Member pages! (part two)

Here's the blog post:
http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/06/member-home-pages.php

And here's a screencast about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZEfJOL4IKo

---

I'm starting a new thread. The first one has topped 240 messages, more than most users will want to read. Many also related to bugs that have been fixed or the missing profile tab, which has been restored.

So, let me know what you think about the home page.

First, to repeat we will be giving members the ability to remove pieces entirely.

My questions are:

*What are you favorites and least favorites?
*What would you get rid of, and what order would you put them in?
*If you can imagine how other see it, particularly first-time users, what do you think they'd want for defaults?
*What modules are missing? What could we add?

Favorites: Recently Added by Other Members, On this day, Early Reviewers, Connection News

Least Favorites: Recently added (mine), Members with your books, Hot Reviews

What would you get rid of? from the blogs

what do you think they'd want for defaults? I think the defaults are pretty good as is

What modules are missing? What could we add? Tag Watch!

Can you explain tag watch for us? New books tagged X?

Yes, where X is a tag of my choosing. Either new books, or books newly tagged that way. If that makes sense.

For search, could we opt to search site-wide instead of just in our own libraries? In all honesty, the first time I clicked on it, I thought it would be site-wide and not just in my library (there's much that's about me and much that's about everyone else on the page and it gets confusing).

Zeitgeist should include combining stats.

Out of curiosity, how are the featured authors picked? Is it random (as in, "hi, I threw up 5 books so I could be an LT author and now I'm featured!), or is it more involved?

ETA - for new users, a module with the new "how-to" videos would be a nice default. When everything's customizable, seasoned users could scrap it...

Least Favorite:
On This Day
Hot Reviews
Featured Authors

What Order:
Move the Blog articles higher up.

What could you add:
Feature a book on its release date
(thinking....)

Out of curiosity, how are the featured authors picked? Is it random (as in, "hi, I threw up 5 books so I could be an LT author and now I'm featured!), or is it more involved?

Random, weighed toward authors who are popular and whose member profiles have many books. I think it's RAND(0-1) * RAND(0-1) * LOG(books) * LOG(copies on LT). It's probably too generous to popular authors, but I figured I could scale it back after the biggest had their shot. (How's that for too much info?)

I love that the two answers so far have "on this day" in opposite positions.

For me what's missing is the comments, since that is what I come to LT for if I'm not adding a book. Also missing is thumb-upping of my reviews, since I check for that, too.* I would like the connection news if it didn't automatically include the "Top 50 Similar Libraries."** I don't really care what books I've recently added, but the pictures are pretty, so I think it's fine. I like the local stuff. I like the talk okay (although I just deleted the threads I didn't want and they repopulated). All the stuff on the right is unnecessary but also is not in the way.

*What I mean is that I check for the thumb-upping on a semi-regular basis, so if there were some kind of indication on the home page that this has taken place, it would be nice.
** Meaning that if #50 uploads 50 titles in one day, I'm forced to look at those books even if I have decided that this library bores me.

Tag Watch, yes. That would be amazing, and would cut through a lot of the chazerai and get to the heart of what I would want to use LT for.

>7 timspalding: Actually, I think it's a little better this way for now...I dread the day that the author that mass spam-friended any of us with The Art of War to promote his book gets his official day.

I like "On This Day" - I've added some CK in my day! Glad to see it put to good use.

ETA - 8, if you click on the edit pencil next to the module, you can remove the top 50 libraries. ^^

I really like the new homepage.

*What are you favorites and least favorites?
I'm not a big fan of "popular this month", but I think new users would be. It gives an overview of the site. I like the local events and the author feature of the upcoming author next to the events. Looks nice. I like the featured authors--perhaps it could be 2 LT authors and 1 non-LT author? (I like getting exposed to new possibilities). I also am happy about the reviews--what I would prefer more is one featured review as discussed on some previous thread (I don't remember where) and a pony.

*What would you get rid of, and what order would you put them in?
I would put "from the blog" up under announcements, especially if you are going to remove the blog tab as suggested in the other thread.

*If you can imagine how other see it, particularly first-time users, what do you think they'd want for defaults?
I think as it is now is a good default. It gives a good mix of personal and site details. A first-time user will see things about their library, recent popular books of the site, and recommendations. Lots of things mostly about books, which is good for a book site.

*What modules are missing? What could we add?
For me personally (because I know you must be designing this for me personally), I would like
1) something that shows the most recently added author pictures. In fact, I don't really need to see the pictures, just the "credit" and "justification" fields. But I don't really need exactly this. A quick link somewhere to the helpers log would suffice.
2) some sort of notepad or way to leave myself messages. I used to leave myself private messages on my profile about books that looked interesting, but I think that that function could be similarly or even better performed on the homepage.

