'Categories & Latest posts' for visitors and only 'Latest posts' for users

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I feel that the ‘Latest posts’ homepage is perfect for conversations just as Discourse itself encourages.

But for the first time visitor (not-logged-in users), a ‘Categories & Latest posts’ gives a better idea of what the forum is about, as the ‘Categories’ section can define really well what you can expect there, while also having a peek at the ‘Latest posts’ on the forum.

This could also have some SEO implications as the search engines will crawl the ‘Categories & Latest posts’ homepage, which you can control a bit better in terms of keywords, text on page through the ‘Categories’ section. Also, the categories/sub-categories are linked directly from the homepage (better link flowing).

This could be the best of both worlds.

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Last I knew, categories were linked directly from the Latest page. If this is not the case for you, have you checked any plugins / modifications you might be using to make sure they didn’t break this?

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True, the categories for those posts appearing as ‘Latest posts’ are being linked in the ‘Category’ column, but that’s not the point I was trying to make, but rather that the ‘Categories & Latest posts’ front page might be more suitable for visitors & possibly search engines and vice-versa (‘Latest posts’ is more suitable for already registered users).

So, my question is whether others feel the same and if such an ability to set different front pages is practical or not ?

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I’m too lazy busy to find it now, but there has been discussion about having member selectable “home” pages.

If that can happen it would be easy enough to have a default home page and let members decide for themselves which they prefer. IMHO, that would be better than having code make a decision for them.

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It’s not even that, but just 2 homepages that already exist in Discourse. The difference would be to serve one for users, and one for visitors (not-logged-in) for the above mentioned reasons.

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I guess I’m not understanding what you’re getting at. AFAIK, it is exactly that. The default of all the possible home pages will display for not-logged-in visitors, and once logged in, members would (when / if it happens) be able to choose another if they wanted to.

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I agree, having a landing page with categories and latest posts is better for new users to understand the community.

Looks like this has been discussed a long time back, is there a way this has been enabled?

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Isso é algo que também me interessa: a ideia original de ter uma página inicial separada, configurada pelo administrador, para visitantes versus usuários logados, e não a sugestão posterior de uma preferência do usuário.

  • Um visitante ou robô de busca chega ao fórum e vê a lista de nível superior de Categorias (possivelmente com Destaques/Últimos/Principais tópicos ao lado), o que lhes dá uma visão imediata de alto nível sobre o que é esse fórum, quais categorias são ativas/populares e para onde devem ir a seguir.
  • Um usuário logado chega ao fórum (já familiarizado com as categorias) e vê os Últimos tópicos, permitindo que acompanhem ou retomem rapidamente conversas entre as categorias.

Cada página inicial atende ao caso de uso preferido de seu público, mas prejudica o outro. Visitantes ainda não estão orientados, então um fluxo ao vivo dos Últimos tópicos não transmite muito sobre a estrutura da comunidade. Usuários logados já conhecem as categorias, então a página de Categorias distrai da pergunta: “O que aconteceu desde que eu estive aqui?”.

Usar “Categorias + Destaques/Últimos/Principais” para ambos os públicos atende mais ou menos à necessidade, mas ainda adiciona ruído visual para usuários logados, que já têm o seletor de categorias como um menu suspenso (e com peso elevado, na coluna “primária” mais à esquerda).