New AveoForum home page and "Featured threads"

[MetroMPG]

So...

Most forum members probably don't care that we have never had a dedicated home page on this site. Up to today, if you went to www.AveoForum.com, you were just forwarded directly to the forum index anyway.

But we get a lot of visitors coming here from Google looking for an "Aveo forum" who hit the home page URL. So Daox and I decided to put out a formal welcome mat. It went live this morning.

The new home page includes...

• a general welcome message
• latest Aveo-related garage entries (sorry, but if you made a nice entry for your Harley or your lawnmower, it won't show in this particular list )
• latest forum posts
• "Featured projects, DIY guides and topics"

That last item might interest existing members more than the other parts. Tim and I have selected a list of projects/interesting threads to show off to new visitors. Currently the page only shows the latest 8 items, but there are dozens in the list. (I'll be adding a link to "view the rest".)

Hope you like it! Because it took way longer than it should have, and I'm sick of working on it!

www.AveoForum.com

[Daox]

It looks great Darin (who did the vast majority of the work). Thank you!

[gothstone]

Love the front page, and I use the second column to keep up on the latest posts. Could you give the second column back some of the space from the first column like it was for the first few days? It was much easier to read.

[MetroMPG]

Hey gothstone... glad you like it. Can you explain what you mean? There haven't been any changes to the code /layout recently. But sometimes the column 1&2 heights change just depending on the length of the thread titles / descriptions.

[avguy]

"Latest Forum Talk" is a nice addition guys, thanks for the extra effort! One problem I've always had with the forum is having to sift through a bunch of separate sub-fourms, looking for things in my areas of interest, and LFT can help with that. Here are 2 suggestions - don't know how much effort this would be, so maybe they will need to go into the queue.

1) list references to a thread only once. If there a bunch of replies to one thread in a short amount of time, that will take up most of the page, and tend to defeat the advantage of the quick look summary. SELECT DISTINCT(THREAD_ID)

2) Add a very abbreviated indicator to each line showing which sub-forum the thread comes from. As a for-instance, I'm not a customization guy - nothing wrong with anyone who does that stuff, it's just not my thing. So while I would tend to ignore threads in those sub-forums, some other guys might be interested in only or primarily that stuff.

So the first line I'm looking at right now would become something like:

Check Engine Light -- Today,10:04 am (E&D)

Or:

(E&D) Check Engine Light -- Today,10:04 am

Thanks for trying to make this the best possible place

[MetroMPG]

Just FYI, the "latest forum talk" on the home page is mostly meant for first time visitors to the site who aren't members. (Few members hit the home page, Googlers regularly do, however.)

You can get the functionality/depth of info you're looking for (and more) by hitting the "ACTIVE TOPICS" link at the top of any forum page.

[gothstone]

Wow, I feel dumb. The active topics button is exactly what I really wanted. Thanks!

[MetroMPG]

Happy to help.

[avguy]

Wow, I feel dumb. The active topics button is exactly what I really wanted. Thanks!

Well, I've been on this forum longer than you, which means I'm around 15 months dumber than you are

[Pontiac1976]

Looks good. Should help bring a few more to the board for good info & good & help. Help them find topic there looking for.
Thank for the hard work Metro.