Again, I really like the homepage. These are just extra "wouldn't it be neat for me if. . ." thoughts.

Note that it *does* tell you when you have a new comment. But the comments aren't there.

The thumbing. Hmmm. I know what you mean, but I'm also worried about encouraging thumb-watching by members. It can be very dispiriting. It's like the difference between one's vague sense of how unpopular you are in high school versus a person-by-person survey of all students confirming that you're a loser.

> just deleted the threads I didn't want and they repopulated

Yeah. Sorry. Too busy fighting to do some code-loving.

fleela nailed it in #2. I agree with everything.

Tag Watch would be fantastic.

Can we up the options of Popular This Month to 25 or 50? I like phenomena, inclining trends, and declining trends but some of the 'sleepers' will be further back in such a list.

Defaults aren't bad.

>9 Topper:

It's not often I learn a new Yiddishism. Thanks.

I'm not a big fan of "popular this month", but I think new users would be. It gives an overview of the site.

Well, does it? It feels like a false consensus to me. I mean, the Host has only about 600 copies. Sure, they were added in a sudden burst, but that's out of more than a *million* books added this month. It worries me. I would not have been attracted by it. But then I'm more of a snob than most members, I fear. (Anyway, I shouldn't go too far out here. My wife read it and said it wasn't great literature, but it was a page-turner. I've read a few of those.)

On expanding the list, it just gets very messy. It can't be a raw popularity contest—Harry Potter would win every month. But when you compare ratios between months, after the first few you get noise. LT hit some sci-fi blog? Suddenly Douglas Adams is a fast-riser!

Favorites: recommendations, connection news, talk, from the blogs (since I stalk the latter for signs of new features), announcements (much better than the yellow box), my zeitgeist.
Least favorites: hot reviews, popular this month (I care least about these, but I don't care strongly).
Stuff I like: everything on the left. I guess recently added is least functional, but I like that it adds color and images to the page.
Stuff I'm indifferent to: almost everything on the right. I like blog notices, announcements and maybe early reviewers (though I'd probably try to fix that one to make it take up less space). The other stuff I might glance at if it's there, but it would be among the most likely to go after customization.
Order - I'm not sure. I'd move the blog notices under announcements. I'd probably move my zeitgeist higher somewhere. I'd probably move talk to the upper right, where I could see it without scrolling down. I'm sure I'd play around with the modules a lot.
Missing/suggestions for new modules - I like the tag watch idea (pretty much any area of the site that currently has an rss feed is a good contender). A notice for new comments (x new comments) that links to the profile page. Maybe a module for comments themselves. I think the suggestion for a how-to module for new users is a very good one.

What does "popular this month" mean? Saying that it "shows this month's most popular books" doesn't answer the question. Is it the book which has the most copies added in the month? The book that is mentioned most in Talk? The book that has been reviewed the most? I think you should define the term.

Also, what makes a review "hot"?

>10 stephmo:
Thanks! That changes things, doesn't it?

>12 timspalding:
Understood--I was just letting you know what I do when I come here. (But for some of us, thumb-watching is about the only way we know that our library even exists for other people...)

new modules: A way of tracking favorite authors. If there was a new work added it could be either combined or added to the wish list.admittedly this is more of a specialized combiner or obsessive completest thing that most probably wouldn't need.

Let's see, now that the whole profile tab thing is done with and I can concentrate on the new homepage.... *gets overwhelmed by all the shiny* It's so awesome I don't know where to start!!

It's hard to think about what a new user might want to see as default, or their impression of it, because different users are here for different reasons and therefore would want to see different things.

One thing I noticed right away: The "from the blogs" section is at the very bottom. I LOVE the blogs and check them constantly, and I know that may not be a popular action, but I think it would make sense to put the blog section up by the "announcements", since they are similar and about the same things more or less.

Again, this may just be me, but I'd think the Early Reviewers should go before the "On This Day"... especially for newer members who may not know about Early Reviewers. Trying to look at this like a newbie would, it would definitely interest me to see something right away about becoming involved with the site and a chance to get free books.

5: Ohhhhh! A module with the "how-to" videos would be awesome for new users!! And heck, I'd love it too. I love these screencasts that Tim has been making, they are so cool! I've love to see them all together in an easy-to-access module. :)

And, since there is talk about the "Popular this month".... maybe split that into two smaller ones, "popular this month" and "most popular" or somesuch? As you said, the popular this month doesn't really show a representative of the whole, and I think it would be a lot more interesting (especially for new users) to see MOST popular/reviewed/whatever books.

