Homepage?

[Andy]

Shaun and I are considering giving YWO a real homepage, for a number of reasons. We'd like a big welcome message for new members, samples of the most recent literature (displayed like blog posts) and other small "widgets" like you see on blogs a lot, except with forum content. It would basically be like a sampler of the entire site.

Anyway, I want to know if you've been to any forums with these sorts of pages (like this (http://www.vbadvanced.com/), or the ones our Affiliates (http://www.youngwritersonline.net/affiliates.php) have). We'd like it to look really nice - not all blocky - so if you can offer any examples that you think would look nice at YWO, please link to them here.

[jordanisonfire]

So, when you type in YWO's URL, you'd get the homepage?

[Andy]

Yeah, but the community forum will still be here on another page. If you're using bookmarks, you could just link to the community instead of the homepage if you wanted to.

[jordanisonfire]

No problem, just wondering. I see no problem with it, so long as it's well designed and organised.

[ElephntFalingOffClif]

I really like the idea. It would look really cool.

[Starry]

*shrug* I usually just skip immediately to the "New Posts" link, so it doesn't really matter to me. But it could be interesting, I suppose.

[Lykaios]

I'm on one forum with a homepage and it looks quite good, I think it'd be nice to have on here. :)

www.teenagewriting.com
[^Delete if you want]

[Carraka]

I can't see how a homepage would be any great loss. Except for loss of the time spent making it, and that's time that I won't be spending. Therefore, I have no objections.

Lils, you must delete "[^Delete if you want]" because, um, I say so. I think somewhere in the rules it says that you're not allowed to advertise other sites without approval from the administrators, but it's a teenage writing site, fergod'ssake, and if that's not enough, you were bringing it up in a related conversation about the happiness of a homepage --

Right, then. teenagewriting.com has a very simple, elegant homepage, which makes me want to hug it, and I think I would've joined it just for the homepage, if I hadn't just joined a different writing website and was coming to grips with the fact that I can't actually manage more than two.

So I approve, as long as we don't crowd with advertising/irrelevant information, which I know won't happen anyway. I have great confidence that whatever you come up with will be clean, useful, and aesthetically nice.

[jordanisonfire]

Ah yes, Teenage Writing. I remember that. Vaguely. Ah, they haven't critted my novel since I left. For shame!