Having trouble navigating...

[birdographer]

When I put the DU address in the browser, it takes me to what I consider to be home. New posts, recced posts, news stories, pic of the moment/day/whatever. It's a great all-in-one page. Today for some reason I had to log in again. Once I did that, it took me to some other page. I can't figure out how to get back to the page I get to when putting the address in the browser. There is no "Home" page option. How do I get back to where I started if I get waylaid like that? TIA

[EarlG]

1. Click the big site logo at the top of the page

It will take you directly to the home page.

[highplainsdem]

5. EarlG, could you please restore the text links to the home page in

front of the Latest Discussions links at the top and bottom of the board? That does make it easier for people to navigate, and some DUers have been thinking there either is no home page any more, or Latest Discussions is the home page simply because it's the leftmost link in those sets of links, the place where Lobby or Home or DU Home were for two decades.

There's plenty of room there, even with mobile view, for a text link to Home where it always used to be.

[EarlG]

7. It really does take up unnecessary space on mobile

because it's redundant with the site logo sitting just a few pixels away from where a "Home" link would be, and it's a link that most people don't need to see at the front of the location trail (that's our internal name for the list of horizontal links at the top of the page, btw).

I think perhaps this is an issue which affects different people differently.

Some current users may be temporarily unsure of how to reach the home page. That's because they're used to clicking the Home link which isn't there any more. With it gone, they think the home page has disappeared, and they don't consider that there might be another way to get there. However, a number of people who have had this issue have simply asked how to get to the home page, and now they know how to do it. So the issue is cleared up for all those people.

New visitors, however, are not going to miss a link which they didn't even know was there to start with. They should intuitively know that they can get to https://www.democraticunderground.com by clicking the site's logo, because that is completely normal internet navigation behavior.

And this may sound odd, but I don't consider the home page to be the most important page on the site anyway. I don't mean that I don't consider it important -- it obviously is important. But to me the home page is, and always has been, a place to get a taste of the different things that are going on at DU over the last 12-24 hours. It's a perfectly fine page for new visitors to get an idea of what the site is all about, or for people to stop by a couple times a day and get a quick summary of what's going on. But the items on it don't change very often -- it's certainly not the most dynamic page on the site. It's not where you go to see what's happening right now.

That would be the Latest Discussions page, where all the action is. Most people who are active on the forums navigate to the Latest Discussions page CONSTANTLY -- certainly far more frequently than the home page -- which is why Latest Discussions is the most prominent link in the location trail, appearing at the front of the location trail on almost all pages, and that's why the other pages appear below it in that location trail hierarchy.

I believe the biggest issue with the Home link so far is that some people who were used to using it are confused by its disappearance. I get that. But once it's been explained to them, then the issue is over for that user. I don't think new users are going to have the same problem, because they can't miss something that they never even saw in the first place.

We obviously have a difference of opinion on this, and I want you to know that I will continue to consider the suggestion. But I also wanted to explain why the change was made, and why I don't (currently) consider it to be too much of a problem.

[highplainsdem]

8. We'll have to agree to disagree on this. After two decades of having the

text links there, I believe they should have stayed, and removing them was like yanking the rug out from under all the DUers who used them. The text links would be helpful for newcomers used to seeing text links to the home page on message boards, too, and they're standard on message boards.

And we disagree very much on the home page. I posted a long OP on this in GD the other day. I think the new home page makes DU look much less interesting and conveys less about the site than it did before.

But the items on it don't change very often -- it's certainly not the most dynamic page on the site. It's not where you go to see what's happening right now.

One of the reasons that's true is that the new design buries LBN beneath other stuff, including The Left Column, which is older news and analysis and changes pretty slowly.

I occasionally checked the Latest Threads page, but not often. The LBN stories posted by Democrats were always the first thing I checked, and I didn't care which DUers posted them, didn't need need to see their names, always wanted to see the source of the news and a snippet. (Just seeing headlines in some views of DU4 is a very poor substitute, and seeing 10 instead of 25 LBN stories on the DU4 home page is also very damaging to its effectiveness, IMO.) So I often returned to the DU3 home page to see the latest additions to LBN. I always wondered why The Left Column had the same stories that had been posted on LBN maybe a day earlier, and I rarely looked at the Left Column because I didn't want to reread a selection of older news curated by someone.

But to me the home page is, and always has been, a place to get a taste of the different things that are going on at DU over the last 12-24 hours.

