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In lugnet.admin.general, Bruce Hietbrink wrote:
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A couple of ideas:
1. Classic-castle and FBTB both prominently feature admin-generated
announcements on the front pages that are updated every day or so--new set
announcments, contests, fests, etc (presumably other sites, too, these are
just the ones I read). These are the reason that I go to the front page of
each of those sites first rather than jumping straight to the message boards.
The one problem with this is that it is fairly admin-intensive. To have new
content every day someone (or a committee of someones) has to generate
something new every day.
2. Pics of MOCs. Some of the newsgroups (.space, .castle, .trains (though
not updated as often)) post pics of cool MOCs in that theme in their
sidebars. Perhaps something like this - cool MOC of the day or week - would
generate a flow of new eye-candy on the front page. Of course, this again
requires someone to choose and post the new pics regularly--perhaps the
curators of the various sidebars could have a rotating schedule where they
post a pic from their theme and then a few days later the next theme is up.
Or could there be a way to automate this, like 1000steine.de, MOCpages, and
the “recent” page on Brickshelf? Perhaps drawing on Brickshelf and take the
image with the most views in the past 24 hours (I’m not sure if there is an
easy way to program this, maybe Kevin would have ideas?). Or more easily I
suppose you could just have the most recent Brickshelf image (like
1000steine.de and MOCpages have a running update of the most recent MOCs),
updated every 2 hours automatically, or a completely randomized image from
Brickshelf. Of course, this could often be something of much less interest,
which I why I was wondering if there was a way of automating using the page
views counter on Brickshelf--presumably the coolest MOCs would get viewed
more often as visitors to Brickshelf clicked on them.
3. Similar to #2, but pics from “events”, such as Brickfests, LUG or LTC
outings, etc. Again, the downfall is that this is admin-intensive in
selecting and posting images regularly. Perhaps, as with the above
suggestion about sidebar curators rotating, volunteer reps from each LUG and
LTC, and also different coordinators from fests, could select 1 to 4 images
from their most recent event and have some schedule. Looking under .org and
.trains.org I count 54 LUGs and LTCs, plus we could add another 10 or so if
we throw in groups like ILTCO, Scibrick, festival coordinators, etc. A
schedule could assign someone new to post every three days and each group
would only be responsible for posting twice a year, and there would still be
quite a bit of turnaround of new images. This would require a coordinator
whose job it would be to keep the schedule and send e-mails regularly
reminding the various LUG and LTC reps who are scheduled to post. One
advantage of this (I’m warming up to this version) is that it would generate
a constant rotation of front page eye-candy, and it would give different
groups a chance to advertise themselves to the wider community. E.g. they
could include links to their .org groups or LUG websites and announcements of
upcoming public events. Many groups already regularly post pics of meetings
or public shows in their .org sidebars, so picking a few images for the
Lugnet front page would not be a significant amount of extra work.
4. Bring back CLSotW. I know there has been low voter participation in the
recent run, but I still think it’s very cool to highlight great work on a
regular basis. There are many very cool sites that have gone up since CLSotW
died most recently--classic-castle, ITLCO, and Scibrick just to name three
“community” sites that would be obvious nominees (to me, at least), not to
mention many great individual efforts (like my personal favorite, Mike
Crowley’s great Miniland-scale Star Wars creations).
Bruce
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These are pretty much the improvements I would like to see on the LUGNET
homepage. I think adding in some sort of blog feature would allow
moderators/curators to easily post content to the homepage (disclaimer: I don’t
know anything about how websites work). So without further ado, here’s what I
would like the homepage to look like:
Explanation of changes (from top to bottom, more or less):
- sign-in key on homepage: This could be used to sign in and see the site in your language, post, go to a “my LUGNET page”, whatever.
- different links under news/set search: added “Reference”, which would lead to Partsref, set guide, FAQs, etc.; “Groups”, which would lead to the LUG map and list, and “Archives”, which would lead to archives of the blog posts
- central blog area: here mods/curators can post articles and pictures about just about anything. This would be very flexible and could be used to get all kinds of information, images, and links on the homepage.
- community icons: on the right edge is an area for links to important sites. The sites featured on the homepage would rotate, and would be drawn from a central page of links (“more links” under “Community”).
Obviously, this is not a complete redesign, but I generally like LUGNET the way
it is. Thanks for asking for our contributions, and thanks for all the great
work, Todd.
Marc Nelson Jr.
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: New homepage for LUGNET
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| A couple of ideas: 1. Classic-castle and FBTB both prominently feature admin-generated announcements on the front pages that are updated every day or so--new set announcments, contests, fests, etc (presumably other sites, too, these are just the (...) (20 years ago, 19-Feb-04, to lugnet.admin.general, lugnet.publish.html, lugnet.general, FTX)
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