We will be experimenting with a new look for the home page. In the past when you visited NPN you would see the Categories view, which you can still access here! Now, you will instead see the Latest view which shows you the latest activity on the site from all categories.
You can get back to the Categories view at any time by clicking the Categories button in the Nav bar:
The static Categories view is BORING. There are no images and the latest list on the right only shows the topic title with no image.
The category view is dated and unnecessary to see all the time.
It gives new users something much more visually appealing to look at and is much less overwhelming than a huge list of categories.
It shows you topics from all categories so you see more than just the main categories you are interested in and could create more conversations in less popular categories.
Please give the new view a try, if you don’t like it then it’s easy to switch back. Just go to your Interface Preferences and change the setting for ‘Default Home Page’ back to Categories and click Save Changes at the bottom. Notice you also have the option for New or Unread as well if you prefer those.
You do not need to go to the proper category before posting an image either. From the main page just click the New Topic or Image button:
The composer will pop up and you will see a field that says ‘select category…’, click on this and select the category you want to post to. When you click on this you can also search for the category by simply typing the category’s name.
I really like this change, being able to see the images. My only wish would be for this page to show only the recent image posts, not which images have been recently commented on. The problem, as I see it, is that for frequent visitors and commenters, we have probably already seen these images and would like to see the most recent image posts.
Thanks Allen, I can appreciate wanting to see that view, unfortunately it’s not an option to see all the posts in that type of view, and I also think the Latest view is the best for most casual visitors who just want to poke around with the latest action.
For frequent visitors such as yourself, you should be taking advantage of the New and Unread buttons. New will show you only new topics/images that you haven’t seen yet, and unread will catch you up on any new replies to topics you’re following. You can also see the view that you described in each individual category, so if you go to the top menu on the site, select Community, and then Image Critiques, this view will be displayed the most recent topics/images displayed first, and new replies will not push them to the top.
I think that’s the key to circumventing a lot of images that you’ve already seen. I personally liked the old category home page look. My strategy is to open all the NEW images so that they don’t stay NEW and I can tell new from old. And then I’ll add a comment to a post which will thereafter always have an UNREAD status if anybody adds a comment. That way I don’t miss anything. Each look at the category page tells me if there is anything new or anything of interest without opening a single image. That’s my strategy for using NPN in an efficient manner.
I wish to amend my observations after further usage. This new format has definitely made me view images outside my interest area and I’m seeing great images which I was overlooking before (like that great northern owl). So I think it’s good to have both looks available as you have created, one for a quick narrow look at areas of major interest and a slower perusal to see what’s out there. This is a great addition to NPN, in my opinion.
First, I wanted to say the continued site improvement efforts are much appreciated. There’s a clear desire to make NPN the best it can be, so kudos to you and Jennifer!
Maybe there are others like me, but I am very much a creature of habit. Any change like this will cause a reaction - and for anyone in the corporate world they may have heard reference the book, “Who moved my Cheese…”
I’m pretty settled in my navigation and like the “Categories” home page. It’s literally a one-stop shop, one-click access to any image gallery or discussion page. The “new”, “latest” or “unread” landings seem to add a layer, an extra click (pull-down) to get to say one of the Critique galleries.
Having said that, it is nice to see the thumbs and also to get a glimpse in to all the other galleries/forums that one might not typically venture in to.
To me, this is the best feature - giving the user control over what they see. So Thank You for including this. I choose to keep the “categories” landing page. However, I will explore the others and am glad that this option is available for those who like it better.
