Unclutter the homepage

[greengeek]

The current home page looks a bit cluttered - especially if you view it on a small screen or smartphone (as new users are likely to). There is too much on the page and constant scrolling is required.

I propose that the home page have a limited number of sections to keep it tidy, and the exploded subforums can be accessible deeper in the next level menus.

Here are the headings I think could be on page one:
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ProposedFrontPageSample.jpg (64.26 KiB) Viewed 842 times

And here is what the homepage looks like at the moment:
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OrigHomePage.jpg (33.25 KiB) Viewed 842 times

[taersh]

Hm, I don't get the point.

Can we run Puppy on a SmartPhone?
If not, why should I search for Puppy or visit the forum using a SmartPhone?

Hm, I don't get the point...

[greengeek]

OK, fair point - but many users do check the forum on cellphones or small screens.

But anyway - what do you think about my proposed categories? Suitable for the homepage?

[taersh]

Categories are fine.

But as in Menus: some people just don't like too many sub-menus.

[fredx181]

I agree, too much cluttered, getting rid of "Dog House", "Easyos", "Fatdog" and put them in one category, something like: "Others" or 'Other Projects" (and perhaps make them subforums) would be a whole lot better IMO, btw, I like greengeek's proposed setup above too, but that may be too much to ask for now, as it's a total change/rebuild.

Fred

[wiak]

The majority of what is being referred to as 'clutter' is pretty much a duplicate of what the Puppy-specific categories were on the old forum. As has been said, by you actually Fred, this is the "Puppy Linux Discussion Forum" so greengeek's proposal wouldn't particularly be acknowledging that (if Puppy squeezed in alongside Dogs, which ends up with the confusing mix issue that became so obvious in latter years of the old forum). I suppose you could squeeze EasyOS in alongside Puppy, since so closely related, and FatDog since so Puppy-inspired-lookalike-history. The "Dog House" category is the least cluttered of all so hardly important in terms of merging in somewhere else to reduce claimed clutter. I guess the old forum was already 'cluttered' and with the extra categories for 'others', this one is slightly worse and more so with the Puppy Linux International section, though I feel that is important (though could be structured more like Main Line Puppy Linux Distros as a top-level forum with internal subforums - but maybe it needs more space than that to be futureproof).

Would I bother.

No.

I don't myself find the current version particularly cluttered (from a desktop perspective). More important at this stage would be to address any category of forum missing rather than trying to be overly frugal in terms of merging too many rather unrelated distros into one section, which is not where most of the current first page length comes from anyway.

This is about distros not about mobile phones. Reading the forum details on a mobile phone, is a minority activity IMO, and perfectly possible as is.

At that level of reorganisation, enough is enough I say. If people had been interested to design the forum way back when it started last December they should have committed more to that effort then rather than confusing matters/efforts now.

Or if consensus is 'let's have minimum clutter for mobile phone use' then just have one category and put a big start new topic button in there and indeed mix all the distros together and everything else. Personally I think the current version is pretty good - it is not my preference certainly (because I never supported the idea that Puppy should be the dominant category - I'm longish term member of old forum, and continue to contribute to it, but nowadays don't use Puppy itself unless to test a contribution I have for it) but, yes, on the basis that this is to mainly be 'Puppy Linux' forum then fair enough as it is.

If the DebianDogs consider themselves some kind of Puppy Derivative, of course (if indeed truly shaped to look and feel like Puppy) then they could be put into Puppy Derivatives section I suppose (though not how I find them - the look of most DebianDogs look nothing like traditional Puppy but more like most Debian Live systems when they use LXDE or similar).

Over to rockedge to decide, which once so decided is fine by me now (be it one category with everything shoehorned into it, or a dozen, with no space for anything but Puppy Linux itself).

I pretty much like how it is, and congratulations to rockedge for doing such a good job making diplomatic compromises that do not take away from the fact that this is to be the Puppy Linux forum, whilst recognising that not all distros involved here are in fact Pups at all.

wiak

[wiak]

Greengeeks suggestion, by the way, only shows a possible mobile-friendlier top layer. The main issues concerning the overall mad mix of distros would have to be addressed in subsequent layers and the issue becomes that probably no-one likes multi-layer hierarchies - hence my not really liking that proposal at all. Mobile phone reading issues are not so important than the awkwardness resulting from too many layers/subforums.

