I cant visualise the landing page of dpr, because as long as I can remember I have always kept a forum page open in my browsers and I have navigated from that. (I am not a member there any more: I just lurk.) Similarly here, I keep a thread page open and navigate to the rest via the “threads” page. I only turn my computer off when it is misbehaving, and the iPad is always on.
David
seriously if i hadnt read the thread title i wouldnt of known there were any changes.
Understood. It is what most of us who have been around this place for sometime do.
Now try to put aside your prior knowledge. Imagine someone has recommended The Photo to you and given you dprevived.com/ to have a look at. Try understanding it. How long do you think you would spend on the page before you go to to your previous photo site of choice? It is generally felt that a page where someone arrives for the first time has no more than two clicks to convince them this is a place they want to come to again.
dprevived.com/ isn't easy to grasp at first meeting but it is far easy to decipher for a newcomer than the previous dprevived.com/ The main purpose of the new dprevived.com/ is to give a structure that enables www.the-photo.org/ to work.
I suggesy dprevived.com/ is considerably easier for a newcomer to grasp than the previous Forum Index page. Even so, dprevived.com/ isn't designed for new arrivals. www.the-photo.org/ is what new arrivals will see first. If you have a look at it, it explains what we are about and gives direct links to easily understood things that might engage a newcomer.
For those who have never seen it, this is DPReview home page. www.dpreview.com/ - note all the ads - it would put me off if I was new.
You can get rid of the ads with browser extensions and then it looks like this:
I think the-photo.org has the edge! 😁
I am concerned about the so-called "landing page". In particular:
how do new arrivals get "directed" to it?
I suspect but can not prove that, even now, there are many more links to the original URL out there than there are to the later-introduced "landing page". If that is the case, the "landing page" will remain obscure to all but the 50 or so regular users of this site.
Has Admin researched the ratio of original to landing-page links on the web rather than telling us it just ain't so?
Just imagine that some friendly blogger starts promoting us and directing his/her readers to the-photo. Or someone of us starts social media campaign, promoting the-photo - current references to our sites are not the measure of possible future references.
Believe me, this all is quite throughly discussed over. There are different potential user groups and for some of these such approach should work better then direct drive to forums - for me and most likely for you this is not so, but we (having more technical or IT background) are only very small part of general public.
Ted,
We have looked into this. We expect that most referrals will come from other people rather than a new person trying to do a google search. As time goes by search engines will find us.
We don't want to grow too fast - that way lies madness. Don't forget, we are not in this for profit - we just want to build a friendly community where we can learn from each other and enjoy the fruits of our labours.
Alan
...and any news on "flat vs threaded" idea?
Timeline?
Otherwise great thank you for recent improvements.
It's still ongoing. We have code, but want to wait until the current version is up and running before we try it out (we are about 5 versions behind). And then the following version (still in beta) may have it 'natively' - that is still under discussion.
Alan
Thank you and looking forward if and when that is possible. You may have more members joining as a result. Nevertheless, great progress and improvement so far. Appreciate your efforts.
Thank you
The web page isn't trying to be found by search engines.
I'm not "admin" but I'm tied up in the strategy.
At this time, when we feel the concept is understood and working, we intend drawing the site to the attention of selected targets. They will be invited to explore what we do. The web page is where we want them to start. It explains the concept behind the site and gives fast access to areas we hope will get the interest of newcomers. The "Weekly thread" format is being used because it gets more engagement with posts, keeps discussions fresh and ensures posts get responses. We need our forums to look, and be, active.
At a later stage, when we have run through the contact strategy (and this will take a little while) we will probably have a different style of web page aimed at search engines.
For the record, Mike, I did not mean or say that it is trying to be found by search engines. I do however wonder "why not"? (rhetorical question).
Since Admin seems to be firmly against me on this issue, I won't say more so as to avoid being thought of as "arguing" about it.
Ted, I'm not against you. Why do you think I am?
Alan
I meant yourself and Arvo, not just your good self, Alan. I did think that Mike is also Admin but apparently not.
Hope that clarifies.
Ted, I'm not against you either, I just attempted to clarify some aspects behind the current solution.
There is need for new users, I think no one will dispute that. Mike laid out his plan to get new people on the board - maybe this is not the best plan possible, no one can know that beforehand - but at least it is a plan, it includes concrete steps to implement it and is certainly much better course of action than doing nothing.
I do not think so. These days kids and young people are quite computer literate. They do all their study on the computers. Or are you expecting only old people to come to this site? When my wife and daughter made the website for their business, one of the important conditions was to show up in the search engines.
