The Great Home Page Experiment

The Great Home Page Experiment

Apologies for the brief and rather flavourless update this evening – was in the middle of sprucing up the home page and my laptop’s battery caved in. As you can see, we’re going through something of an early Spring clean, so excuse the mess while I’m unable to fix it basically.

The general idea is that all posts will be morphed into this one monster list of TSS articles – we have written a lot of stuff over the last week, but some posts have not been as popular as others because they were hidden underneath other sections. I hope to have in place a system where users can easily see new posts on the home page since their last visit, so you don’t miss a beat.

The top of the page – horrific Dr Robotnik and all – is intended to be for the latest ‘hot’ stories, be they news, articles or anything else. I will be adding text into each of the three (one currently doesn’t work – something else to fix) hot story images as soon as I get the chance. In the meantime, enjoy a turning Robotnik without any context. Sweet dreams!

Let me know your feedback on the home page, and whether you think these changes are good for you. We’re not above changing it again to suit your needs, so give us your thoughts in the comments box below! And we’ll return to our usual home page service soon…

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Published by

Dreadknux

Founder of The Sonic Stadium and creator/co-organiser of the Summer of Sonic convention. Loves talking about Sonic the Hedgehog in his spare time. Likes Sonic Colours a little too much for his own good, apparently.

16 Comments

  1. If you are refferring to how the articles aren’t shown on the front page, then I would like it to go back to that. The site does look better though. I just like being able to type in the website and right off the bat see anything new that is Sonic related without having to click anywhere else. I’ve always loved that.

  2. Yeah, I hated scrolling down to see the other latest articles, so I think this is better already. If you guys also added a chatbox to the side, we could leave quick comments, requests, or something like that, and also it would make the site look even more lively.

  3. I love the idea of one monster list, but an even better idea is a monster list, plus a list of the top 5 commented posts, that way a hot topic can be easily found.

  4. Another addition that would be really nice to see would be different coloured borders on the pictures next to every different type of news update.

    For Instance…
    Yellow Border = Fan-Community News
    Red Border = Sonic Community (Yardley, TSS etc.)
    Blue Border = SEGA News/New Game News

  5. Miles: the border colour idea is a great one, thanks for your input! I plan to add a ‘most commented’ list on the sidebar soon – would this be good for you?

    Hook131: you’re missing the search bar eh? I’ll see what I can do. 🙂 In the meantime there’s a search bar in the ‘Archives’ page under News in the header.

  6. I like Miles per hour’s idea and I double it. Also, a box for TSS site updates at the bottom would be a good thing to have.

    But I must admit, this set up does seem rather bland and basic for the world’s biggest Sonic fansite.

  7. This was a great idea and the Home Page looks as lovely as ever 🙂 plus it makes it easier to catch up on events and news plus videos and the important stuff that you’ve missed out

    I also agree with suggestions above it would be really effective….or maybe a image to represent the day or something else etc etc…..These are all great ideas keep em comming 😉

  8. I like the big pictures for the articles at the top, but I would rather have the news news be front and center how it used to be.

  9. I love the new homepage. I’m glad I spoke up on Twitter the other day. I also like Miles Per-hour’s border idea. Great job, Dreadknux!

  10. Both versions of the website page are special and unique in their own way in my opinion and I too also like Miles Per-Hour’s idea…Excellent Plan XD and DreadKnux you did a fantastic job on this…A great start and it feels right to refresh a bit for the new year 🙂

  11. Lookin’ good so far, Dread, though I liked the old layout’s separation of Community Articles, News, and Updates more than I do the current system’s massively long list…

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