What does "popular this month" mean? Saying that it "shows this month's most popular books" doesn't answer the question. Is it the book which has the most copies added in the month? The book that is mentioned most in Talk? The book that has been reviewed the most? I think you should define the term.

It's currently a ratio between added this month and added before that, with a copies cut-off, so that a book added one this month and never before is no the winner. If I did most copies added this month the winner would always be Harry Potter.

Favorites:

My books recently added, Local events, popular this month (in theory -- none of the actual books shown there interest me, but I like the concept), recent recommendations.

Least favorites:

The Talk excerpt (it's one click away, why bother?), the "Hot reviews" (mediocre reviews of books I have no interest in? By what definition are those "hot"? If those are thumbed, someone's being very generous -- two of them had spelling errors in the snippets provided, and one of those two is a summary that reads like an eighth-grade book report), Early Reviewers (this is going to be interesting to me for one day a month. Other than that it's just discouraging to see how many requests there are. ;) )

Since I will be able to remove all of these I see no reason why they should be globally removed -- I won't have to deal with them.

The rest are in the murky middle -- not a huge fan, but not actively annoying. Overall I think this is a big improvement over the profile, which I only used as (a) a place to see comments and (b) a shortcut to my commonly used tags or to see "members with my books", which is now here. (Other people's profiles are sometimes interesting. Mine, to me? Dullsville.)

What I would like:

Once collections are implemented, a "what I'm reading now" and "my wishlist" section.

A "Tag watch" as fleela describes.

What newbies would want for defaults? Axe the Early Reviewers -- that's only of interest to members, and it's very well-publicized as it is. Or leave the small section and hide the "most requested books" portion -- that way you can remind people of its existence but not inundate them with details. Other than that, I don't know, I think they're pretty good.

Axe the Early Reviewers -- that's only of interest to members, and it's very well-publicized as it is.

It's not! We hit the blog—which newbies don't read—and message users who are already signed up. That's almost it, except for a tiny space on the tools tab!

20> I think it would be a lot more interesting (especially for new users) to see MOST popular/reviewed/whatever books.

I disagree.

First, it's static. Interesting once.

Second, it's already accessible via the Zeitgeist.

Third, it's predictable. The top ten include seven Harry Potters. That's not going to excite anyone.

Could you prevent the titles of the modules from jumping around when moused over?

Favourites:
-absence of yellow language box :)
-popular this month
-early reviewers
-announcements

Least Favourites:
-Local
-Members with your books
-Talk

Basically, I like things that are different and present new information (or even just old information in a new way).

It's interesting to see which books are popular; I'd really like it if the list could be expanded and if we could see archived lists somewhere. If you hit a sci-fi blog and there was an unusual amount of Douglas Adams added one month, that's still interesting. Anyway, whatever algorithm you're using seems to be successful in picking out the books that are especially popular at this particular time rather than just in general.

Similarly, I like the ER module because it's interesting to see at a glance which books are the most popular. I think ER should be way higher on the page by default; people really like free books.

Local is boring because there's nothing there; MWYB is boring because it doesn't change much; Talk is boring because it doesn't highlight any particularly exciting threads, it just repeats what I'm going to be looking at anyway, except in a miniature and less useful way.

In the Hot Reviews section, I'd like the option to show a cover and rating for each book. Also, it currently looks like the first letter of each review has been stricken through.

For recent recommendations, I'd also like the option to show a cover and maybe the average rating for each book. A title generally isn't enough to make me want to pick up a book.

When customization is available, I'll get rid of MWYB and probably Talk; I'll leave Local in the hope that something will show up there someday, but I'll probably move it down. I'll move the ER box higher, probably just under Popular This Month. I might also move the blogs box higher. I think there are too many things in the right-hand column that I'd like to be able to see without scrolling; I hope we can move modules from column to column. I might even like to add a third column, like you had initially proposed. I'm wavering between whether I'd get rid of the box with my name and the search box and a few other generally useless details; I sort of like it, but it takes up way too much valuable space for what it is.

I'd like to see the Talk module improved so that it could highlight threads that are particularly interesting (by letting us restrict it to certain groups, and by showing the most active threads in those groups). And of course there's a certain improvement I'd like to see in Connection News ;).

Axe the Early Reviewers -- that's only of interest to members

I think it's probably one of the strongest incentives for non-members to become members.

Generally I really like the new homepage. I currently use the LT blog as my browser homepage. I forget to check Thingology. I like that the blog post module lists new posts for both. As long as this module is available I might switch my browser homepage to the new LT homepage. If this module were discontinued I'd keep the blog as my browser homepage.

