Parker: Rather than hijacking the "quote" thread, I'll start a new one about possible re-design options for the homepage. Hopefully others with better design sense than me will join in with good ideas.
Some simple thoughts for tonight:
I browse HTF by clicking my browser shortcut, taking me straight to AHL. From there, I use the drop-down menu to progressively move "up" through the forums I enjoy (primarily Computers, TV, Movies, Software). The main pages don't help me get to the forums so I ignore them. Here are some thoughts to possibly improve the pages so I could use them (and also then see more ads).
The alternate home page, the "favorites only" view places my most important information, my forum favorites, on the third page (counting the page-down presses required to get there). The most important information apparently is the weather outside, website statistics (57,523 members) and birthdays. Honestly, I don't care. I want to read about movies. Then there are two pages of ads. Finally, my forum links.
The forum links are too spread out with the forum description, post count, moderators, and name of the poster as of my page refresh. A seasoned user, I know full well what the forums are about, the moderators are well labeled within the forums, and in a forum this busy, the name of the most recent poster has no value.
I suggest moving the favorites to the top of the page, giving only the forum name. Possibly links to the last five threads I participated in would be nice.
Remove all site statistics, birthdays, weather, date and time. Follow that with the ads. Then have all the utility links on the bottom. The whole thing should compress to about 50% its current size.
Hope that makes sense and doesn't come across harsh. You do a remarkable job keeping this forum running so smoothly. It's the best run, best managed, best membershipped forum I've ever know. I only want to make suggestions to lead to its improvement.
I also am aware of the desire to prioritize ads and promote ad impressions. Currently, I don't see these major ads because they so clutter the page, I don't look at the page at all. By making the page useful, I hope more people will use the main pages and so increase ad impressions on the whole.
Some additional thoughts on what I think are the "main" page a new user would see.
Replace all the ads, utility links, and website statistics on the top 1/3 of the page with a concise listing of all forums, or the user's favorite forums.
Below that, have a basic bar of utility links. Following that, begin the ads.
I don't care for the Audioholic links masquerading as HTF links, before any HTF links appear.
I don't care for the HTF links randomly dispersed along the sides. It's just not usable.
And I think it cheapens HTF's appearance having nearly 15 pages of APEX deals on the front page: they are well-placed in their current forum (and I enjoy checking there occaisionally). This isn't
http://dealnews.com and shouldn't try to be.
