New MiceChat Landing Page now LIVE

[Dustysage]

Howdy Chatters,

Due to the two news broadcasts tonight quoting miceage, we decided to go ahead and make our new Home page live at www.micechat.com. This new page is designed to help capture casual visitors by presenting them with a single easy to read page. However, the full forum listing will ALWAYS be available just by clicking "Forums" on either the site navigation or the tab at the top of the site.

We knew that Al's story was going to be big, but we never expected it to be this big

-Dusty, Monorail Man, and the MiceChat Crew

[flynnibus]

Re: New MiceChat Landing Page now LIVE

great news dusty! give us some teasers on how the traffic looks like after the newscasts vs before

I'm having some difficulties with the landing page currently though..

The graphics in the header of the top right panel is getting squashed and therefore not lining up. This is on a XGA screen in Firefox 2



Also because of that with the long text in that panel, that panel goes on by itself for almost 2 full screens.




the other panels seem to have their sizing better.. but the news panel is killing the DLR and WDW thread panel

[Monorail Man]

Re: New MiceChat Landing Page now LIVE

It's the URLs, and the wrapping. I'm working on it right now.

[flynnibus]

Re: New MiceChat Landing Page now LIVE

ahh.. darkbeer's URL at the top of the thread...

[Monorail Man]

Re: New MiceChat Landing Page now LIVE

Got it.

[flynnibus]

Re: New MiceChat Landing Page now LIVE

very nice...

[Dustysage]

Re: New MiceChat Landing Page now LIVE

Thank you for your help flynnibus.

This version of the Home page is just temporary. We have a much prettier graphical version in the works. But that is a little ways off.

[Mac Daddy]

Re: New MiceChat Landing Page now LIVE

For the record, it seems the new landing page is already working. I noticed that one of my threads had bumped back up again, and when I opened it, I saw that two new members, first time posters, had responded to it. These two new members had to be a direct result of my thread showing up on that landing page. At first, I thought "What are the odds that two different first timers would post in one of my threads?" but it all makes sense now.

I also wanted to suggest that once a thread outlives it's topic, maybe there would be a mechanism to take it down and make room for more popular threads which are on their way up. Case in point: My thread is basically about the tree being set up back stage and set up for the WDW special and now the tree has been up almost a week and the special is history. If this thread is still around by next week, it's gonna get stale pretty quick. So....will there be an expiration date for these, regardless of rating?

Thanks again, Dusty and MM, for all of the great work you are doing. 20,000 members! Holy schmokes! And now with Al being internationally famous, I think we'll keep right on growing.

[Dustysage]

Re: New MiceChat Landing Page now LIVE

I also wanted to suggest that once a thread outlives it's topic, maybe there would be a mechanism to take it down and make room for more popular threads which are on their way up. Case in point: My thread is basically about the tree being set up back stage and set up for the WDW special and now the tree has been up almost a week and the special is history. If this thread is still around by next week, it's gonna get stale pretty quick. So....will there be an expiration date for these, regardless of rating?

Thanks again, Dusty and MM, for all of the great work you are doing. 20,000 members! Holy schmokes! And now with Al being internationally famous, I think we'll keep right on growing.

There is a time element built into the thread display for the home page. I believe that it is 7 days max for a front page display.

I've noticed that a lot of our guests and new members are viewing the Home page threads.

[monotonehell]

Re: New MiceChat Landing Page now LIVE

It's change and change is bad and I don't like it. *grumble*

I'm joking of course - It's looking great and working well. Hooray! ^_^

[mrfantasmic]

Re: New MiceChat Landing Page now LIVE

The only problem I've noticed is the home page appears to exclude new threads, so it takes awhile for a discussion to actually be noted on the front page.

[Monorail Man]

Re: New MiceChat Landing Page now LIVE

The only problem I've noticed is the home page appears to exclude new threads, so it takes awhile for a discussion to actually be noted on the front page.

There is a single area for recent threads across all forums, in the lower right.

Again, the goal of the landing page is to bring in new members and visitors to read our recent 'best threads'. Many people do not have the time to keep on top of the discussions. This allows for an easy jump into our best discussions of the week (as voted by members).