Tuning and improvements

[Ed]

Having received comments that the community site is unfocused and muddled, I’ve been making some changes to the layout. Regulars will probably have already spotted many of the changes.

Some of the changes may seen odd but I am attempting to make everything work as desired on both mobile and desktop browsers. I still maintain that the desktop experience will always be far superior. There’s just no way to give a proper, effective experience on a 6-7 inch screen.

More changes are coming but also, don’t be surprised if you see changes happen and then disappear a few minutes later.

[Kerry]

AT&T is blocking the videos on this site in the United States.

[Ed]

Do you mean the embedded Vimeo videos? Or just the ones hosted on this server?

[Ed]

Also, those of you on mobile devices, do you like the optimisations I’ve made to the header area (the panel directly below the menu)? Is it easier/clearer?

[Ed]

Just made more tweaks and (hopefully) improvements. Also updated the Master Dare List too.

Diana likes this

[Ed]

Should I attempt to reduce the size of the main menu (at the top of the site) again?

[Ed]

I could probably get rid of the top menu altogether.

[ptHarry]

Ed: “I could probably get rid of the top menu altogether”

I did wonder about that myself.

I normally visit the site on desktop, where it makes reasonable sense in its current form. But when you mentioned tuning it for mobile view I sent the home page to my phone.

In mobile view, a third of the screen is taken up with the header and top menu, another third is taken up with the orange panel and the bottom third is taken up by “welcome to our community site”. Only after scrolling down do you get to any actual content. It takes a lot of scrolling to get to any actual content. But initially, that mobile user sees very little of what I see at first glance on a desktop screen. So, that “top left corner” of the desktop screen needs to contain something very compelling when it appears on its own to encourage people to scroll down further.

Perhaps the home page needs a completely different layout to the rest of the site. A landing page dominated by a photo and  story that changes every day from a list of top articles. So the site looks different at every visit, even if, at first, nobody is contributing anything new.

Is there a mechanism that could automatically embed a random blog or forum post on the home page?

[Ed]

In mobile view, a third of the screen is taken up with the header and top menu, another third is taken up with the orange panel and the bottom third is taken up by “welcome to our community site”. Only after scrolling down do you get to any actual content. It takes a lot of scrolling to get to any actual content. But initially, that mobile user sees very little of what I see at first glance on a desktop screen. So, that “top left corner” of the desktop screen needs to contain something very compelling when it appears on its own to encourage people to scroll down further.

I’ve tried to fix that by removing the righthand top menu panel (it was to the right of the Updates panel, and appeared below it on mobile devices). Removing the menu would help further.

Perhaps the home page needs a completely different layout to the rest of the site. A landing page dominated by a photo and  story that changes every day from a list of top articles. So the site looks different at every visit, even if, at first, nobody is contributing anything new.

The “Welcome” post absolutely must be the first post you see on the main page. If I don’t describe the content and display an age warning, I’ll get in trouble (with my hosting company for starters).

Is there a mechanism that could automatically embed a random blog or forum post on the home page?

Not that I know of. There may be a plugin that does that but I’m attempting to remove around 1/3 of the plugins as I’ve got way too many.

[Ed]

I’m considering re-adding the activity page:

Activity

Before you ask, I get very little formating control over this. If I make anything smaller all the related formatting elements on the site will change too.

ptHarry likes this

[Ed]

Can anyone remember why I got rid of it years ago? I vaguely remember a spam problem, but I’m not sure.

[ptHarry]

When was it removed?

I looked in archive.org, which has pages going back to 2018, but I didn’t find anything that resembles the format that I see at https://community.nakedexperiment.com/activity/

[Ed]

I can’t find it in the logs. I would imagine the same time I removed the groups and the old forum, but I don’t remember when that was.

[ptHarry]

I guess this was the discussion that led to its removal:

That was seen on 27 July 2021. Sadly, archive.org does not seem to have captured the actual discussion.

It had gone by the next capture, on 04 Dec 2021

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[Ed]

I’m not sure. “Topic” implies something in the forum.

Has anyone seen Sian around here recently? I haven’t seen her in ages.

[ptHarry]

One year and 4 months, apparently.

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Diana likes this

[Ed]

Sorry, I didn’t mean on the site (I should have been clearer). I meant has anyone seen online (on other websites etc.) or messaging etc.

If anyone has, I was going to suggest reminding her about our site. I know a few people who stopped visiting for a while and then forgot about the community. When something reminded them they returned to being active again.

Diana likes this

[ptHarry]

I see you’ve changed https://community.nakedexperiment.com/activity/ so that it displays only a few lines and then “read more”.

That seems like an improvement to me … the full posts were showing yesterday.

I guess its purpose would be to spotlight such activity as there is, increasing its visibility to encourage further participation. For that, seeing many initial snippets is probably better than seeing just one or two long posts.

Diana likes this

[Ed]

Weirdly, I didn’t change that as it has no admin options. I wish I could control which events appear within it.

Diana likes this

[ptHarry]

I think anyway that if https://community.nakedexperiment.com/activity/ appears somewhere that’s easily seen when visitors return to the site, it stands a chance of increasing participation.

Diana likes this

[Ed]

I’ll have to work it into the design somewhere. The obvious place is the main menu BUT if I might get right of that…

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[Ed]

Does the main menu make it easier for new visitors?

[ptHarry]

Ed: Does the main menu make it easier for new visitors?

First or second visit, maybe. I know if I visit a site that looks interesting at first glance, I will either check out most of the main menu items or come back later to find out what I might have missed.

 

Ed likes this

[Ed]

I’m still trying to decide whether or not to remove it. Many of the links in the menu are now replicated below the logo (but not all).

ptHarry likes this

[ptHarry]

Effectively, the links below the logo (whichever of them you keep) can do the job that the menu once did. So on that basis, the menu is no longer required.

 

Ed likes this

[Ed]

Better?

[Ed]

Visitors were way up yesterday but interactions were almost zero. Obviously, that has nothing to do with the changes but it would be nice to get some feedback from all those visitors.

Diana likes this

[Ed]

As the site still seems to work without the main menu, I haven’t received any negative feedback and visitors to the site remain undiminished, I’m going to leave the menu switched off for now.

ptHarry and Diana like this

[ptHarry]

The proof is always in the pudding 🙂

Ed likes this

[John]

If I remember, Sian was disappointed about the removal of the all female chat, but no one had actually used it for years. We have several female members, but they never seem to be active at the same time.

Ed and ptHarry like this

[Ed]

That’s true. Actually, it’s been a recurring thing that people get attached to a concept but don’t actually use it in reality.

In that case, it was pointed out to me that the ladies had some ability to chat with each other in private via the private messaging feature.

[Author]

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