New Site: Home Page, feedback needed

I need feedback and advice on how you guys use the site to help me design the new homepage.

I think the logged in home page is best off as a dashboard. Right now, I have 4 components: My Games (with links to find or start a new game), Latest Posts (with the 3 latest posts on the forum, like the current latest post widget), My Characters (with a section to create new characters), and Library Favorites (with a link to the library). There wouldn't be a Latest Games widget anymore.

Is there anything else you think belongs on a dashboard? I realize by doing this, I'm removing the Latest News section, which means you'd have to look at the forum for announcements. Alternately, I was thinking about the left or right third being a news feed, including announcements, latest posts, new games, etc (with options to hide some of that), and then on the right having 3 sections for your games, characters, and library favorites.

Thoughts?

I like the announcements/news section. It definitely reinforces the feeling of community for me.

Would you prefer seeing it as is, and trying to fit the other modules around it? Or do you think the feed idea I mentioned would work as well?

I think your feed idea would work :-) Your idea for an option to hide stuff is great because of course everyone has their own preference.

After I log in, I check for unread posts in the games that I'm in via the "Latest Posts" forum search. I switch to the main page to see if there are new games that have available openings and that I might be interested in participating in. That's primarily how I use the site.

Personally I prefer a two-column dashboard, mostly because that's what I'm used to (at work we use JIRA). If I could customize my own dashboard, I'd have a filtered "Latest Games" section with only games I'm interested in, and a section that has the latest forum posts. But that's just my personal preference.

CancerMan, what I'm thinking in terms of "Latest Games" is to make more use of the LFG feature: you'd be able to choose to filter the Latest Games widget by all games or your LFG options.

I'm going to bump this thread, in part because I'm currently working on implementing the header and footer, so I can start using the new GP logo. As always, I'd love to hear feedback and suggestions, specially if you're more design oriented. Right now, I'll be adding the header/footer with mostly the content the current header/footer has, as I'm nowhere near the advanced functionality this was original designed with in mind.

Can't wait to see it!

Ok, long overdue, but I'd love feedback on what you think of this design. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to put characters on the home page as well; I don't know if I'm going overkill with the recent posts per game. I was trying to think of some way to toggle between my games and characters, but I couldn't figure out how, nor do I think it'd look good. i'd put it under My Games, but as you can see, that'd just make an untenable right column :/ Thoughts, feedback, design advice all welcome.

This looks good, I notice a setting function by latest activity. Does this mean you can filter that feed?

That's the idea. Initially, it'll be so you can set your LFG, but I'm open to ideas on how to filter that feed. Right now, it was going to be public forums and new games based on your LFG settings. The idea was general, public stuff on the left, more community oriented, your own stuff on the right, if I can figure out how to display characters.

I'm not sure a kith what other types of filters might be needed but I'll think on it...

Character wise... I don't know how variable the size of theses boxes are but there is certainly space in the sample for some icons. Maybe you could fit the icons from the user page that displays number of characters by system. The characters already seem sorted by system, and on the home screen we could pressent those icons as menu buttons to display characters from that system. It's a little more open then what we currently have, but I'm not sure how much clutter that would be, or how erganomic.

Oh, sorry, I didn't mean the characters in the game. To see that, you'd still go to the game's detail page. I meant My Characters, as in your own characters, like if you clicked on Characters in the current site and hit All Characters.

I don't know how hard this would be or if it is even possible but hopefully it could spring some ideas from you or others. Clicking on the person portrait, brings you to 'the character version' and clicking on the pencil brings you to 'the games version'

@Kaleth, That's kind of what I meant. We could use the white space on the bottom right to fit some system icons, each of which acts as a menu drop down menu of the characters from that system. This division could display more characters then the current my character tab.

Alternatively it could be a collection of character portraits in the before mentioned white space, though I'm sure you would have considered this. I suspect this solution might be a bit cluttered.

i don't have image editing at the moment to show what I mean...

Maybe take one of the viewable games away to where only 2 show and that may leave more room under it to have a profile set of "my characters" page. I myself would love to have a little easier access to my characters.

I considered showing 2 to 5 games. I figured the average number of games played is closer to 5, so 3 would be better than 2 :/

ok, makes sense. Just throwing ideas.

I do know we could use a "back to the forum" button on the bottom of the page though. That has to be frustrating for you as well to scroll all the way back up to click that button.