Woah! What Happened To The Front Page?

Personally, I like having Squills on the front page. It gives me something to read there (other than the recent topics thing).

EDIT: One thing: I don't really like how far down the list of people online is.

Taking some of the feedback into account, I've changed the layout of the front page back to the old layout. Squills will stay on the front page, but now anyone can post on it.

If you want to check out the latest literary additions, all you got to do is either click the "Recent Literary Additions" link or go to "My YWS." Both are easily accesible from the front page and all the index pages.

This is great, Nate! I like having the old format back, and I don't mind Squills on the front page as long as you can access the Additions easily.

I haven't checked... Is the RLA link available to guests as well?

The RLA link is available to guests as well, although I suppose most people don't notice it since it's in the board navigation menu and not at the very top.

One of the things I'd like to do is add another block on the front page called "Quick Links," where you could place up to 5 links to your favorite sections of the site. Doing something like that is too technical for me, but there may be a mod out there that already does it.

I've got to say my vote is with the DD group (look at that, D, you're an anti-establishment figurehead ) - one of the reasons Nate was unhappy with the site before it closed, I seem to remember, was that there was too much focus on community and not enough on purely writing. In line with that - which I am, to a point - I'd say that having the latest submissions of writing on the front page of a writing site is an excellent idea, and having a members blog, no matter how good, detracts somewhat from the impact. Hopefully, a large number of those 25% were people who dropped in looking for a chatroom style atmosphere and were intimidated at the thought that they might actually have to produce something.

I don't mind how the front page gets designed: I do think that having a blog instead of pieces of writing is counter-productive and a little hypocritical if we're trying to focus more on writing.

Anyway, it's just an opinion. Hopefully a coherant one.

What's counterproductive is telling me the reasons why I closed the forum. That pisses me off everytime I read something like that from someone who seems to know exactly what I'm thinking. As I seem to remember, I closed the forum because of snide comments like that, and reading such comments makes me just want to close the site again. Sometimes I honestly have no clue why I even bother.

Nate wrote:Sometimes I honestly have no clue why I even bother.

I can tell you why. Because you're a natural teacher. You slip into the leadership role wonderfully and without complaint and everybody looks up to you, not because of your intimidating stature, but because you have so much charisma that people can't help but respect and admire you.

For some people, this might be a bad thing, but not for you! You love seeing people learn, to get it. Instead of being a snotty older writer, who dismiss younger writers as being too "immature" you allow us younger writers to flock together on this website and learn and chat. And it's for these reasons that YWS is the most successful young writers group on the web. And to be honest, that's pretty dang cool.



...and besides. Everybody knows you closed the site because you knew the alien chimps were coming for you then...

Thanks Snoink.

Maybe people just aren't reading my posts, or maybe they are but not reading them fully, but here once again is the reasoning behind the change:

VERY FEW PEOPLE were scrolling down the front page. When they were, it was mainly for a brief glimpse. The purpose behind the change was to increase the time people spent at the front page, and thereby retain a greater number of people at YWS, which would therefore INCREASE the number of reviews.

So far, people are spending a lot more time on the front page; it's jumped from 1:10 average to 1:55 average. The exit rate (the rate of people who view the front page) has dropped as well, but not as much (25% to 21%). Moving Squills to the front page was the right choice.

I never expected such intense opposition to the change, so I brought back the My YWS page, on which the recent literary topics are listed. There is also the "Recent Literary Additions" link as always. And to be perfectly honest, if you can't be bothered to click just one link to get what you wanted, then you probably couldn't be bothered to write a review.

But what most people worry about is that there is a lost of emphasis on writing. That, I utterly fail to see. Squills is a writing blog. YWS is a community for young writers. Having a blog on the front page for a community makes sense.

And what I am doing here is returning YWS to the way it once was. The front page used to list announcements, not literary topics.

Also, Squills is no longer an exclusive blog. So far, no one outside of the core group of Instructors or Mods have posted anything of Squills, but the option is there. All you have to do is follow the guidelines and make a post; no different at all than posting a story or poem.

So is the emphasis on writing lost? Squills is a writing blog for young writers, so I don't think so. But what if you want to see the most recent literary additions? Well, there are two links for that. All it takes is a couple of extra seconds.

And for those who remember, this is exactly the same thing when the pay to post feature was instituted. Some people even left YWS. Even a few of the same people who protested the move from community oriented to literary oriented now protest a simple change on the front page. Some users didn't trust that I knew what I was doing then, and they still don't now.

As for why I closed the forum; I closed it for several reasons. Of the one presented here (lost of writing focus), that's true, but it's kind of like saying the United States went to the moon because it was there; that is, it ignores a lot and oversimplifies things. I felt the board was losing it's writing focus because people were coming here just to debate or just to play games. But, that's also something I could have quite easily changed. The reason behind the shutdown was a lack of finances; it was $55 a month and I couldn't afford it any longer because I had just got my own apartment and was now paying $1166 a month for that. All of the other reasons behind the site's shutdown could have been easily fixed, and indeed most were when I found the money to bring the site back.

In the end, I do know what I'm doing here and I never discount feedback. I look at the data to see if a change was good or not, and I implement other changes to appease those who don't like the change. I put a lot of hard work into bringing the My YWS change back, and I didn't get any thanks for that from anybody. Instead, I got disgruntled responses from people who can take advantage of all the work I do here for free. And that's fine, I run this site expecting that. You can't expect to go very far in life if all you're looking for is a thanks or a pat on the back.

Okay, Nate. What you're saying does make sence. I don't know about anyone else, but the focus I'm talking about is reading and critiquing work. If the first thing we see if Squills, we'll spend our time reading and replying to those articles and spend less time reading the poetry and fiction.

Bringing back the My YWS is a very small thing. Personally, I don't particularly care about that feature, so I'm not going to thank you for it. As far all the other, more noticeable changes, it seems that, from what I can see, very few people like them, and most people dislike them.

To be perfectly honest, I think you try too hard. Remember, KISS Method.