Recently we implemented a few tweaks to our homepage based on some user testing and feedback from new Community visitors. Essentially we moved from Latest to the Categories view.
So far from what we can tell, new users are find it a bit easier to navigate and find the content they’re looking for. However…
Return users, such as our power users and Experts, keep needing to click ‘Latest’ as that’s the view that works better for them. Their feedback is that it’s easier to see which topics are getting activity, compared to those that aren’t, by looking at the ‘Latest’ view.
I think I once saw a way in these forums to show Latest to members/return visitors, and Categories to new visitors… but I can’t for the life of me find that topic.
I’m pretty sure that this isn’t possible without a plugin or customization yet, but it would definitely make sense to allow that! Maybe we can split the site setting top menu into one for logged-in users and one for the anonymous view?
Also I tracked down a comment showing that Imgur set something like this up, just can’t figure out how they did it. I’m fine if it’s a customization for now.
I don’t think there’s going to be a simple way to accomplish this without changes to core. I’ll be interested to hear the rest of the team’s thoughts on this when they return from the yearly retreat. This has come up before…
Allowing users to pick homescreen is definitely something we want to add. Now we have a very clear UX section for it in profile.
Once that is added you could add an option for user default and it could differ from forum default. Adding this to next release cause it is quite easy.
