Inspired by recent comments and e-mails I’ve been rethinking the design of the Locus Online homepage, and supporting pages, the past couple weeks — the sort of rethinking that’s appropriate every couple three years anyway. It’s been a year since the homepage was widened to include box ads in the right margin; and roughly three years since the current homepage color scheme and drop-down menus were introduced.
Since I’ve gotten absolutely no comments to my previous post that invited comments or suggestions about such a redesign, I feel free to do whatever I want.
I’m considering a couple options. Both would reorganize the archive links in an attempt to better make site content more findable, along the lines of the site’s logo subtitle, and introduce some gradient graphics to give the site an up-to-date look. One alternative would completely retain the blog-like homepage, while a second option — an option I experimented with back in 2005, and find myself drawn to once again — would remove fly-out menus and place instead directory boxes of various site category contents down the homepage, with only a handful of recent posts at the top… making the entire site contents more visible, hopefully. Not sure I’ll finish either version and make a decision in the next week…
Because in a week I’ll be leaving for Denver, and the Worldcon. I’m not on the program and have only a couple appointments; will be around for the entire con, probably hanging out at the Locus table in the Dealers Room part of the time, and would be happy to chat with anyone reading this blog…
Meanwhile, have read quite a few interesting books lately (see sidebar thumbnails) and will post comments about them, sooner or later.
