back.

Other than that I think the front page looks pretty good, the clouds are grand, pretty indifferent to them tbh, the google ads on the right hand side to need abit of tweeking though as they do look alittle out of place imo.

aidan_walsh

The page has been changed that if you hover over the title of the thread you will now see who the last poster is.

Dord

Dades wrote: »

+1 for this, btw. It looks great I think.


Regarding the boardsie characters...



Maybe it's time to let go?
I think the ones on the footer are great - less... finicky.
That goes for the right hand links too.

Quick suggested mock up (using basquille's nav idea)...
(Right hand navs are shoddy example only)

I like that suggestion for the new layout with the new boardsie guys. It's much more readable, less busy.

KatCookie

-1 i love those characters! they are timeless in design, Dades people could look old real quick. I was going to put in a thread asking about Boards.ie Tshirts ( i found old threads and then forgot about the idea) but i'd love to have those characters on a tshirt, very original looking!

Ricky91t

CuLT wrote: »

Background: This really grew on me for some reason, it was done by an outside designer, and the more I stared at it in the background of various design shuffles the more I liked it. Plus the opportunity for seasonal background changes is too good to pass up

I really like the back ground image,makes a nice change

Crash

Rather than seasonal background changes, could the background be changed dependent on the outside weather? :P

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

Basq

Going Forward wrote: »

Rather than seasonal background changes, could the background be changed dependent on the outside weather? :P

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

randylonghorn

Vexorg wrote: »

Next the "Last Poster", I have to admit to being surprised that would be missed, given the sheer volume of posts and the chances you might see a poster of interest rather than a topic of interest, cleearly stalking is importmnat to some people:) We will see how this can be incorporated and if it proves difficult, we can see if it can be enabled through a user control panel option.

I agree with Boston (below).

I actually wouldn't miss the Post Date column at all, I think it's fairly redundant to actually display it given the sheer volume of posts and the speed with which the table updates (except in the middle of the night), though obviously it's important in the background to order the table.

Drop it, reinstate Last Poster?

Boston wrote: »

For me, its not a case of stalking posters but rather threads. When I see a thread I posted on the main page I tend to look for the last poster so I know whether or not a new post has been added since the last time I looked at it. Quiet handy is a fast flowing thread.

But also what others have said. When I see a certain someone has replied to a thread I rub my hands together with glee because I know its going to be something witty, cutting, funny, intelligent, ect ect.

Vexorg wrote: »

In relation to the slow page load can anyone affected by it do a check against www.boards.ie/index-old.php also - a bit of a sanity check.

No, my sanity (such as it is! :P) is unimpaired!

There is a definite lag of about a second between the loading of the clouds background and everything else kicking in more or less simultaneously (IE7 / bb).

Just tried it on Firefox there, and it was also slow ... but it was more a series of small lags as each element popped in, rather than one long pause and then bingo!! Old index page isn't that much faster on Firefox that I could see, but there is a very noticeable difference on IE7 between the old and the new, on my machine anyway.

Rabies

Maybe I'm the only one, but I don't always have my browsing window open full screen.

Only the Latest Forum Posts box is scalable, Updates, Adverts, and Events stay the same size.
Would it be possible to have them all scalable?

The background is growing on me.

But I really do miss the last poster column.

aidan_walsh wrote: »

The page has been changed that if you hover over the title of the thread you will now see who the last poster is.

That's fine if you're only interested in one or two threads. If you enjoy browsing all of Boards and checking out what certain posters have to say, then it is more of a mini annoyance.

The date isn't really needed in my opinion. Time and user is better.

The size of the adverts themselves doesn't bother me. Hardly ever take notice of them.

seamus

\o/ all of my suggestions were implemented. Goe me! Yeah, 50 characters looks way better; Most people don't seem to use more than that for thread titles.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I don't always have my browsing window open full screen.

I'd say you're certainly in a minority alright

Only the Latest Forum Posts box is scalable, Updates, Adverts, and Events stay the same size.
Would it be possible to have them all scalable?

From my scant and non-recent experience of working with Google Ads, the ads themselves aren't scalable, you have to specify exact width and heights for the ads. So except for maybe putting it into a scalable iframe (Ugh), I'm not sure if it would be possible. I could be wrong though, it's been a while. The far-left bar is also pretty much at it's minimum limit, you couldn't make it any smaller.

An idea for future revisions of this page (which I'm stealing from someone else in this thread) is to have it customisable to a certain extent. Give subscribers the ability to hide ads, and turn the left and right panes into moveable panes, which you can choose to dock or minimise off to the side of the screen (like an MS visual studio window). That would probably take a bit of work though and it's not exactly crucial.

All the database would have to remember for users is three items - show ads, show left and show right.

The date isn't really needed in my opinion. Time and user is better.

Agreed (sorry Cult). Since I don't use the page, I hadn't fully understood the whole reason for having the last poster, but having it in the title is a bit pointless when all you want to do is skim. I agree the date is pointless. It's been a long, long time since the front page showed anything but posts made in the last 30 minutes. If you remove the date, that *may* give room for the poster name.

Rabies

Minority!!!!
I feel discriminated against


A customisable front page similar to Google would be cool

Vexorg

Having the front page customisable has been something we wanted to do for a long time, its just a question of getting the time to do it properly, being able to move the panels that interest you makes sense.

Subscribers should not be seeing the ads if they have the remove option elected. This is just an oversight I think.

Last poster :- will keep working on this, perhaps a last poster button beside the filter button which would give a different view with the poster name in place of the date/time field.

Epic Tissue

Vexorg wrote: »

Having the front page customisable has been something we wanted to do for a long time, its just a question of getting the time to do it properly, being able to move the panels that interest you makes sense.

That would actually be great

Dades

Was it all a dream? The homepage is back to last Tuesday!

Vexorg wrote: »

Having the front page customisable has been something we wanted to do for a long time, its just a question of getting the time to do it properly, being able to move the panels that interest you makes sense.

That should deffo be the goal for a top down redesign when time permits (imo!)

mike65

Looks good - last poster restored.

Mike

Vexorg

Yup - Pretty much.

KTRIC

Moaning FTW

Sully

Am I the only one with the old front page rolled back, and javascript errors all over the site? Im forced to use IE7 on the PC im on, so it could be that (also the ads dont seem to be showing, but I dont have them turned off?)

Villain

Same here Sully

takola

I'm back to the old front page too. No errors so far though and the adds are showing fine.