New "Main ATS Home Page" Built With Flags...

New Site Home Page (BETA)

As promised in the ATS Flagging System Thread, the flags are an important tool that enables all our members to influence the make of a new site home page, designed to be more "user friendly" for people hitting ATS for the first time:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

As you can see, thread flags play a major role in defining, in real-time, what appears on the page.

Once the flagging system has been running for a week or so, and we have enough flagged threads, we'll be switching over to use this as the new home page. The same system will also be adapted to provide an overview of activity and flagged popularity in forum groups, and individual forums.


The page is still in "BETA", and there will be some additional design tweaks and adjustments before it goes live... but I wanted to show you how important your flagging is.


fixed link

[edit on 19-2-2007 by DontTreadOnMe]

Kewl


Now to flag.

What a "Cunning Use of Flags" !



Looks cool!

Just noticed the link to the ATS Podcast Player on the navigation bar too.



[edit on 2/19/2007 by Mechanic 32]

Looks great, but the last part "Important Topics" doesn't seem to be working correctly.

Originally posted by djohnsto77
Looks great, but the last part "Important Topics" doesn't seem to be working correctly.

It's apparently still a work in progress, I believe.

Just noticed the Hot Topics button on the navigation bar, too.

I can't wait for the Grand Opening, when everything is up and running.

[edit on 2/19/2007 by Mechanic 32]

Are the "Home Page" and the "Forum Page" two separate pages? I remember a few ATS's ago, we would be directed to the Home page upon arriving at ATS. Then a flick of the switch was done and we were directed to the Forum page. So I guess my question is, this adjustment to the Home page, will it reflect the page which lists all of the forums, or will be simply be directed to this new home page?

...I hope there is some logic in what I've just said.

Cool SkepticOverlord nice work, I hope the tags make searches easier.

I tagged a few threads by scrolling down to the bottom of the thread and typed in words I thought people would try searching for that pertain to the thread, is this correct? should I do it another way?

I also noticed the search window is gone from the regular home page, is that gone for good or can you put another one or will the tags have a search function?

The New ATS Primary Home Page Is Live!

www.abovetopsecret.com...

The page is 99.9% dynamic, and about 80% of the content is determined by your flagging... so get flagging!

Originally posted by megaslayer
Cool SkepticOverlord nice work, I hope the tags make searches easier.

I tagged a few threads by scrolling down to the bottom of the thread and typed in words I thought people would try searching for that pertain to the thread, is this correct?

It's thread flagging, not tagging!

See the post above mine ^^^

SkepticOverlord, I'm confused about one thing...

Will this replace the current home page??

The reason I ask, is that there is no link to MyATS there, as well as other buttons on the navigation bar.

Or is this going to be an additional page?

Sorry to be the first negative input with this new flag system: It seems that all this has done is made the site much harder to navigate from the homepage.

The different forums are now on the left hand side of the screen and offer no information on the individual topics (time of last post, number of posts/threads).

I found Dark Matter very easy to navigate and the 'hot topics' which used to reside on the left side of the page seemed sufficent. If the majority of the front page is as automatic as you say it is then could the issue of redundancy start to show as people flag?

Also, asteically...dark matter is much more visually pleasing then the new homepage --at least in my humble opinion. Like I said, it seems clustered and more difficult to navigate then dark matter.

Clean neat and simple > clustered and fancy.

All in all it seems messy and immediately confusing...a 'new member' or visitor to the site could, in my opinion, easily become very overwhelmed.

Keep in mind there are three "pages" you can use.

www.abovetopsecret.com... - Home Page
www.abovetopsecret.com... - Board Home
www.abovetopsecret.com... - Posts Page

You can use any of them you wish and the new home page will never be seen (although its a powerful tool). For NEW users however, the home page will allow them better understanding and navigation of what ATS is and has.

All of this translates into one extra click of the mouse. Not much confusion towards the overall "navigation" of the site.

Looks great!

Originally posted by ZeddicusZulZorander
Keep in mind there are three "pages" you can use.

www.abovetopsecret.com... - Home Page
www.abovetopsecret.com... - Board Home
www.abovetopsecret.com... - Posts Page

You can use any of them you wish and the new home page will never be seen (although its a powerful tool). For NEW users however, the home page will allow them better understanding and navigation of what ATS is and has.

Oh hell...well as long as the "forum" page...Board Home...does not begin to look like the Home Page one then I suppose I retract my previous statements reffering to the replacing of the page with the other.

However, the Home Page does seem quite cluttered.

We've had some inpute from a number of sources, that we need a better "site home" for first-time users who stumbled into "abovetopsecret.com"

For experienced users, the board home and associated pages are a comfortable place... but for the new user who previously hit the board home, it was hard to fathom what goes on here... now we have something for them.

And... no existing pages that members have been using will change.

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord

The New ATS Primary Home Page Is Live!

www.abovetopsecret.com...

That's one fantastic looking homepage. This really is teh best lookin forum I've ever seen. TBH, I can't recall seeing one that even comes close.

Again, mad skills.

One small change I think would help is for the forums to be perhaps shown when you hover the cursor over the pictures or something, because new people won't be familiar with the different forums and I'm not sure which forum each particular picture refers to either.

[edit on 21-2-2007 by Xeros]

I don't know about anyone else, but I quite liked the old homepage with all the archived information. I sort of wish you had put it back or had a bigger link to it on the homepage.

Nevermind, I see it now.

Other than that it looks good.

[edit on 22-2-2007 by apex]

Just hit the home page again and took a few minutes to look around. It looks great. And I completely see what SO is saying. If I were coming to ATS for the first time, I would much prefer to hit that page with plenty of information, rather than the page with the forum listings.

A little more welcoming for the fresh faces.

This will sound like nitpicking, I'm sure, but...

If this is the first look that people get at ATS, wouldn't it be wise to do a little proofreading and correction of spelling and typos?

I mean, "Sleath"? and "moeslems"?