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OP - February 26, 2010, 04:12 PM

This was actually one of Yeezevee's more coherent suggestions - that this forum really needs a good front page with lots of good articles and info.

I know Aziz is doing a great job doing a Wiki - but it would be good if we could have a better front page.

Is anyone up for doing the leg work?
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Re: Front Page
Reply #1 - February 26, 2010, 04:34 PM

What kind of articles? It does have a few though, your videos and Islames stuff.

You mean other resources?
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Re: Front Page
Reply #2 - February 26, 2010, 05:06 PM

I also heard what Yeezvee was saying - I'm up for helping..

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Re: Front Page
Reply #3 - February 26, 2010, 07:42 PM

We can go nuts on this and it has been suggested before. I have even tried to get people to write stuff, if my memory serves me correctly.

If people can come up with good content or suggestions on content I'm happy to handle the coding and admin side of it.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #4 - February 26, 2010, 08:18 PM

Quote from: Hassan on February 26, 2010, 04:12 PM
This was actually one of Yeezevee's more coherent suggestions - that this forum really needs a good front page with lots of good articles and info.

I know Aziz is doing a great job doing a Wiki - but it would be good if we could have a better front page.

Is anyone up for doing the leg work?

I think we should have a chair - one that listens to all the ideas, and decides on the best way forward.

Hass - Whether or not you have the time, I think you are best suited to this role - you've got experience of both forums and obviously agreed with Yeezvee that something should be done; but its up to you obviously.

I am happy to be the discussion fluffer.

Just to be clear to everyone, we are talking about the front page i.e. http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php vs. this on FFI (at least this is what I think Yeezvee was comparing it against - perhaps somebody can confirm) http://www.faithfreedom.org/

If we dont get any volounteers, then I would like to even suggest scrapping the current front page and incorporating it into the index section, I am not sure if it even gets visited. Any ideas on hits that page is getting?

Also Os - now that all this stuff is happening with SMF, does it look like we are gonna be staying with this version for a while? In other words content management system for the front page and no spellcheck for posts for the foreseable future :(

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Re: Front Page
Reply #5 - February 26, 2010, 09:11 PM

I wouldn't try to incorporate the current front page into the main board index. That would be a nightmare. I use the current one mainly for the news widgets as they are a handy way of getting multiple feeds. It can easily be re-formatted though since it's all just html and a bit of php where necessary. You can make it look like anything.

Personally I prefer clean layouts and find pages like the FFI front page a bit too cluttered. I think it would be better to make more use of categorisation linking to other pages, and don't give people visual overload on the one page. It also loads faster that way, which is still important for some people. There have been suggestions about loading our front page up with Flash and videos and all sorts of things. I'm totally against that because I can see it being a nightmare for some users. I think we can have content like that but it should be linked from the front page rather than being displayed there. For example, we used to have all of Hass's vids on separate pages linked from the front page.

The CMS allows versatility in styling and layout but I set it up before I knew as much as I know now so I just used the basic blocks. We can extend it in various ways, or even use SSI to do completely custom pages as well. Short version: the sky is the limit.

As for spellcheck, any decent browser comes with spellcheck built in. IE8 should have it somewhere under your options. I don't think IE7 and earlier do but they are on the way out anyway.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #6 - February 27, 2010, 09:26 AM

Quote from: IsLame on February 26, 2010, 08:18 PM
Hass - Whether or not you have the time, I think you are best suited to this role

I don't have time, IsLame - despite being on a lot recently - I have a great deal on my hands and will not be online so much.
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Re: Front Page
Reply #7 - February 27, 2010, 09:35 AM

Quote from: Hassan on February 27, 2010, 09:26 AM
I don't have time, IsLame - despite being on a lot recently - I have a great deal on my hands and will not be online so much.

Fair enough - lets just make suggestions here then, and let it takes its own course I guess..
Quote from: osmanthus on February 26, 2010, 09:11 PM
Personally I prefer clean layouts and find pages like the FFI front page a bit too cluttered. I think it would be better to make more use of categorisation linking to other pages, and don't give people visual overload on the one page. It also loads faster that way, which is still important for some people. There have been suggestions about loading our front page up with Flash and videos and all sorts of things. I'm totally against that because I can see it being a nightmare for some users. I think we can have content like that but it should be linked from the front page rather than being displayed there. For example, we used to have all of Hass's vids on separate pages linked from the front page.