We agree on that. But we disagree on whether the new design accomplishes that.

My OP in GD:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100218381548

[highplainsdem]

9. Re what I was saying about the problems with the new home page - I finally looked at it using one of my

laptops for the first time since the switch to DU4 (I'd been using my tablet instead), and while LBN isn't buried quite as far down the page and there are snippets, it's still too far down the page and there are too few LBN stories shown.

THIS is what's dominating the home page, in a huge font that seems to suggest this is the most important story in the world for DUers:


Around 76 locations
were raided in India as
part of a crackdown on
phony tech support
scam calls

and while it was worth posting in LBN, I have absolutely no idea why that should be the LOUDEST and LARGEST headline on the home page of a Democratic site, ever.

And it's been there as THE MOST IMPORTANT STORY for a while now.

I'll admit sometimes less important LBN stories were at the very top of the page as LBN continually updated that part of the DU page. But it was easy to see other LBN headlines at a glance, as well as the Trending comments.

I'm looking at DU with my 14" Chromebook, rather than my 15.6" Dell laptop, so maybe that very oddly emphasized headline takes up more space than it would on the slightly larger laptop. With this Chromebook, that first Left Column story with the huge headline is so large I can't even see the full headline of the Left Column story below it, without scrolling down. The font for the Trending and Greatest topics is miniscule by comparison - and those are in a font even smaller than the one for the left sidebar.

LBN headlines can't be seen unless I scroll down, but the top headlines currently from the LBN feed are

Nine Republicans Jump Into Race for Speaker

Netanyahu told to 'quit now' as ex-leaders pin blame on dysfunctional government

Mitch McConnell backs Biden's $106bn aid request for Israel and Ukraine

which look to me like they're more important than the story about India cracking down on scammers, but DU's home page conveys the impression that to DU or its admins, the Indian scammers story is most important.

And that, in a nutshell, is why The Left Column with its old news and analysis should not be the focus of the home page.

You could constantly change The Left Column to try to keep up with whatever is apparently the very most important news story at the moment, but that's going to require constant attention from you or whoever helps you constantly change Left Column stories throughout the night as well as the day.

What DU3 had instead, just having LBN stories as the focus, with at least a few of them instantly visible and DUers in general contributing to that feed so there's always someone online when news is breaking, makes more sense.

Big headlines convey importance, and a headline the size of that one for The Left Column story featured on DU4's home page says you think it's of earth-shattering importance.

LBN stories constantly updating are obviously a news feed with Dems doing the aggregating, so no one's going to be wondering why a certain story is at the top at that moment, especially when that's likely to change within an hour or two if not sooner.

[EarlG]

10. That story is at the top of the homepage because

at the time the homepage auto-updated last night, that was the most replied-to thread in LBN in the previous three hours. So the reasons it’s presented as the most important story is because at the time, it was. The reason it’s still there is because it’s a Sunday and I don’t have morning auto-update turned on at the moment.

On weekday mornings I manually add items of interest which stay on the homepage until the evening when the next auto-update occurs.

Anyway, just so you know, I’m not interested in doing a big redesign of the home page right now. However, your comments (not just in this thread but elsewhere) have given me some ideas to improve the current layout, so stay tuned.

Finally, did you know that the thing you are looking for — lots of LBN threads in chronological order, newest first, without large headlines, with a text blurb underneath — is already available on the Latest Discussions page in the right column?

[highplainsdem]

11. No, I didn't know that. As I said, I rarely look at Latest. I did just now, and I didn't see LBN stories with the newest

first, - at least not till I scrolled down and finally found them under Spotlight Forum: Foreign Affairs and Welcome to DU! listing newcomers.

The list of LBN latest is effectively buried there. And they're missing the very important snippets that were on the home page.

They worked much better where they were on the DU3 home page. Really contributed more to the page and site that way.

And where they're now sort of buried on the Latest page, they're also two clicks from DU's home page, the one I land on when I visit DU, since I don't see any links for Latest on the home page and there's none on the navigation bar when you're on that page, either. LBN itself is only one click from the home page, and I can click Start Time there to get the stories by the newest first, but the snippets that helped so much are still missing.

So to get the closest approximation I can to what I had earlier and liked I have to scroll down the home page to the abbreviated list of 10 latest LBN stories and snippets, then go to LBN and click Start Time and skim down past those first ten to get to simple headlines of the other recent stories, with no snippets, and then start reading in more depth...and hope I don't miss something I would have been interested in because there wasn't even a snippet there. When I checked the home page regularly for the LBN list there, the DU3 list, I always saw at least snippets of almost every single news story posted in LBN.

