If you were going to design a Home page, what would you include in it? I’m talking about a page that would be the first thing you’d look at in the morning and the last thing you’d look at at night. It could have anything in it. RSS feeds, social media feeds, email notifications, blogrolls, chat functions, music libraries, whatever you can think of. It could be customizable, so you can pick what you want, how it’s displayed, and change things when you get bored. But it would have access to all the things you need to check and all the tools you like to use.
And one other question. For those of you who keep your blogging personas completely separate from your real-life persona, how could we make anonymity work with such a Home page? Could it be as simple as not letting anyone else see what you see, so you can have your Facebook and Twitter feeds on your home page without worrying that people will figure out who you are? Or maybe just have a box to check if you want to remain anonymous that then provides different options?
I have a blog about gardening for children. I talk about more than gardens. I have a username and a pen name. I set up an email for it as well as a paypal account.
I’ve used the pen name for years. I use it on LinkedIn and other places.
I don’t ever have personal information on a site.
No videos.
Also allow people to interact without having to register, at least as much as you can to stop spammers.
I think I disagree with this. Registration, or something like it to establish a consistent user name, seems necessary to good conversation. If you look at Techdirt, for example, most of the comments are by anonymous, so you can’t really follow up and know which anonymous you’re talking to. Makes it much less motivating to participate, for me at least.
It sounds like you’re talking about a content management system like Drupal or Joomla. Something like that would give you all the features you could want, including access control for the anonymity question.
right. but what would you want on your home page? What would you take off the menu?
Ah. Never mind then. You’re way ahead of me.
I have a serious question: Where is Tarheel Dem? It seems like i haven’t seen a comment from him in ages.
maybe you will prod him into delurking.
Apparently he’s been out of state for May Day activities.
To add to Indianadem’s comment, Tarheel is very involved in the Occupy movement.
More from THD in Chicago.
thanks for posting
🙂
Cool. 🙂
He has been busy.
Late returning to the thread, but I appreciate all the updates on TarheelDem. Can’t wait to read the links, but wanted to say thank you first.
Try and pardon the stupid, but I take it you’re talking about a public blog/site and not some custom thing just for you to read? Seems like the question is answered once you figure out what audience you want/expect. So it’s hard for anybody that doesn’t know that to give you a useful answer.
OTOH, it seems so obvious that I’m not sure I still get the question: you’d put on it what you think is of interest. That would identify it as something other than the google/yahoo/tpm homepages most people have. I don’t see the point in trying to compete with them with yet more newsfeeds, weather, video, etc. Strikes me that you’re hoping to get around the reality that general-purpose home pages are already good enough for most people, unless there’s a well-defined specialty.
If you’re just looking for what might pique user curiousity, though, top 10/20/50 lists of whatever always seem to work. If it were me, my hope would be to build a small, smart community (like this one) where the format allows for much longer, interactive development of ideas and tracking down of assertions than is possible here because everything scrolls away. The Constitution never would have been written if it was being discussed on a blog. I’d also have good private messaging from other users for those who want it.
What DaveW said. Having explicit goals and objectives will help determine how it will function. Sooner than later the budget also becomes a ‘design constraint’. I believe it’s also best if you think through your moderation policies/style as well.
FWIW, I joined Peter Erickson in putting together the One Million Strong blog and one of the smartest and most popular things we did was to pull in RSS feeds from 4-5 sources we thought were exceptional writing focused on our targetted subject. For some users it became a very convenibecameent stop throughout the day..
Yep, that word is supposed to read ‘conveniet’. Time to hit the hay…
All I can offer is that it would have to be mobile-friendly. I guess I don’t quite understand the question.
I don’t care about any of the gadgets, but since I read this blog every day, there is one thing I’d like: The main posts are too wide for comfortable reading.
The human eye is more comfortable reading lines around 54 characters wide (I think, there’s a specific number). Wider sidebars and narrower main columns work best for blogs. I often narrow a window when I’m browsing blogs that have wide main columns in order to make it easier to read long passages.
Just a thought.
Like others, not sure what you mean as to wanting a Booman customizable page or such. As to anonymity, the only way is to use separate browsers for Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter. Those sites tag you and track wherever you go, that’s what those Facebook and “like” buttons are for, you don’t have to click on them, they list with the Facebook cookie on your computer.
yes on anonymous check box.
i don’t even know if this is a possibility, but it’d be nice if there was some sort of search engine on the comments section where you could verify/debunk some of the claims made in these threads.