The CMS allows versatility in styling and layout but I set it up before I knew as much as I know now so I just used the basic blocks. We can extend it in various ways, or even use SSI to do completely custom pages as well. Short version: the sky is the limit.

Yep, I think the same. It just looks like a disorganised wall of text atm, and could be made to look snappier but I cant think how to avoid this problem. I guess if we take a look at some other forums and see how they do it, then that might help.

It might help to understand what paramatars we are under, then we know how far we can let our imagination flourish.

Anyone know any links to forums with good looking & useful homepages to help generate ideas?

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Re: Front Page
Reply #8 - February 27, 2010, 09:38 AM

Quote
Anyone know any links to forums with good looking & useful homepages to help generate ideas?

http://www.jihadwatch.org/

^ thats a good website

I would love to write articles, but my english writting skills isnt that well :'(
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Re: Front Page
Reply #9 - February 27, 2010, 09:47 AM

Thats not a bad idea - how about having a vertical scroll thread for all member contributions (like here)

Privilidged members can link in news articles, there own videos, blogs etc will be like a sort of Bloomberg round up on the the world of non-theists & muslims from a secular viewpoint. No commentary/reply function should be allowed though.. but perhaps a clickable 'comment' button that enables you to comment on a thread in the main forum that opens up when its posted (bit like a poll)

This might enables search engines to find the most pressing news of the day here, and encourage more people to join if they feel compelled to comment. Also this page could be used as a news source/like a COEM magazine, which people might actually favourtie and treat like a sort of Bllomberg/Reuters newspage one day;) OK might be getting ahead of myself here, but hope you get my gist.

P.S Ive never seen this been done before so its pretty revolutionary and perhaps not even possible..

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Re: Front Page
Reply #10 - February 27, 2010, 03:06 PM

That's perfectly possible and worth thinking about.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #11 - February 27, 2010, 04:22 PM

come on people - lets have some feedback - any other ideas / thoughts/ suggestions/ improvements for the front page?

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Re: Front Page
Reply #12 - February 27, 2010, 05:27 PM

Or we could also do something like facebook, almost like keeping an overview of activity on the front page.

e.g. no of replies to your posts, number of posts today, over the past week, number of new members this month, a graph of growth over the past 2 years, along with most popular thread this month etc.

Basically for blowing our own trumpet & advertising our wares like a display cabinet ..

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Re: Front Page
Reply #13 - March 02, 2010, 06:50 PM

Quote from: Whale on March 02, 2010, 06:41 PM
Tell ya guys I got some feedback for this site. No one asked for it I know but here I go:
- loads slow. Look at other hosts, they're cheap at $8/month
- main page of the site should just have the forum, after all thats what everyone here comes for.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #14 - March 02, 2010, 06:52 PM

I agree with Whale - as it stands, what is the point of the front page? Why not just have the forum index as the front page, with links to the rest of the stuff?

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Re: Front Page
Reply #15 - March 03, 2010, 04:35 PM

We could do that, but then we need somewhere to put all the links to the extra content. A separate page is a sensible place for that so..............

I assume that everyone who visits the place more than once bookmarks the forum if they want to, so direct access should not be a problem. We could have it arranged differently though. Instead of the front page being the home page, which is what the CMS defaults to, I could set it up so that the front page content was on a subsiduary page linked from whatever button in the main menu and the forum was the home page. That makes sense in some ways too.

Oh and I agree about the server. It's fast sometimes and slow at others but overall I'm not happy with the value for money.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #16 - March 03, 2010, 05:07 PM

Quote from: osmanthus on March 03, 2010, 04:35 PM
Oh and I agree about the server. It's fast sometimes and slow at others but overall I'm not happy with the value for money.

Yep, but you are splitting the costs with others arent you, so its up to them too I guess and whether its worth the hassle is another question

Quote
We could do that, but then we need somewhere to put all the links to the extra content. A separate page is a sensible place for that so..............

