New client home page
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Hello everyone
I'm planning on recreating the current client home page and with it the role the newshub currently plays. Right now due to a lack of staff, the newshub isn't maintained at all. and to be honest, its more of a news page than an actual home page. Therefore, I'm thinking of re-creating the home page and putting the newshub as a second priority on it.
Below I'll discuss possible ideas and additions to the client home page that I believe will add new features and somewhat maintain current newshub things.
Youtube / Twitch new videos/streams
Im unsure of how doable/effective it can be but I'm thinking of using the Youtube/Twitch API and getting the latest supcom videos/streams and having a link to them. So if Derp or Gyle uploaded a video or Farms is streaming, it automatically gets drawn and show on a small section of the home page, kinda like the "latest FAF content"
"Top" players of the week
So with game statistics, I could in the short term do a small bar with short term statistics from most played games, biggest rating gain/loss, etc. This would involve a filter of around 1k and above probably since I'm sure new players will have the biggest rating changes and this is more for the long term community players. This wouldn't be done manually but using the FAF API and scraping statistics of players over the week.
This idea is still in the works because I'm not sure what criteria to follow or put there. I'd love some feedback about whether this is a good idea to you and what would you change about it.
News
well yeah, there would still be a news section but it wouldn't be the same news but more long term news such as maybe some new development or maybe the bigger article news. Would be like small squares somewhere. Would include the incoming tournaments and other stuff.
Adaptability
Speaking of news, the current newshub/home page is static. I'd like to make it so we can have 1-3 "modes" where the layout changes depending on if we want to put a small article/game patch upfront nice and big or show tournament results for Rainbow cup week or LOTS week or just an average newshub. Kinda like having a News, Tourney and Home page mode depending on the ocassion.
Basic Info
Like any homepage, having a small section of links to stuff such as the discord, wiki, forums, patreon, git, etc.
What would you want to see or what do you think about these ideas? Let me know below and please refrain from anything too crazy since there's plenty of work with the above.
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I think 'top players of the month' would be more suitable, because if you plan to do this every week, it will consume a lot of time, and if you have other responsibilities as well and a real life, the manual labor will tank a lot of time.
If you manage to automate the whole process via statistics of the players, then it is a different story. Also, per season is more than good enough as well, if per month is too stressful. (Player with most games played in MM, match of the season, fun facts, the biggest win streak, etc.)
Integrating the latest FAF content from verified FAF streamers is a nice idea.
Making the news section dynamic to have sort of changing "streams" or "nodes" sounds promising and like a lot of work.
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I thought it was supposed to be news page?
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Recreating the same news page
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I'm not in favor.
The news page is the only place where you can reach the entire audience of FAF. There is no other place to do that. Removing that, or making the role of the page smaller, would be a step back in time.
To be more on point about your suggestions:
Youtube / Twitch new videos/streams
If I'm interested in following any of these casters then I'll subscribe them on Youtube. There is no need for them to be visible all the time. What we have now (occasionally one is highlighted, and sometimes a new caster is) is fine.
On top of that it will involve maybe even more manual work then the entire news hub ever was:
- (1) You'll need to manually add / remove casters from the list of casters that we're interested in
- (2) You'll need to manually accept which uploaded video or stream is shown
Where (1) has the issue that there's no clear criteria: if someone uploads 1 faf video is that enough? Or does it need to be 20? Or maybe monthly content? How do people apply, and when do they get removed again?
And (2) has the issue that if you do not manually check and approve videos and streams you can end up with all sorts of content that is completely unrelated to FAF. One example being Gyle playing Broforce - nice and everything but it has no place in the news hub.
"Top" players of the week
I like this idea where you share the 'top trends' automatically, but I'll also be honest that I think it should be more about content then about players. It would be an interesting, easy to automate way to promote (new) maps, mods and perhaps even replays.
Adaptability
I don't necessarily see the value in this. Sounds like it is more difficult to maintain, with little gain for the user. Why not make 1 page with clear sections?
It feels to me that there's a better direction to take. A lot of the news does not need to be manually updated / created / deleted. Take the tournaments section. You could create some user flow where:
- (1) A tournament director can submit some form, perhaps on the home page of FAF
- (2) The form has all the information you need, including a thumbnail, the initial text, title, the date of the event, etc
- (3) Once submitted the tournament director receives an identification token to be able to make mutations
- (4) You (as promo team) then gets to accept / reject submissions and / or mutations
As a result the 'work' would be reduced to checking the submissions once a week, accept / reject them and move on. Everything else, including removing the tournament from the page again, can be entirely automated. This would of course involve database and server changes, but that is fine - you'll need to learn about that as a web developer at some point during your career. The sooner the better.
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Just make a new tab in the client for all of those?
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I'm in favor of having more "long term" news that are more relevant in the grand scheme of things. In the recent years we had a lot of "X made a new video" news, but we lost the ability to browse old articles easily. I would prefer a slower pace of news that then features stuff that is interesting to read even when some months have passed, like a patch announcement, a development roadmap, new board elected, team leader stepping down, etc.
With the current format there are so many news items that I am not interested in that I frequently don't look at the newshub at all. But because we don't have an archive of relevant articles I probably miss stuff all the time.
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@blackyps Longer style less frequent news was supposed to go up on the website was the plan but with the lack of people that doesn't seem to be happing. all the news you stated here was what should have been going on the website news rather than the client news as a short post.
@blackyps said in New client home page:
I would prefer a slower pace of news that then features stuff that is interesting to read even when some months have passed, like a patch announcement, a development roadmap, new board elected, team leader stepping down, etc.
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I like the player focus.
Consider selecting by more than just stats.
Consider having nominations and short interviews. Favorite map and game type. Favorite demo (link). Favorite caster. How you got started in FAF.
Maybe start with some of the staff who make FAF happen too!
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News + Maybe some leaderboard type stuff or maybe most viewed/rated replay or something would be nice content wise.
On a technical level I'd prefer ugly and fast over fancy looking but borked and using more resources than pretty much anything else on my computer.
The home page for me right now uses ~500M of memory (theres about this much change in the total 2G for the client when loading it) which is obscene when my entire browser with youtube, gmail, and about 70 tabs plus extensions uses ~860M. Seriously, the game launcher using more resources than the game and most of my daily applications combined when its been used a while is not acceptable. I don't care if I dont get round_edges.png and smooth_animation.avi.
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I just Feel that in general your making more work for yourself for something that has already been updated in the last 6 months while other areas suffer that have more a direct impact on the FAF as a Community. just seems that the General Focus is Fix this Update that and not actually using when you have to is full potential.