People are used to the old forum use/usage. This new forum is a reflection of that, but also shows at a glance (immediately, on the first page) the alternative distros also discussed/with-feedback in this same forum. In doing so it fixes what I found to be the biggest pain in the old forum, for which I wrote a post back then:

https://www.tinylinux.info/post/distrib ... m-members/

With current first page layout, that above post of mine is no longer important here at all since very little is now buried away and merged together in a mess under Puppy Projects anymore

wiak

[greengeek]

Formatting for mobile phones is not really the priority - it was just an example of how much cleaner the front page of the forum could be.

Even if you don't like the layout - can you see some benefit in having all ready-to-boot "Operating Systems" listed under one button? The submenu could be something like:

Official Puppies
Puppy derivatives
Fatdog
Other Dogs
BK Easyos
Other hybrids
(and maybe also "under development" but not RC ready)

Clean and simple.

I recall reading somewhere about the "rule of seven" which suggested that no menu, list or submenu should have more than seven choices as it quickly becomes counterproductive. The current front page does have a bit too much going on i reckon.

(ps: i listed Fatdog seperately to other Dogs because of SFR's comments about it's stronger association with puppy)

[wiak]

Formatting for mobile phones is not really the priority - it was just an example of how much cleaner the front page of the forum could be.

Even if you don't like the layout - can you see some benefit in having all ready-to-boot "Operating Systems" listed under one button? The submenu could be something like:

Official Puppies
Puppy derivatives
Fatdog
Other Dogs
BK Easyos
Other hybrids
(and maybe also "under development" but not RC ready)

Clean and simple.

I recall reading somewhere about the "rule of seven" which suggested that no menu, list or submenu should have more than seven choices as it quickly becomes counterproductive. The current front page does have a bit too much going on i reckon.

(ps: i listed Fatdog seperately to other Dogs because of SFR's comments about it's stronger association with puppy)

Well, I realise at looking at the above, that it might work. Actually, BK talks about EasyOS being a derivative of Puppy, which having tried it I'd say it was, so you could cut that list by one and they could all be subforums of one containing forum (much like current Main Line Puppy Distros). Official Puppies is same thing as Main Line Puppy Distros so that would contain the next layer list of subforums (Bionic and so on). The issue would remain that it is an extra layer of hierarchy. If you were organising your own forum greengeek, you could do it that way and no doubt you could make that work, but there is likely to a lot of resistance to such a major change (from old Puppy forum layout), and more so because extra layers are probably not going to be popular (and it is true that GUI start menu layout suggests the same dislike of many sub-layers). Up to rockedge, for sure, but no single idea is likely to get implemented unless suddenly all members say 'yes' ... that's what we want. Put yourself in rockedge's shoes - no arrangement will suit everyone, or anyone totally. It is not that your idea is radical, and perhaps it would be better once people adjusted to it though I expect that third layer effect (really four layers deep once new topics posted, for example, within Bionic Pup subforum) could be annoying in practice. What I myself would find objectionable is any idea to simply mix the different distro types up again in any non-separated way, which I consider worse than a confusing mess. At least what is there just now, avoids that. By the way, look at tinycorelinux forum - it is not exactly a short one page introduction (longer I'd say) - not that that makes it good, but I think the reason again is to minimise the number of layers you have to drop down into in order to reach individual threads.

If you really wanted to show that your idea is better then I'd suggest you demonstrate it on an example site. You can actually get a free host to experiment with (on which you can easily install phpBB) on the free tier of bytehost: https://byet.host/free-hosting

[mikewalsh]

@ GG/wiak:-

I must admit, it's got so every time I've logged-on in the last few days, yet another category seems to have been added! When's it going to stop?


Mike.

[wiak]

@ GG/wiak:-

I must admit, it's got so every time I've logged-on in the last few days, yet another category seems to have been added! When's it going to stop?

Yeah, well... Advanced Topics (Puppy) is the big one (six forums), next in space comes Puppy House Training (four forums), and, when logged in, Off Topic Area (four forums), and then comes Puppy Linux International (three forums). ONLY then comes other than Puppy distros (and one of these, EasyOS is a Puppy derivative, and FatDog pretty close to Puppy historically, and in look-feel too) - Dog House (three forums), EasyOS (three forums alone!), FatDog (1 forum). Changing some of the above, particularly all the Puppy sections: Advanced Topics, House Training, Puppy Linux International, and EasyOS to make better use of subforums (in the way Main Line Puppy Distros does) would cut the clutter hugely. So if you were thinking you could reduce much clutter at all by cutting Dog House to one rather than three then you are can't count Mike!