Yep, I think we should do that at the very least if nothing else goes ahead.. although I would still prefer the other ideas to this option.

I dont think we need just one button - most of these sections can get reappripiated and pinned under the current framework in the forum page.

These are the current sections

Quote
Additional information
Rules of this forum.
Contact the staff.

The can go under rules section

Quote
Copy of registration agreement.
Software requirements for this forum

this can be pinned to questions/probs/suggetions section

Quote
Ex-Muslim critiques of Islam
Hassan's videos: Page 1
Hassan's videos: Page 2
Hassan's videos: Page 3
Hassan's videos: Page 4
Unethical/questionable hadiths and surahs (by Peruvian Skies)
My problems with Islam (by awais)
Paradise (by Peruvian Skies)
The reason I left Islam (by Islame)

ExMuslimUK's videos
ExMuslimUK's videos: Page 1
ExMuslimUK's videos: Page 2

- Can all go under resources section
Quote
RSS newsfeeds from Reuters, al Jazeera, CNN and many more

-Pinned to news around the globe section

I think thats just about everything, leaving us with a redundant/blank canvas for a front page

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Re: Front Page
Reply #17 - March 03, 2010, 05:21 PM

That results in sticky thread overload. Really if you have more than three or four sticky threads in any commonly used board you are doing it wrong.

I see what you mean though. Something like that is definitely worth thinking about.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #18 - March 03, 2010, 05:41 PM

Quote from: osmanthus on March 03, 2010, 05:21 PM
That results in sticky thread overload. Really if you have more than three or four sticky threads in any commonly used board you are doing it wrong.

You're probably right, but am sure we can work something out if thats what we decide to do, perhaps even extra sections (if there are already too many then you could make them collapsible) in the forum then.

As nobody has volunteered to steer this project, I dont mind doing it.

I guess the best thing is to mention everything here, and provided there are no objections, then continue as said.

So the options so far is that we have:

1) Lose the front page and merge with forum page
2) Do (1) and go with this proposal
Quote from: IsLame on February 27, 2010, 09:47 AM
Thats not a bad idea - how about having a vertical scroll thread for all member contributions (like here)

Privilidged members can link in news articles, there own videos, blogs etc will be like a sort of Bloomberg round up on the the world of non-theists & muslims from a secular viewpoint. No commentary/reply function should be allowed though.. but perhaps a clickable 'comment' button that enables you to comment on a thread in the main forum that opens up when its posted (bit like a poll)

This might enables search engines to find the most pressing news of the day here, and encourage more people to join if they feel compelled to comment. Also this page could be used as a news source/like a COEM magazine, which people might actually favourtie and treat like a sort of Bllomberg/Reuters newspage one day;) OK might be getting ahead of myself here, but hope you get my gist.

P.S Ive never seen this been done before so its pretty revolutionary and perhaps not even possible..

3) Do (1) and go with this proposal
Quote from: IsLame on February 27, 2010, 05:27 PM
Or we could also do something like facebook, almost like keeping an overview of activity on the front page.

e.g. no of replies to your posts, number of posts today, over the past week, number of new members this month, a graph of growth over the past 2 years, along with most popular thread this month etc.

Basically for blowing our own trumpet & advertising our wares like a display cabinet ..

4) Combination of (2) & (3)

Have I missed anything out? Which option do you think is the most realistical Os (if any at all), and I will expand on that option from here on in..

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Re: Front Page
Reply #19 - March 03, 2010, 05:47 PM

I'll think about it a bit more. I still think using separate pages for some of the content is a good thing as it gives a better presentation than a standard thread post. However they don't all necessarily have to be linked from the main menu. Some of them should be, and some of the options we have now can probably be dropped.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #20 - March 03, 2010, 05:53 PM

Cool, tbh I think this area is probably the weakest part of COEM atm, so anything is better than nothing.. I'll leave you alone now to do some deep

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Re: Front Page
Reply #21 - March 03, 2010, 06:03 PM

Well we probably should have a full-on sitemap page. That could handle the links to all the custom pages that aren't part of the forum boards as such. Put a sitemap tab up in the main menu and you have instant accessibility and enough visibility that it wont be forgotten. That could perform the same function as the current front page but in a better way.

