To Home Page or Not to Home Page

[ibaker]

That is the question???

I currently, and have for as long as I remember, used a home page for my sites. In the vb days I always used vbAdvanced CMPS and now with XF I am using XenPorta (which I will add that I absolutely hate).

If you have a look at my home page HERE you can see what I generally have displayed. The top News Item is manually changed every day and the rest of the blocks are all automatically fed from within the site.

So I wonder what "real" value a home page like this does...perhaps it should be better or perhaps no home page is better these days and just have the forums displayed as the default so visitors can get straight into things.

We also know that Search Engines like home pages that change every now and then, not too often but not go stale as well. To have a really good home page most of the time requires a great deal of work to maintain it so then you have to ask if that work is really adding the value to your site that warrants that amount of work so the site doesn't look stale to regular visitors.

We also know that many of our regular visitors just use a bookmark straight to the forums anyway, bypassing what ever great extra content you may put on the home page...if it doesn't change every day then why not just go to the forums every day OR if it does change every day then the work load to change it every day...take a holiday for a week and WOW

Anyway, just my ramblings above but I really am curious what others feel about whether "To Home Page or NOT To Home Page?"

 

[Jeff Fuqua]

I use my front page as a RSS portal. Someone can go there and catch up on recent news in just a few seconds. As long as the news is tied to the forum, I think it makes sense to offer such a thing to those who don't have time to skim the forum.

I used to pour a lot of time into my front page. Now, it's really simple with the feeds. The only thing I have to do is add photos to the top stories every few days.

 

[MagnusB]

Front pages are a good way to introduce new users to your most relevant and up to date content. Also, many are expecting more than just a forum, even though what they are looking at is just a forum. On the other hand, some are more interested in the forums them self, or the activity streams (whats new and recent activity), and as you mention, the front page can become a problem if it grows a bit stale.

So in short, whatever works for you, neither is wrong or right.

 

[Jake Bunce]

To Home Page or Not to Home Page

Not.

If you are asking the question then you don't need one, otherwise you would already have one.

 

[ibaker]

Jake, I have one on one site and not on another...I am questioning whether they add value relative to their workload or not