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| Zkuq said: Cut the avatars entirely, for all I care. I don't think they're worth much on the front page, especially since they indicate the creator of the thread instead of the latest poster. I would think the creator is typically important when a thread is new but loses importance as a thread ages. But I'm fine with either choice, really. Might also want to consider whether the forum section becomes too compact if you remove the avatars altogether, compare to all the other content (of course this could be resolved by adding more threads to the front page). |
Yeah, a good point about it only being important when a thread is new, take my Xbox OT for example which has been open for years, it's a bit useless to display my avatar there anymore. Good point about it being too compact, my core issue really is I think it looks messy as heck in the current implementation, I think I would be fine if they were all the same size but in the past when I asked about it, it seemed like it was suggested to me that it would be an awkward fix.
Using ResetEra as an example, every single avatar is displayed at the same size beside the threads themselves but I think the issue with VGChartz is that everyone has different sized avatars so you'd have to implement something to cut the avatars at a certain point and restrict them to a certain width/height (for the front page only).
| Zkuq said: I personally think the Poll of the Week is fine on the front page, but I won't be very sorry to see it go either. I think it fits there well enough on PC, but on mobile it's probably a bit much. In fact, on PC I might even consider raising it above the forum section, but maybe that's just me. |
Above the forum section?! 
That'd push forums down even further.
Let me ask you, is your objection to removing PotW based on visibility (you want to be able to see it), functionality (you like that PotW allows voting by IP) or something else? If the objection is visibility, do you not believe the example in the OP would be enough? By marking it as important it would stay in that position all week and be highlighted in orange.
| Zkuq said: Community contributions almost certainly needs to go. I just don't see how it's front page stuff. It can be interesting, but I don't think it's worth cluttering the front page with. Additionally, it highlights how inactive the community is these days by default: the latest reviews section, which is what's displayed by default, shows reviews that are 9 months old at this point... |
This is a good point about Community Contributions, that it highlights how inactive the community is these days and it's one reason why I also thought about removing it, once I saw how inactive the latest reviews section is, I don't think it really needs to be there rather, the leaderboards can be placed elsewhere and whenever someone makes a review we can just create something that auto-posts to their wall.
Lets say we remove CC but keep PL/PotW then we could move PL to the right side which would (on mobile) put it at the bottom of the page rather than where it is right now which is above forums and articles, I don't really think it makes sense to be there, it's a community feature, it should be with the forum section and the first focuses of VGChartz should be Charts > Articles > Forums > PotW/PL Community Features.
| Zkuq said: The scroller for the forum sections is horrible, but I don't really use it anyway, so whatever as far as I'm concerned. Would a dropdown, maybe a themed one, perhaps work? Of course that's two clicks versus the one of the two-liner. I'm not a fan of the two-liner either due to the space it requires, but it's much more usable than the scroller version we have now, so I don't think I would mind that change. |
Yeah, the two liner takes up more space in height but the scroller is a bit awkward and hides the rest without scrolling, I tried to trim it down because I think "Website Topics" shouldn't be its own section and instead moved it into "Off-Topic" section so that decreased the boxes from 6 to 5 but I don't know what else to do to streamline it further, Lol.
Dropdown? So something like this...?
But try to make it look nicer obviously 
| Zkuq said: Would it make sense to combine Latest Charts with Latest Software Updates behind tabs? |
Good idea.
| Zkuq said: One thing I noticed if you get rid of a lot of stuff on the front-page, the article/news section 'overflows' the other content, lengthening the page unnecessarily. That's not necessarily a proble, but it's not ideal either. Maybe use smaller images for some of the older news on the front page? Of course... That doesn't seem to solve anything on mobile devices anyway, so maybe not the greatest idea after all. |
Aye we're fucked with mobile, we've never really had anyone with mobile experience, Lol.
It's not a bad idea for desktop.
