Update: art-focused homepage

[bartv (Bart Veldhuizen)]

For the last week, we have run a gallery based homepage to test the hypothesis that this might lead to more activity on the forum. Today I reverted back tot he default page while we think through our learnings to decide on next steps. In this post I’ll outline our learnings and next steps.

Before I continue, you can still set the gallery based homepage as your default by selecting it as your theme - just select it at the bottom of the sidebar:

Community sentiment

The poll didn’t get a lot of votes so I’m taking this data with a grain of salt, but there seems to be a slight preference for the gallery based homepage.

Impact on daily activity

Early data suggests a ~10% increase in daily pageviews.

Impact on likes

I looked at the number of daily likes given as another indicator of engagement. While there was a short spike right at launch, this seems to have settled back into the regular numbers.

I’m considering adding a like button to galleries to reach the same kind of low-friction engagement that platforms like Reddit and Instagram have - the quick reward there matters to artists, and the low like number on BA could suggest low visibility of their artworks.

Daily posts

Similar to the likes, the number of daily new posts saw a spike at launch, but then settled back to the regular numbers.

Problems with the current site layout

In no specific order, we found the following UX challenges:

• The theme selector is hard to find if you don’t know it exists. There are no ‘hints’ in the UI that you can change the homepage there.
• Posting is only allowed in subcategories, not in main categories like Artwork - selecting a main category will leave the ‘New Topic’ button grayed out, which is confusing to new users.
• Making sticky site announcements (like this one) is harder since a large number of users are not looking at the regular topics list anymore.

Ideas for improvement

Several ideas for improvement have been suggested by the community. Some will be easier to implement than others - especially ‘re-theming’ the entire homepage is a task that probably requires hiring a Discourse developer.

• Create a hybrid homepage. Difficulty: high.
  A new homepage with a mix of the categories list, recent topics AND a section for art would be the ideal solution as it would appeal to both people looking for support as well as to people who just come to enjoy or share art. Here’s an example of what it could look like.
• Add a highly visible theme toggle. Difficulty: medium.
  An element at the top of the page that lets users choose between ‘latest art/latest posts’. See an example here. Edit: perhaps this theme component can help.
• Re-think the top navigation bar to make space for new elements. Difficulty: easy.

Next steps

I have a busy time at work coming up, so I won’t be able to move the more complex solutions forward. But at the very least I’d be interested in getting the visible theme toggle and top nav reorganization done before the end of the year. Some help would be appreciated - please let me know if you’re available.

[Roken]

To be honest, I thought I’d done something to change behaviour here, and so just immediately went to “Everything” when I came to the site. I’m probably not alone.

[Okidoki]

So something changed and the likes and complains got higher…
Conclusion: to get more traffic (and payment via advertising) change something every week…

Jokes side… there are some interesting discussions about the future of BA… so everbody can (constructively) participate and there is always the possibility to change the look via userscripts (or maybe donate for a special theme ? ).
(And also some changes are because of updates of the underlying software…)

[joseph (J)]

@bartv

But at the very least I’d be interested in getting the visible theme toggle and top nav reorganization done before the end of the year. Some help would be appreciated - please let me know if you’re available.

You know I’m down

[Ace_Dragon]

At first, I wondered if general Blender discussion was axed completely, and BA was strictly an art only site now (as the all categories button was somewhat hard to find at first).

On current bookmarks, it just made it more difficult to actually jump into the actual discussions taking place on the site. It also does not help how you don’t even know the number of replies for each art thread and who responded.

[3DGas]

Well, I’m new at the site and in Blender (overall), in my humble opinion, the way to get through people eyes is to look more like social-media-like pages (IG, FB, etc) and not to show the standard forum-like aspect… Personally, I care about the content that the forum offers instead of the esthetics. But to be honest, a more modern aspect would be profitable. I repeat, this is my humble opinion, as a new user.

[pitibonom]

Hi all

I’m really glad with the new features as they don’t interfere to old ones. For my own part, I still have the forum as a homepage.
I can however understand some people would like the art home as a homepage.

IMHO there are several factors acting:

1. the identity ( the deep reason of existing ) of BA
2. the need for ads ( financing host and crew ( if applicable ) )
3. the aimed public
4. the tools
5. the available human resource

for 1) i sincerely will be partial as i mainly use BA as a technical blender reference. IMHO BA is the most active and the richest internet entry point for those asking the eternal question ‘how-to ?’. This is my case and to be honest, i’m not sure i’d use blender if BA would not exist ! Maybe blender fundation should take this in account as blender beeing an always-changing-messy-tool ( that i love ) i’m sure few people would use it if there was not a BA forum for answering questions.
From this point of view, BA is a tech forum. And a forum, as it is, is the best tool for discusses, questions and answers. I however often have a look and leave likes at art from the top banner ! But i don’t only ‘like’ i sometimes leave a question about how this or that were done…
I know that today, lots of people prefer images and consider text as a boring useless old thing. But knowledge transmission cannot be done through images. only text can, and brains are involved.

for 2) indeed, the topic must be mentioned. hosting & maintenance is not free and beside the discuss of tech choices, the need for money is real. I feel ( maybe i’m wrong ) that, as BA started as a free service, it became hard to say ‘we need money’… No shame !
Of course making it a paying tool would make people flee but… I see nowhere a button saying ‘support us’. Maybe a crowdfunding button would be a start ? I think most people passing by, don’t even think that BA needs fund ( moreover in this world where everything is free, and you pay with your private data ). I think this has to be discussed.

for 3) This is an important point. Does BA want people passing by for 3 seconds a day, have a look at pics and leave 2 likes, and voilà ? or does BA want people writing boring novels ( like i’m doing ) about how to use blender ? This bring us back to the 1) point but has to be seen from a traffic point of view. More people lead to more chances of beeing funded. And therefore both art & tech have to be considered. Drawing a black and white pic, i’d say that people interrested by art never read forum content. And people interrested in tech don’t look at art. Of course Things are never this binary but it is a tendency. Couldn’t BA be an art & tech platform, reuniting the 2 different domains ? maybe a homepage with 2 big images to click on ? one for the art forum and one for the tech forum ?
This brings us to the 4)

for the 4) this is an important thing as it contains BA’s web visibility: the search engines referencing. IMHO, the google referencing of BA is very bad. for 1 BA entry, there are 10 blender.stackexchange.
And images ( finished projects ) are almost absent of the search results. I think that if BA needs traffic this point must be hard-worked. More than the site look for bringing people who already know why they come on the forum. acquiring more visibility will bring more people who don’t know about BA and who will eventually stay a while, sign-up and maybe tip the crowdfunding^^ Anyway what i know is that the more BA is seen the more it will be ( i think professionnals call this the critical mass )…

for the 5) it is also an important point as only humans make this forum live. without BA crew, BA would simply not exist. And BA needs time and efforts ( eg for moderating me when i’m rumbling about this or that blender ‘feature’ ). I know what those time & effort represent and aside thanking all the team for this, i’d say that BA shouldn’t try to become what crew cannot bear. Therefore the maintenance and evolution should match the crew available time and will

Thanks to al !!!
And happy blending and BAing !