What would you do with the home page?

Well I'm tying up the loose ends of the design and while I know there are a few bugs that I'll get to eventually, I think the home page needs the most attention at the moment. I need some help though

Well I'm tying up the loose ends of the design and while I know there are a few bugs that I'll get to eventually, I think the home page needs the most attention at the moment.

I reduced the site to its base elements, sifting out the glut and only putting back what I thought was needed. I just didn't put enough back into the home page.

Ideally, I'd like it to be a different layout from the rest of the site so I've come up with some implementation ideas and I'd appreciate being told what you prefer.

1. This is how it currently is. Big explanation at the top, single column and just not that much data.
2. This would just be ramming the current sidebar into the design. It's not really what I want to do but I think it's better than 1. Perhaps splitting the info into two sections.
3. Splitting the top up into two parts, having the current posts, as they are and then having the required sidebar elements as a footer.
4. As now but with the sidebar-footer-monster.

I'm not very well qualified to answer this. I'm somebody who religiously uses RSS to check on updates for sites. Even if you're not, imagine you're checking the front page for updates... What do you need to know? Imagine you've just read an article and now you're on the home page... What do you need to know?

Are any of those layouts serving any purpose if people can read the current sidebar and get all the same info? What do you thin

Written by Oli on Friday, 27 April 2007. Tagged with personal. Read 1248 times. If you liked it, please give it a digg.

#1 /* 16 months, 9 days ago */

The most obvious answer is to throw the sidebar into contention again (i.e. use #2) because that needs the least development and you're happy with it.

I'd be inclined to make the homepage a little different, maybe #3.

<a href="http://www.seopher.com" target="_blank">Seopher.com</a>

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Seopher Its not for girls

#2 /* 16 months, 9 days ago */

Use #3's top bar on #2's design, the sidebar just tidies things up alot and makes things accessible rather than a trip to the bottom of the page... Otherwise, awesome =)

Born to make you happy

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WildThing Pass the kipper

#3 /* 16 months, 9 days ago */

OH OH! I want Hacking Hamster back....

Born to make you happy

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WildThing Pass the kipper

#4 /* 16 months, 9 days ago */

Design 1 - Is decent because it is simple, but does not appear to have a lot of room for content.
Design 2 - Is my favorite of the four. It has lots of space for content and is organized well. Sort of feels like a layout similar to EE's :)
Design 3 - Nothing really aligns with anything else on this design. It feels far less organized than design 2. Depending on the length of the page, I don't know if anyone will scroll down far enough to ever see the red boxes.
Design 4 - Although this one is better than 3 because the blue and green boxes are aligned, I still dislike the footers because they don't align and because they seem "tacked on" to the bottom of the page.

Design 2 seems to deliver the most content in the most organized manner. Be careful not to try to cram too much content though, negative (white/empty) space can be very important as well.

What do I need to know on the home page? I don't think that I fully understand your site yet, but I've been enjoying sites like Digg and Slashdot lately. They give you an article synopsis (which saves space) and if you want to read more, you click on a link.

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masmus Anonymous User

#5 /* 16 months, 9 days ago */

I'm imagining something like #4, but each box is collapsed to show just its header, and when you mouse over a header, some cool JavaScript thing happens to reveal its entire contents.

I amuse easily. The JS tricks that were on v9 of this site had me amused. So does the randomly changing tagline that appears above "thepcspy" on the new version. You should add more taglines; I think I've read them all already... or do you wish to discourage constant refreshing of your site?

Cross me and be thagomized.

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Stegosaurus Normal User

#6 — Author comment /* 16 months, 8 days ago */

Well I've got to say, I really liked #3 as an idea but I implemented it locally and I didn't like it...

So I've gone for a variation on #2 with a wide top. What do you think?

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Oli Numero Uno

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