A personalized entrance page

Grover

Grover

Well-known member
I found myself doing this often on XenForo:
  • Go to the UDM (User Dropdown Menu),
  • Click on Your Newsfeed,
  • Open up a few of the news items inside new browser tabs,
  • After finishing reading them I go back to the main forum screen and...
  • Click on 'Watched Threads' to see if something new/interesting has been posted in any of my watched threads,
  • Obviously before doing all this, the obvious in-your-face red alert-indicators are starring you in the eye, so first you click on that to get the dropdown overview of your alerts...
  • And for every single one of them I open new browser tabs to view them and get involved in discussion if necessary...
  • And so on, and so on... life on XenForo is good! : - )
I was thinking, wouldn't it be beneficial (on several levels) if these manual steps would be taken care of automagically by the software? Wouldn't it be very handy/convenient and good for content exposure and -thus- the user interactivity of XenForo powered websites if these items in my list above would be served to the enduser the moment they log into the forum? Without the need to click on any link or menu first. A Personalized Entrance Page so to speak.

A Personalized Entrance Page

The moment you logon to the site you will get an immediate overview consisting of blocks of mini-overviews concerning anything that would be of interest to you. The software already knows (through your settings/preferences) what you are interested in, so why not let the software serve that info to you (instead of the enduser having to get/looking for it themselves) in 1 comprehensive and clear automatically generated overview? Like:

  • A mini overview of your New Alerts,
  • A mini overview of your News Feed,
  • A mini overview of your New Watched Threads,
  • A mini overview of your New Conversations,
  • A mini overview of Birthdays of Today and in the coming days,
  • A mini overview of new Media posted (if XF ever get's User Albums) by the people you follow or any people (can be controlled by options ofcourse),
  • A mini overview of updates on threads in which you liked the first posting,
  • A mini overview of Events you are attending and also the Events your friends/people you follow are signed up for,
  • ... and the list goes on and on and on.
I believe such a personalized entrance page will be beneficial on several levels.

[new] I added some afterthoughts here.


Thoughts and -if I may be so bold- support please! :)

(Originally proposed for vBulletin (to good reception), but -not surprisingly- nothing (apart from planning apparently) was done with it. Even if it was one of my most famous suggestions! ;-) So I would love to see this now in XenForo)

Reminder: If you think this should be default functionality in XenForo, the please [like] this first posting! Thank you.
 
Upvote 33
Going out on a limb here, http://www.google.com/ig

The whole forum front like igoogle. Members would be able to change the sidebar to what ever they wanted to display. Boxes would be in the header and footer as well (if they chose to drag them in these locations). They could choose to change the height of the forums and have it in an scrolling bar. They could choose to hide forums they don't visit very often or choose not to see.

Ig just needs to merge with xenforo and to be available for public use on their own server :D
 
I like the basic idea very much. But I'd add the ability to SPECIFY what things I want to show up on my "personal homepage". The UI would have to be DEAD simple, like a series of checkboxes associated with icon/text combos that very VERY clearly identify the content types to be shown, but a one-size-fits-all for a "customized" portal type page seems counter-indicated. :)

Liked.
 
Junior said:
Going out on a limb here, http://www.google.com/ig

The whole forum front like igoogle. Members would be able to change the sidebar to what ever they wanted to display. Boxes would be in the header and footer as well (if they chose to drag them in these locations). They could choose to change the height of the forums and have it in an scrolling bar. They could choose to hide forums they don't visit very often or choose not to see.

Ig just needs to merge with xenforo and to be available for public use on their own server :D
Click to expand...

You forgot to *like* the first posting, Junior ;).

Anyway, it might seem weird to say this in relation to my own suggestion, but pages like that as iGoogle always seem a bit overwhelming for me :(. Yup, I realize a page full of mini-overview is exactly what I am suggesting indeed, but if (and it's (such an entrance page) also not quite that essential to me---> wow this is not the way to promote my own suggestion, is it?! ;)) XenForo would ever go for such a page where everything is served on a plate to the end-user, then I do hope it will/can be done in a way that is not overwhelming to the enduser.

For example -from my point of view- an overview like this one: http://xenfans.com/popular/ has also an 'overwhelming' factor to it, because I feel overwhelmed by the huge amount of Avatars that is presented in 1 single screen. Looking -with a keen eye on User Interfaces (if I may say to myself)- at that particular screen I believe it's not balanced well.

My point being: for such a Personal Entrance Page as I am suggesting, it is really important that it's balanced well overall (text/pictures/layout) to make it easy for people to absorb the information presented and for it to become a valuable asset to a platform.
 
My Homepage design. Only some of it is beyond my skill.
The red squares to left of an item are meant to be alerts.

My Homepage.webp
 
a.k.a Dashboard.

Yes that would be super! I remember in Drupal had setup a site with drag and drop dashboard. Easy to find favourite content, fav user feeds, quickly create content etc

as long as it is not cluttered -it will be super
 
In VB we coded some user configurable widgets...

Xenporta might be an idea

I am on the same page

a "My Forum" page for members..

I am configuring 2 forums at the moment and am trying to build a useful 'portal page'

I have in the back of my mind it may require extra CSS work and we might end up with using Wordpress as the 'front page' (fed by forum data) to make it look 'slick'
 
In the days when I used vBAdvanced, I had customizable fields that allowed users to set personalized widgets (like weather) on the "home" page. I'd love to see this with XF.
 
Biker said:
In the days when I used vBAdvanced, I had customizable fields that allowed users to set personalized widgets (like weather) on the "home" page. I'd love to see this with XF.
Click to expand...

I've used things like yahoo many years ago - blocks user can enable / disable.
This would be great.

Latest content (What's New + All Recent) selected categories or forums or RM categories Searches block for all content, forums/ pages/ RM/ Convos/ All.
Conversations (New alerts/ start new/ see all) Link to Members list + Search.
Weather and other external widgets.
User's editable personal library of links in folders with a default starter list.
A Notice block from admin level using the notices system but on this page replacing any active notice at the top.
Links to user's social networking services FB aol etc
Links to help guides, with option for admin to edit ( remove default, add extra links )
Account block to edit profile etc.
Logout link.

{EDIT} admin sets which can be disabled.
Option for disabled blocks show as very small links.
 

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