My own thinking is only greatly different from greengeek's suggestion in that I don't like extra top layer. But I do feel rockedge hit the nail on the head with the way he organised Main Line Puppy Distros (i.e. the internals being subforums); the clutter would be greatly reduced if same was done with Puppy "ADVANCED TOPICS" and Puppy "HOUSE TRAINING" and certainly "EasyOS". And if Fred only wants one slot in same form as Main Line Puppy DIstros, that would be fine for the DebianDogs (though I think it would be a big organisational mistake to lump DebianDogs in with Puppy Derivatives... no matter the claim they are shaped to look and feel like Puppy, which isn't how I find them at all by the way). And definitely still needs to be one similar slot for OtherDogs (again with subforums as it already is). And why isn't EasyOS put into Puppy Derivatives (and FatDog could be in OtherDogs or Puppy derivatives come to that). Oh, it is not difficult to reduce the 'clutter' if that is the desired issue needing addressed. Aside from that at least things are logically split out at the moment, so it works well enough on desktop display IMO. "Additional Software (Puppy)" needs to remain a separate forum of course, or the subforum app-types would vanish from the first page.

So reduce the big clutter causers (Puppy ADVANCED TOPICS and HOUSE TRAINING), rename Dog House to DebianDogs (since there ARE other dogs in the world)... and make it a forum with subforums like Main Line Puppy Distros. Dog House better then renamed to Other Dogs (or something suitable), that being a forum with subforums (e.g. WeeDog, dCoreDog, probably CorePup too unless that really is a Puppy Project somehow???), which is what it already is. Neither of these take up significant space in the scheme of things... Let the maintainers of the rest decide where they want to be placed! - Puppy Derivatives, Other Dogs, Puppy Projects, as subforums to reduce clutter... TazPup is indeed a hybrid of Puppy and SliTaz - maybe Puppy Projects is correct - up to mistfire... it is the ONLY distro that is really a hybrid of Puppy so there is no logical reason to have a whole forum for Puppy hybrids...

Once all this discussion/ideas are over, since too many cooks spoil the broth, inevitably rockedge has to take the role of benevolent dictator and make it any way he wishes, and so be it. If we don't like it, we don't need to use it. But maybe one extra top layer, as greengeek suggested would work in practice - difficult to say without trying it in practice. I will say though, that one big disadvantage of extra layers is that new posts don't get reflected up to the top layer so well - even worse with the way new phpBB arranges things on mobile phone (I noticed that already) - the old forum was very simple so looked same on my mobile phone as on desktop I found (so needed a lot of pinch zooming in); the new phpBB forum auto rearranges itself to better fit mobile phone display, but that has that drawback of new posts not being seen on what is displayed. I just live with that drawback.

wiak

[Flash]

My own personal preference is for a "flat" index page with as few sub-forums as possible. Somehow I can deal with clutter better than neatly putting everything away in drawers. If things aren't where I would put them, or I forget where they are, I wind up looking in every sub-forum before I find what I'm looking for.

[smokey01]

The search function works much better in this later forum software.

[ThruHammer]

Flash,

Has Rock given you enough control to rewrite the forum as you would imagine it?

If and when you have time, maybe you could put together a working sample?

I, like others I've consulted with approve of what wiak has suggested.

Maybe put him in the drivers seat for a few days?

[wiak]

Flash,

Has Rock given you enough control to rewrite the forum as you would imagine it?

If and when you have time, maybe you could put together a working sample?

I, like others I've consulted with approve of what wiak has suggested.

Maybe put him in the drivers seat for a few days?

Thanks, but I think rockedge is reading all opinions, and has taken it onboard (including since you posted ThruHammer), and I think he is doing a good job with it. Really it is not easy (impossible even) to satisfy any or indeed all opinions. One major difference/advantage on this new forum compared to at least last many years on the old forum is that opinions are being noticed by administrator-moderator(s) and not ignored. Frankly, I'm liking this new Puppy forum organisation, even on my mobile phone, though I'm mainly using it via my Linux desktop.