New Geekzone frontpage trial

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freitasm

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#69175 4-Oct-2010 20:12

Hello folks

We decided to do a bit of an experiment... We have introduced a new default page for Geekzone, which is located at http://www.geekzone.co.nz/default_hot.asp. The main difference is that we no longer list "News" items. Instead we now have a "Hot Discussions" box there.

The box lists active topics in the last seven days with most replies, from the top busiest one.

Any suggestions? Swap the box "Recent Discussions" and "Hot Discussions" boxes? Anything else?

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#387877 4-Oct-2010 21:01

Kind of related but if news is not on the front page, I won't read it, just a thought....
IMHO Hot Discussions is not necessary, I prefer the way it was.....
I would prefer that News and Hot Discussions coexisted. If news stays in some capacity on the homepage then I don't have a problem with it.

Maybe you could put a Hot Discussions or News "ticker" below the menu and "welcome back" bars that show the titles of the category you don't put in the homepage segment?

Hope this feedback is helpful.

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jbard

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#387906 4-Oct-2010 21:34

Yeah i think should keep news on the homepage in someway, i would never think to check it if it was not their. Also does Hot Discussions really need to update every 60 seconds? top topics in the last seven days have 100's of post and i don't see this changing every minute - i think update every 10 mins might be more sutible?

freitasm

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#387918 4-Oct-2010 21:45

But do you read the news content? I am looking at stats here that show me that "news" is only 3% of New Zealand pageviews, while "forums" is about 71%. Even the frontpage itself gets 13%, a lot more than "news".

So perhaps the question shouldn't be "shall we change the homepage" but "what would you want to see in the 'news' section"?

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#387920 4-Oct-2010 21:46

News on the home page for me too. I read quite a bit of that stuff, and as silly and as lazy as this sounds, if it's not there anymore I won't go looking for it. Hot discussions doesn't interest me, I glance at recent discussions though.

Also how about going back to the old way where clicking on a topic doesn't open up into a new tab by default. Is there any way to have control over this and offer the option for choosing same tab or new tab?

freitasm

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#387923 4-Oct-2010 21:49

The forum links open in a new tab because the frontpage forum box now is "live" and updates itself every few minutes. If it opens in the same page, then you don't have the "live".

If you disable "live" in your profile then the links open in the same page.

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freitasm

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#387925 4-Oct-2010 21:50

Ok, I've restored the original frontpage and for this trial please use http://www.geekzone.co.nz/default_hot.asp

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#387926 4-Oct-2010 21:51

Maybe you should just give the option to enable news to people who want it on the frontpage

Personally I never read it and prefer the new layout

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#387927 4-Oct-2010 21:51

Yeah i read the news, but i am finding after the live update was added i forget to refesh the page as i don't need to for forum topics so i only check the news every morning first time geekzone is loaded. So maybe news needs to be live as well? or maybe not live but a notification to say new content is avaliable if you refesh? - similar to face book.

Also i like that it opens in a new tab.

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#387929 4-Oct-2010 21:53

yeah maybe a simple version of igoogle would be cool for the front page, you could tick whether you want an item or not and then also tick whether you wanted it to be live or not?

bit of work to setup but then everybody could have it just the way they want it?

freitasm

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#387932 4-Oct-2010 21:57

jbard: yeah maybe a simple version of igoogle would be cool for the front page, you could tick whether you want an item or not and then also tick whether you wanted it to be live or not?

bit of work to setup but then everybody could have it just the way they want it?

I am sure we could do it... But the question still remains: is the news worth it? As I said, only 3% of page views come from New Zealand in that section.

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#387934 4-Oct-2010 21:59

Not wanting to sound "know it all ish" and feel free to point out a flaw in my logic but in theory you read a news article once, and only if it interests you, whereas you read the forum posts once, post, and then go back to reading it every time a new post is made. So if 20 people are actively following a 100 post thread you will get 1300~ page views on the forum post vs 20-40 views of a news article on a similar topic. Not to mention that the forums are the "main" part of Geekzone so their is going to be plenty of page views.

So to answer your questions, I will read one in six of your news articles because it interests me, and I don't think it needs to change.

freitasm

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#387936 4-Oct-2010 22:00

Sound like some good logic there...

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#387937 4-Oct-2010 22:03

tomgeeknz: Not wanting to sound "know it all ish" and feel free to point out a flaw in my logic but in theory you read a news article once, and only if it interests you, whereas you read the forum posts once, post, and then go back to reading it every time a new post is made. So if 20 people are actively following a 100 post thread you will get 1300~ page views on the forum post vs 20-40 views of a news article on a similar topic. Not to mention that the forums are the "main" part of Geekzone so their is going to be plenty of page views.

So to answer your questions, I will read one in six of your news articles because it interests me, and I don't think it needs to change.

agree completely :)

I think news is great, you guys are always quick to post news which is the most important thing i think. But your articles sometimes seem a little lacking - which is fair enough, but maybe you could add links to similar articles or wikipedia pages about the subject etc. I guess this would mean directing people away from the site which is the best thing to do.

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#387939 4-Oct-2010 22:04

We don't mind posting links. It's a good netizen policy.

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#387941 4-Oct-2010 22:07

Yeah often your news articles give a taste - which for most things is all i want so it's perfect. but sometimes if i'm really interested in a topic it would be great to have some links with more details.

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