The other option is to do some fancy coding (not that fancy, really) and nick some of the code from SMF 2.0, which allows board titles to be redirects to another web page. That could be changed to allowing thread titles (stickied) to be redirects instead, which might be better. You could even tweak it so that one sticky thread allowed multiple "titles" redirecting to different pages. That way you can get the same effect as what you were thinking for pinning the resources section without needing a stack of stickied threads that don't contain any real thread content as such.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #22 - March 03, 2010, 06:30 PM

Oh and I have several other ideas for improving general forum functionality. To take just one example, on the main board index you have the latest post in each thread listed in the right column. Clicking the link takes you to the last post in that thread. This is fine, but usually you will want to read from the first unread post in that thread. There's little point in reading the latest post without knowing the context in which it was posted. So what it should do is take you to the first unread post instead, like the little "new" icons you see in the topic listing page. That should be default behaviour for any links to posts as it is what people will want 99% of the time and clicking the little icon instead of a nice big title is a PITA.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #23 - March 04, 2010, 04:36 AM

thats a kick arse idea Os

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Re: Front Page
Reply #24 - March 15, 2010, 08:28 PM

Ok, been thinking. I reckon unless we can come up with something really good for the front page we should drop it, and link the content from the forum n some way. I can easily do this with some custom pages, and they should load faster than the current front page anyway. So for instance, start with a sitemap page that has links to everything else and go from there.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #25 - March 15, 2010, 08:37 PM

Not sure what you are saying here Os . do you prefer to drop the current front page or replace it with some form of sitemap. I'd prefer the first option, as I prefer less clicks and simplicity. If the forum Index page gets too large, then there are things we can shave from there..

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Re: Front Page
Reply #26 - March 15, 2010, 08:51 PM

I mean drop the current front page and use a sitemap page to link everything up. So we have an obvious sitemap link or button somewhere up top, and that brings you to the sitemap page which shows how to get everywhere else.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #27 - March 15, 2010, 09:10 PM

Example for a rough start: check the main menu bar just after the Forum button, or the link in the theme footer.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #28 - March 16, 2010, 12:06 AM

Ok I gots some ideaz...

Can we have a list of "hot" topics or latest posts (or previews of threads with latest posts) on the front page?

Here are some other forums that have some cool front page features (for ideas)

http://aboxcafe.com
I like the rotating globe, and the poll below that. Not sure what we'd poll, but we could change it around now and then. It'd add another interactive reason for lurkers to join up.

http://www.girlsgetgoing.com
This one seems to have a short list of the 4-5 hottest threads in each subforum. Also, I like the little box on the left that says "Inspire Me". We could have a selection of posts maybe from the Quotes thread or somewhere like that, that just pops up random posts or preselected posts from a certain collection of posts, in a small box on the fp.

http://www.thealancoxshow.com/forum
I like the twitter feed mod - those users who have active twitter accounts could apply to have their feeds included.
Also, I like the upcoming dates thing at the bottom. We could set it up members' birthdays (those who want to share), and holidays, both religious and secular from all over wherever the members are from, as well as other memorable days like Darwin's b-day, Pi-Day, etc., just for kicks.

http://www.hackforums.net
We could put the icons that are in the Other sites on the bottom in a row or 2 like on this page.

I'll keep looking for more ideas.

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Re: Front Page
Reply #29 - March 16, 2010, 01:01 AM

1/ The revolving globe is cute but painfully slow to load if you click for the bigger view. Not sure about it because frankly I tend to go somewhere else if a page doesn't load fast. My preference if we were going to have that would be to not load it on the front page but to link it off a memberlist.

2/ Ok cool. We can do recent topics easily enough. We already have recent posts in the side panel. That is no drama. We could probably also rig up a random post from the "Quotes wot are kewl enough fer me siggy innit" thread.

3/ Don't do Twitter myself but if we can sneak it in and some people like the feeds then yeah, why not? The events one is easy. Our software already allows that a a default feature. I just haven't enabled it because there's usually bugger all on our calendar and the default display of events is kinda blurgh. I can fix that though.

4/ I think I'd prefer the icons in a side column along with some other useful links, or sumpin.

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