Ease of Use of EpicureanFriends.com Website

    Anyone who comes across this thread, please post if you have questions or comments about how the website is organized. Currently it is set up to balance two goals: (1) People who come here for the first time need quick access to samples of information that is here so they will dig further and return, and (2) People who return regularly need quick access to updated messages without having to scroll through too much of the same static content.

    So the way this is currently set up is that the Home page has the most static content highlighting the features of the website, while the Dashboard and Timeline pages focus on a balance of the message and changing content and can be used for bookmarking the site to return to in the future.

    If anyone has suggestions for better implementing this please comment.

    From the point of view that new users coming to this website may not be familiar enough with the expected conversations to understand the "latest posts" listed only by date/time, let's move that feature to the DASHBOARD only and remove it from the HOME page, so that the HOME page shows the list of ten latest TOPICS from the General forum, and then the popular posts from the other forum.

    After this switch New people visiting the home page see the topics at first, and can then decide whether to read the threads. So for regulars who know everyone and what's being discussed and want to bookmark and return to the list of the most recent POSTS, like I do, please use the DASHBOARD as the landing page. The only page that in my mind competes with the Dashboard as the place to visit first is the NOTIFICATIONS page (listed directly beneath the Dashboard in the Menu), but that doesn't seem optimum and has a lot of user-control-panel controls which are static and not part of an update page.

    Give me some feedback on whether that's a good chance to keep - especially if there is any missing box or arrangement issue that prevents the Dashboard from being a good central place for returning users to check first every time they come to the site.

    As a desktop browser, keeping the forum open in a background tab throughout the day, I generally click on the home button to see if there have been any major changes in setup (also to test loading times) and refresh notifications across the top menu bar. Next I check any conversation updates, bell notifications, and then read the unread posts under the Forum tab.

    I don't find the Dashboard submenu item Notifications particularly helpful with that workflow but others might. I do need to find a way to include the newsfeed into my regular routine and haven't quite worked that out yet.

    I believe I have now finally arranged the boxes containing the lists of new posts in the way it probably should be:

    1 - The first box shows the most recent threads from across all the forums.

    2 - The second box shows the list of most-discussed threads from all the forums.

    and then

    3 - on the dashboard there is the "Recent Activity" box which contains most recent POSTS with an excerpt of what is said in each post.

    The Home page is targeted to new and recent users; the Dashboard is targeted to regular users who want to skip the static (or should I say katastematic? :) ) content.

    As always let me know if there are user comments and suggestions we need to consider.