new guilds landing page - launched :-)

[wesden]

Hello fellow guild lovers!

Just wanted to let you know that the new guilds page is out, which you may have noticed - http://www.gaiaonline.com/guilds/

I know its been a long time coming and some of you thought it might not ever come out, but please behold its glory (sorry, I'm a proud mama - lots of hard work went into the page!)

I've started a thread in SF, but happy to see your feedback here. Thanks for everyone's feedback in the past, and let's revive guilds!
-d  

[shall she sail seas]

The "Latest Discussions" tab might generate more exposure for guilds. The only bad thing I can see from it is that people might start creating bumping threads within their own guilds and use it as advertising.... so you'd get bumping threads coming up on top instead of real discussions threads.  

[WindowOpener]

Even after seeing the mockups this is awesome. whee

It's good to see Leon there! 3nodding

It's shiny, tidy and beautifully laid out. The reference to a top secret formula (just beneath Popular Guilds) made me laugh. whee heart

It would be great if the My Guilds panel, which is located and sized really conveniently, could be customised to display guilds we access most often. It seems logical that guilds I own should be displayed first, but actually in my case they're mostly empty. :XP: That said, the neat ajax 'pages' are of course themselves lightyears beyond anything the GGN has seen before. XD The owner and member icons are also a nice new device.

The tabs for Popular Guilds (good use of what used to be the whole landing page) and Latest Discussions are both welcome additions and smoothly implemented (with room for more tabs~ =) ).

The Search, Category and Forum Type tools along the top seem a bit like they're suspended in a vacuum. They're also replicated in the Browse Guilds box so maybe they can be removed?

Lastly - a guild glossary! Seriously, how many hours of brainstorming went into thinking up features for this page? It fleshes the registry out really well without overwhelming visitors with info, and the balance is so good it must have taken ages to decide what to include and what wasn't crucial.

Thanks so much for this thoughtful redesign. I definitely vote it will have a positive effect on traffic. 4laugh  

[LillianSaire]

I think there needs to be a Gaian announcement about it. I think every opportunity to put the GGN in an announcement or make an announcement for the GGN should be used.

I like how you can choose the old search methods or the simple browse one-clicks. I like how simple that is, redundant or not it is good for people new to the GGN.

I still with to comment on the lack of purple or much of any color. At first I didn't even notice the tabs. Color please? sweatdrop Since that question applies to almost all of Gaia right now I guess you don't have to count it as a request.  

[wesden]

LillianSaire

I think there needs to be a Gaian announcement about it. I think every opportunity to put the GGN in an announcement or make an announcement for the GGN should be used.

I like how you can choose the old search methods or the simple browse one-clicks. I like how simple that is, redundant or not it is good for people new to the GGN.

I still with to comment on the lack of purple or much of any color. At first I didn't even notice the tabs. Color please? sweatdrop Since that question applies to almost all of Gaia right now I guess you don't have to count it as a request.

announcement is timed for tomorrow - another "top secret formula" we have is how we time our announcements wink I would have liked to see it go out yesterday, but ......  

[LillianSaire]

The least you could to it have the post times on the announcements correct for the time the announcements are released... That off timing gets confusing.  

[mamarita]

Thanks for the new page, but now- CAN WE PLEASE HAVE MASS PM'ING???? THAT IS HOW WE WILL GET MORE ACTIVITY  

[LillianSaire]

EPIC, everyone is waiting for an Easter announcement and the GGN shows up.


EPIC WIN.  

[MemoryDragon]

I love the latest discussions tab. It's not quite the forum pulse that the regular forums have, but I think it's a great way to increase traffic in an other wise unknown guild. I think that far outweighs the increased risk of bumping threads. Besides, it's usually fairly easy to sort through that sort of junk to find real discussions in the guilds. heart

I also like Window's idea for managing our own guilds, sort of like we can manage our friends lists. But that we can wait for. wink

I'm glad for the glossary too... Short, sweet, and answers a lot of the questions I've seen since first joining the guilds and got tired of answering. heart Now, I suppose we only have to hope some people will actually use it... These are n00bs we are talking about, after all. At least the more intelligent of the bunch might look it up. xd

Great work on the new page!  

[wesden]

LillianSaire

The least you could to it have the post times on the announcements correct for the time the announcements are released... That off timing gets confusing.

features get released here based on a schedule, and often we have a separate schedule for announcements - we don't want to overwhelm the users with 5 announcements a day, so the priority is getting the feature out/launched. Most of the time, the launch and announcement happen on the same day, but sometimes we need to move things around with the announcements.  

[Silent elf]

mamarita

Thanks for the new page, but now- CAN WE PLEASE HAVE MASS PM'ING???? THAT IS HOW WE WILL GET MORE ACTIVITY

smile
so true
hey mamarita  

[Pilotslover]

Posted in the official thread but I think the look is too sparse and I miss how it used to look. I don't even use the landing page any more, just the my guild link.  

[churrlo]

I really like how it is ^^ Needed a new layout and I think you did rather well on it! ^^ Thanks for all your hard work!  

[Chellies]

I really like the new guilds page! The only thing I'm disappointed in [self-centered moi] is that it only shows the top 10 guilds. [Mine's in the top 15. sweatdrop ]
But that's okay. Something to aim for. xD

The only other thing is that you have to flip through your own list of guilds, which can get annoying if you're looking for a certain one. But then again, the shortcuts still has a My guild list which fullfills that, so I guess it's good. Haha.