I think the front apge might be better utilised as a forum feature. There could be a thread for it, (with an archive for those who want to read previous posts) that is updated now and then, or other people could even post their video games satires too. That way people would be able to comment on them too, as we've seen a thread been made on the front page once or twice, and some posts in ggweekly about them now andt hen anyway.
Edit: Forum or GGweekly links seems like a much better idea than ggweekly being ont he front page. Thanks Punk.
Something that explains what all is here would be good. I hate to provide examples, because they are never perfect, but this KIND of thing does the job:
Yodariquo said:Pretty much from the start the front page has been a disparate portion of the site. It has no pertinence to anything else, and while read, is essentially inconsequential to the rest of the site.
Given the lack of invitability as discussed prior it seems as though that space could be put to better use.
Consequently, I have two questions
1 - Should we kill the front page as we know it?
2 - How should we best utilize that space?
As far as I see it, there are three absolute musts to it: the first is additional navigation, the second is a giant JOIN button, the third is a guided tour of the site.
Site tour and join. Cool. DO that.
No, the satire should stay, but perhaps not on the frontpage. Maybe we should make an seperate page for it.
About the new front page, I have a new idea. Well actually it is an old idea. The purpose of the frontpage is to show the people what the site is about. So Yoda you could put "Join" and "Site Tour" next to "Places". This will only be visible for people that are not logged in, for the rest of us it will be "Places", "Profile" and "Action".
Now about the content of the frontpage. The problem of GGweekly is that we have too much news for mere mortal men. So how about a frontpage with only the most important news, but perhaps more in detail. We could also make it so, that if someone clicks on the title, he/she will get all the news for that title. For example we have Turok 4 news, some one clicks on the title. The search engine shows all the turok 4 news.
And perhaps open a thread where we all the old members are introduces in a funny way, and the new members can introduce themselves.
What Iga said. The first page is basically only good once a week or two when a new story comes up, its totally useless after that.
Here's what I'd do. Satire doesn't work on the front page because aside from a lot of bullshit posts, the site really isn't about satire. It's just misleading. Still it is funny and it would make people aware that not everything here is to be taken seriously.
So perhaps you should have 3 or 4 big of the biggest stories featured on the homepage and then one small one as a joke up there and then update it once or twice a week. The big news items would be easy with just a teaser paragraph and then a link to wherever the story originates or perhaps send them to the newsboard on the GG Weekly page. And the satire piece should just be something quick and dirty, not a full article.
It was initially created as a hook. Some sort of gimmick to make the site stand out. Well, I think it's fair to say, regardless of opinion on the quality of the front page, that that's essentially failed. It was the wrong direction.
Now on my end it's extra work for minimal payoff. Once off the front page it seems as though it would essentially be obsolete and even more out of place.
aspro73 said:Something that explains what all is here would be good. I hate to provide examples, because they are never perfect, but this KIND of thing does the job:
I like examples as they provide a working model; however, in this case, this is what I want to avoid. It's just too cluttered and generic, even in structure.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile
Given the lack of invitability as discussed prior it seems as though that space could be put to better use.
Consequently, I have two questions
1 - Should we kill the front page as we know it?
2 - How should we best utilize that space?
As far as I see it, there are three absolute musts to it: the first is additional navigation, the second is a giant JOIN button, the third is a guided tour of the site.
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Tell me to get back to rewriting this site so it's not horrible on mobile