Its front page news!!!

[Mux213]

Or maybe not

I was discussing with Banpei the other day about the new frontpage on our website. We've been busy the last few weeks moving all the old static content back onto the front page like the how-to's and link pages and whatnot..

The main attraction on the front page however is the news section. Now there isn't much news and we've abused our powers as admin to plug the shop a little (well the fact that we've got some new stickers that weren't available I guess is noteworthy news so....) but its still staggeringly empty

We've been talking a bit offline with a few people to see if we can get some hachi related news in from the drifting world and we'll see where that takes us but since the 2007 season has yet to begin we can't dig into that yet.

So this message is just a general shout out to all your guys out there, if you got ideas about something that we should post in the news section, let us know. If you hear about something news worthy, give us a PM and we'll put it on the news.

Also a shout out to the vendors out there. We don't want to turn the news section into a commercial channel posting messages everytime you get something in stock, but if you have a new product that wasn't available yet or that adds something for the community, let us know and we'll include it in the news (good example I think is when oldeskewltoy finishes his miata gearbox kit, that would be nice to have as a scoop in the news ).

So lemmi know your ideas, suggestions, etc! Help us give visitors and passers by something nice to read on our front page

[Apolan]

definately "we" (as in you and banpei ) should post new products and conversion options for the 86 on the front page.. also this forum could in time turn into a mor of a page including history, media gallery, our own tech reference, lists of products for the ae and where to get them (categorised) and so on.. in time..

[Chixican]

Just a personal suggestion. I think you should consider having forums within a frame similar to what club4ag did in order to have more traffic through your front page. Right now I go straight into the forums often not checking the home page often because I have a direct url link. This change would force the user to an extent to see what's new before progressing into the forums. Even better would be to use something like Ajax that only refreshes the single frame that's changing making the user experience more fluid.

Feel free to shoot down my idea anytime. No harm will be taken.

[Apolan]

BANG!

I hate the idea of something beeing forced upon me.. who wants to read news, read, putting it on the front page is exposure enough. Who doesnt, moves along to the forums, shop, garage , our future media section or techical reference

[matt mead]

I dont know aobut u guys, but i think it should be good for ppl to post up about event the enter in or osmething like that on the front pages as well

[Chixican]

Apolan Wrote:BANG!

I hate the idea of something beeing forced upon me.. who wants to read news, read, putting it on the front page is exposure enough. Who doesnt, moves along to the forums, shop, garage , our future media section or techical reference

Fair enough... lol It does make it easier for my personal use.

[Mux213]

Have to agree with apolan on the "don't force things onto people" policy, that just aint our style. With the new site design we already made things more uniform so it should be easier to access things and off course we try and push people to the front page by hiliting new technical acticels and such.

That said, if we look at the garage, attention to it is drawn on every page of the forum because each persons entry is linked underneath their avatar.

It may be an idea to have the latest news item repeated on the overview page of the forum.

dxagta, I would just LOVE that. Any event thats AE86 related or in which AE86s compete I would really like to draw attention to through the news page. The problem me and art have is that we regularly don't know about these events until after they've happened. We need people to tell us so we can post the news.

The same deal with new products being released into the market. We often don't know about these things until someone brings it up in the forums. We'd just love it if a vendor or member gives a shout out to us and points it out to us so we can turn it into a news item.

(which is the whole point of this thread, bring this to your attention so you can help us make this thing work for you )

[oldskull]

dxagta idea is nice. I had an website that do that job before. So friends can add thier own news and admin is the one who could accept them or not. If admin accept them then the news will show on front page. Like now we still have them on http://www.boxshots.org/

About the events, maybe you can make some contact with webmaster like be/nl drift series, prodrift etc. and give them access to add some event or news for their own show/event on aeu86.org

Or maybe u need to find some voluenteer who always on net to add for you.

[Mux213]

Hey Oldskull,

We've already talked to a couple of volunteers with which we need to work some things out. But the drift season has yet to start so hopefully we'll get it on the road before then

As for your submitting news, that would be nice but I'm not sure we can rig that into the way the news site currently works and I think Banpei deserves a brake after all the work he's put into it so far. Just submitting news over PM to him or me would work just the same, just a little but more copy/paste work for us which we'd gladly do

[banpei]

Mux213 Wrote:As for your submitting news, that would be nice but I'm not sure we can rig that into the way the news site currently works

Even worse. We had such a system before (Mambo) and noone ever used it.

We chose this setup because it is much easier and it integrates into the forum which makes it easier to convert already written text (in the pm for instance) and integrate attachments into the posting.

I personally don't like frames (neither does google btw ) so I wouldn't see that as an option. I opted to have the side menu on each page, but Mux and I agreed it would distract people too much.

I do like the idea of having a repetition of the latest news somewhere, so I think we need to figure out where to put it...

Anyway, too offtopic because this thread was initially about the content, not the visuals.