Bigger top row?

How about letting more than 5 images on the top row ?
Not necessarily as many as CGSociety’s home page, but 5 pics is almost saying “Hey look, nobody uses Blender”.
I don’t know, maybe you have your reasons, but I think the website would look more appealing, and that could also impact how people perceive the software.

This is something we can review, but personally I’m not inclined to agree. I don’t think the reaction you describe is what most people think when looking at the top row. In addition to that, putting more images in the top row would force us to make them smaller… the result (IMHO) would be more cluttered and actually less impressive.

So I don’t know. I’m not fully convinced… but I don’t have a massive influence on the site’s design, either. :slight_smile:

In any case, the top row is something we’ll need to address when we migrate to Discourse, so we’ll certainly make this part of the discussion.

Ok, I was exaggerating about the reaction. But I don’t think you would have to make them smaller. I’m not a web designer, but here are my ideas anyway :

  • On my screen there is a lot of empty room on the sides, so why not put the advertisement on a side instead of the top, so that you can add an extra line of images ? Which Blender user has a 4/3 screen anyway ? Actually I don’t even know if the ratio is the problem, maybe it’s the number of pixels. But there are many sites that use the whole space on my screen (like Youtube).
  • The images could be stuck together to optimize space too, like on CGsociety
  • The other side of the screen is still unused, so maybe there could be an additional image.
  • At the end I wouldn’t mind if it just took more room
  • Or how about a home page ?

Somehow I was dumb enough not to notice that the top row in CG society is very similar to Blender Artists.
But it has 2 differences that I think makes it better :

  • Bigger thumbnails and no gap between them
  • Images varying depending on which forum you’re in

I think there’s enough material here to do the same.

The new website solved this. It now displays 6 thumbnails on the top row and can even show a gallery of all the #featured artwork.

I’ll probably remove the gaps, it’s causing some layout issues in the grid gallery

I don’t mind that.