MyFamily developer, Josh Bryant, gave us this sneek peek of a big change to the front page of the 2.0 sites. If you are a member of the MyFamily 2.0 Community Site you can see a screen shot of what it will eventually look like.
NOTE: It will not look exactly like the preview in the next release
Layout
* The ‘add new content’ links have been moved into the top sub navigation bar right below the tabs on the home page. Each of these links will take you to the corresponding page to add new content or members to your site.
We’ve moved to a default 2 column layout to reduce visual clutter and better enable users to focus on what’s important.
What’s Happening
The biggest area of change you’ll notice on the home page is that the “What’s New” featured on the homepage is getting replaced.
This feature has never quite worked the way we wanted to and its been a point of frustration for many of our users. About 6 months ago we set out on a mission to improve it, starting with the basic questions of what exactly do we want the ‘home page’ to feature.
One fundamental thing we decided is that we wanted something that was focused on ‘what people are doing on your family site’ not just ‘what’s new on the family site’. This shifted focus really drives down the path of wanting the service to bring families closer together.
So after many design challenges and iterations, and countless hours of developer time … we’re finally ready to release the first version of our new home page feature: “What’s Happening”
What’s Happening is an activity listing that gives the user a quick glance of what’s been happening on their family site. It includes or will include most everything that a user does on the site today from adding photos to commenting on discussions.
We’ve also attempted to display the information with as much logic as possible, grouping together things that make sense and keeping the interface clean. We’re sure the new interface will not only be pleasing on the eye but have a deep root in usability that gets out of the way and lets you focus on what’s most important to you … the content!
A couple notes:
- * We’re calling this version 1.0 of What’s Happening. There are some things still missing, as well as some really exciting plans to make it an even better feature on the homepage … so if you don’t see something you’d like it to display, let us know, but there’s a good chance we’re already working on it.
- * Version 1.0 will ship without profile changes showing up in the list due to some unforeseen development issues, but the good news is we’ll have that ready to ship with version 1.1 in about 3 weeks from now.
- * Right now, the default display for the feature is by reverse chronological order and set to show a certain number of updates per page. Our future plan when we get around to adding preferences for the feature is to allow site admins to customize this to display any number of days OR updates … as well as sorting by reverse chronological order OR content-type! I’m sure this will be welcome news to our previous 1.0 users who have been waiting for something similar to this.
- * Right now, the default display for the feature is to show every “type” of update from discussions, photos, family trees, events, etc… But in the future as soon as we get preferences added, we’ll hopefully allow site admins to pick and choose which type of updates show up.
Welcome Message
The Welcome Message feature has moved around just a little bit to the top of the main column. It is however the same width as it was in the previous release so any custom messages you’ve created still should look okay. This will stay the same for awhile, so while we asked you to hold off on your welcome messages before, feel free to create them now in the new space.
Featured Photo
We’ve adjusted the featured photo just a bit for this release. We’ve tried to give your site content a little more prominence by moving it to the side column so it no longer pushes the main column down.
We’ve also added a semi-transparent overlay that will display the title of the photo and the author to provide the image some more context for your site users.
The photo will still link back to its own page where users can still comment on it just as before.
Member List
The Member List has gone through a bit of changes … and there’s still quite a few more to come. We’ve adjusted the layout for this release to fit into two columns but we’ll be changing this back to a list-view in the next release. This one feature will be the least-clean of all the changes since we plan to overhaul it again for next release. The screenshot below will show what we want to have it end up looking like … not what it will look like on release day.
Actions Box
You’ll noticed the list of actions that used to be in the top right hand corner is missing. We’ve decided the functionality of this box was duplicate functionality and taking up more space than necessary.
- * The ’site settings’ link has been moved into its own tab that appears on the right hand side for easier access.
- * The ‘change theme’ link has been removed since you can access this feature inside of your site settings page.