OfflineOk, so I couldn't wait. 
As I said in the last post, I moved the theme over but wasn't going to do the front page until I got it done. But the new theme made the old front page look awful. So I took some time and got the new front page at least usable. There's still a bunch more that I want to add, but it's a good start and looks better than what we had.
Because the page gathers together a lot of information, it can be really slow. To help with this, I turned on something called caching. This basically saves a copy of the page so that it doesn't have to be rebuilt each time. This is nice in that it makes it faster unless you're unlucky enough to hit it when it gets rebuilt but it also means it's not 100% up to date. So if you post something new, it may take up to an hour before it shows up there. If the site starts getting really busy where there's new things being posted all the time, I'll shorten that time. For now, though, I think an hour should be fine.
These were some pretty big changes I just made and they weren't tested as well as I probably should have. 
Hopefully there's nothing horribly wrong that I missed. The small glitches and goofs will get smoothed out over time as I continue to tweak the site.
So, what do you think? Thanks to louise95 for her suggestions based on a sneak preview. Anyone else have an opinion?
Michelle
Woohoo! The borders are back! lol... And I like the order of the side menu, what do you think? My only other suggestion as far as the main page goes is that the welcome box looks a little empty... maybe a small graphic or something... updates on private messages... something should go there... But the page looks so good! You rock!
Thanks! Yeah, I like the order now that I've looked at it a while. Good suggestion.
Yep, the welcome box isn't done, yet. The two things I planned on are a link to the inbox with the number of new private messages and a link to the "What's new" page with the number of new posts. Anything else you can think of that should go there? Maybe number of new guestbook messages? (Not sure if the module lets me do that... will have to look)
BTW, a side effect of getting the little avatars on the front page is that they are little everywhere. That's just temporary, in case anyone is wondering. I know I was a bit premature launching the new stuff but it was just taking so dang long to get done. LOL
Michelle
Oh, wow, I didn't even notice the avatars until you said something, lol...
The only thing I can think of other than what you said is... hmm... maybe a status update. Myspace/myyearbook/facebook style. And maybe that wouldn't even be a permanent thing, but just for now to give someone something to click on other than forum posts to hold their interest a little longer....
I've only barely used myspace/facebook so I don't know what you mean by "status update". Could you clarify?
BTW, it's likely going to be a few days before you see anything new here unless I'm naughty.
I really need to focus on a client's site for a while. No more fiddling with my own site until I make progress on his.
Thanks,
Michelle
A status update is where a person can change their mood and what they're up to and the people on their friends list can see it. Just a dumb little feature, but something to mildly entertain.
Ah, that, ok. Yeah, there's a module for that. That's actually on my to do list to add but it will need a bit of custom coding to get it to work right with the profiles. I hadn't thought about putting it there... Interesting idea, thanks.
Michelle
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