[EarlG]

12. I don't know if you ever visited the DU3 homepage on a phone

but for the last 12 years, the LBN threads were "buried" down at the bottom of the home page, just as they are now, and it never seemed to be a problem.

On non-mobile devices, the LBN threads have been moved down the page a bit, but they're hardly "buried." However, on tablets, they are pushed down further. This is because the right column is combined on tablets due to the narrower screen width, and so there is a lot more stuff going on before you get to the LBN threads. Of all the layouts, the one I'm least happy with at the moment is the tablet layout, I think it needs some tweaks. And I'll be getting to that when I can.

If the issue here is that you just want to be able to get the LBN threads in the order they were posted, that's something I can help you with.

You can go to the home page, scroll down, and find the list of most recent LBN threads.

You can also go to the Latest Discussions page in the right hand column -- you barely have to scroll down to get to them, they're right there, presented in the format that you like.

Alternatively, you can go to the LBN forum itself and click the "Start time" table header and the page will re-sort itself with the newest stories at the top.

Or you could even open up this page in a new tab:

https://rssviewer.app/

...and plug in this URL:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=rss&forum=1014

... and you can have your own LBN feed.

That's four different ways to do it. All of them will provide you with what you're looking for, the problem is that none of them will provide you with what you're looking for in the exact place you want to see it.

Sometimes, I can make a quick fix to the code and immediately give someone the thing they want. Most times, it's not that simple. If the issue is that you want me to completely overhaul the home page design so that it becomes the perfect layout for you personally, you will have to lower your expectations a bit. Lots of people come to DU and they all use it in different ways, and I have to try to accommodate everyone as best as possible.

As I mentioned previously, I've taken your comments on board and they have given me food for thought for the next phase.

[highplainsdem]

13. Thanks for the reply. I know you can't please everyone with this redesign, and it's important to make it more

phone-friendly. I hate using phones for looking at anything online, and my tablet is the smallest screen I ever wanted to deal with for doing anything online. I had it set to Standard view on DU3 so I could see more while reading and posting replies. I have my tablet browser set for desktop mode now with DU4 , too, so more is visible.

I've been glad there are people who've been helped by the redesign. But for me, it's been depressing.

I still love DU, the forums and the people, and I'm not going to leave over this. But if you asked me if I'd rather go back to DU3, I'd choose that.

And I feel bad saying that, too, because I know how much work you put into this redesign. But DU4, at least at this stage, doesn't work very well for me, and it also worries me that so many people are having to try different hacks to make it work better for them.

I do appreciate your putting up with my comments on it. Again, thanks.

[EarlG]

14. No worries, and listen, if it helps...

Please understand that I consider the launch of DU4 to be the beginning of this process, not the end. Everything we do from this point -- once we get past the stabilization phase -- is going to be about making tweaks and improvements to get the site to work better and better for people. I'm sorry it's not ideal for you right now, but I am completely open to doing whatever I can to improve things for individual users, where possible. And suggestions are always welcome.

[progree]

15. The LBN snippets aka blurbs are missing on the LBN column in Latest Discussions

on my computer. It just shows the headlines. I've narrowed and widened my window and made it full screen and its always just the headlines. Although I do much appreciate those -- a long listing in chronological order.

Windows 10 desktop computer, 24" monitor.

Finally, did you know that the thing you are looking for — lots of LBN threads in chronological order, newest first, without large headlines, with a text blurb underneath — is already available on the Latest Discussions page in the right column?

Highlighting added. Always trying out the new features

[birdographer]

2. Yep

I had just tried that and discovered it. Came here to edit this post--thanks for the rapid reply.

[MontanaMama]

3. Can you click on the DU banner at the top of the page you're on?

It should take you to DU's home page.

[birdographer]

4. Figured it out

I was going to delete this post but maybe someone else will be as clueless as me. The heading looks like, well, a heading and not a link. While a "Home" link would help those as challenged as me, if I could figure it out before the response to this post, maybe they will too!

[highplainsdem]

6. There's plenty of room for the two text links to the home page that

each page used to have, though, and I just asked EarlG to restore them. They're standard and DU1-3 had them. Not having them is causing a lot of confusion.