Testing a new Homepage Layout
We're piloting a new homepage layout that puts more emphasis on content that we produce ourselves. While the majority of BlenderNation content is 'community news', we also invest significantly into writing more in-depth and original content ourselves.
Because of the high frequency of news updates however, these articles by Abby, Metin and Jim only have a 'shelf life' of half a day. By promoting the articles from our editors more heavily we hope they'll reach a larger audience.
We'll test this for a week and will collect your feedback. Please leave a comment below!
confuse, old homepages layout is better, i can not see pages number 2, 3 etc.
Good catch – I re-enabled the page numbers.
What is better about the old layout? Do you have any suggestions how we can better highlight our own content instead?
Thank you bart for the page numbers.
That looks great! =’) and because article updates are often, that would always look new.
(However, I got notifications “ON” so I always go to the articles straight, i.e. I barely visit the home page :’)
One thing you might want to consider is making the permanent own editors’ content a sidebar. Because I visit Blendernation a couple of times a day, I tend to want to see the newest stuff the first. So adding another permanent bar at the top of the page forces me to scroll further, before even getting started.
If you’d make the editors’ feature a top aligned sidebar, they will always be next to the newest stuff, so they will get attention every time.
Yep that’s definitely an option too, although that way it will have less ‘focus’. Another idea I’ve played with is to see if I can add a ‘dismiss’ button, and have the top bar re-appear when a new Editors post is added.
At first, I thought the old feed was completely gone.
Ideas, some of which might not merit a second thought, but maybe it’ll invoke new ideas:
1. You might want to adjust the banner and editor’s feed so that the top of the “community news” section is still visible on widescreen monitors to let new users know “hey… more content down here.”
2. Dark theme option might be nice.
3. Once past the editor’s feed, you might have a small horizontal (scroller) bar become omipresent at the top with the homepage (though probably not on individual pages, to save on bandwidth).
4. Instead of putting the date below each post, maybe group them by date, and you can limit the front page to A-B days, or C-D posts.
Replying to myself noting that the community feed DOES appear, but the “BlenderNation uses cookies” pop-up covers it.” Guess I’ve just gotten used to ignoring those things.