I'm registered for Early Reviewers, so I like the program. Personally I'd like to get rid of the module. Really one only needs to see the list approximately once a month when the new books are announced. It takes a few minutes to check out the list, make requests, and after that one doesn't need to see it again until there are new books available. As a default I'd say it should go at the bottom as it probably updates less frequently than anything else on the right. You could add an announcement at the top when there are new ER books. Blog Post links should go under the announcements as someone else previously suggested.

The "On this Day" module is interesting. I'd like to see it include more info than just births and deaths.

I like the tab gaps. The groupings make sense. I don't care one way or the other about the Profile tab, but if proliferating tabs are a problem I did like the linkable log in name idea. Also a prominently displayed site map might help.

What about a module for saving bookmarks? It could include LT bookmarks and offsite ones as well.

Could you prevent the titles of the modules from jumping around when moused over

What browser/OS are you? (I should write it down.)

Local is boring because there's nothing there

Well, that does depend!

Also, it currently looks like the first letter of each review has been stricken through.

Hmmm! The quote, I think. Browser and OS for that!

26: Totally agree, Zoe: :)

28: I'm getting the strike-through thing too, IE6 Windows XP

I like my recently added books, though I would like to have both text and covers.

I like the announcements, and would hope that new ideas would be listed there. For example: I saw the thread about the home page in talk, but never looked at it, because it meant nothing to me (I had no way to know that you were going to change the site - change should never be a surprise). So you could say we are think of adding/changing/deleting X - check out this thread in talk.

I think the search function should have two stereo buttons that you click on (or just one that is either on or off). One would be Your Library, and the other would be LT, so you could use it to search either place.

I like those being at the top.

I like the Popular this Month, and am glad that it isn't going to just be Harry Potter et al. It says 'this month', do you really mean we will have to look at the same list for a month ? Should it be by week or by day ?

I like the recently added section by others.

Both are ways to see new books, that I might not see.

I like recommendations, but want authors.

On Connection news how often will it update ? I don't want to look at the same thing forever, but I don't want to be overwhelmed with 50 library stuff (you should make this default to not showing unless added in editing).

The hot reviews I have a problem with. First I don't just want to get thumbed reviews. I also don't want to see the same ones for that long (how often will they be updated ?).

Mostly though I am not interested in reviews about books that I don't have, or am not interested in. It would seem that you could shrink each entry to 3-4 lines with a click for more, and then get more reviews in. I also don't want multiple reviews on the same book that I don't care about. There are 3 on my page for the Richest Season. There are too many words in that section (I have it set to short) so I skip it. It should have fewer words that make you want to click on the more link (eventually people will write their reviews to open with the killer stuff).

Local Events is now pretty much empty for me so it is wasted space if there are no events in my area. It should list favorite venues, and possibly interesting events, or events from favorite venues. If you do it by location, there will too much for me. For those with not a lot of venue options who want location displayed, maybe a toggle from favorite to local so each person can set it their way.

On this day is wasted space. The events are old and obscure. Put something in there that has to do with book news that is happening now. Again it needs to update pretty frequently.

Early Reviews and Authors is fine, though the authors should update frequently, and not just be obscure or LT authors.

The zeitgeist is fine, and has the right idea (says it updates every 5 minutes).

Don't care about MWYB.

For a newbie I think you should have a Newbie module that has help, and links to how to and, vids and wiki, and examples of how to do things. If there is one area that LT is deficient it is in the help/how to.

I would also add a section to see/reply to your new comments.

And then I guess I wonder why the homepage is not viewable by others ? i would say open it up, or allow people to say what sections are public and what are private.

Overall I think if you are going to have a homepage with a lot of canned stuff, it needs to change pretty much every day (or couple of hours) or there will be no reason to come to it.

Oh, I'm currently using IE 6/XP. I should have realized that everything can usually be blamed on IE, but I was led astray by the jumpiness that always exists in Tags. I'm not sure why FF decided it won't open today.

Local is boring because there's nothing there

Well, that does depend!

Well, yes, but Toronto's a pretty big city... if there are no events here, I'd imagine that most of the Local modules are looking pretty barren.

I think it's very lumpy. The BookSense feed helps. I'm not sure if BookSense extends to Canada.

T

The default for covers in connections was on, but the default in the editor was off. That is, doing nothing but saving changed the setting. Only the very first time, I imagine.

It does extend to Canada, but barely. When I put in my postal code on their site and search for bookstores, I only find five--none of them in Toronto, and at least two of them five hours away.

Well, for what it's worth, Indigo.ca refused my requests for an events feed. Blame Canada.

what I like:
Recently added (my books)
Talk (very handy, this direct link to groups)
Members with your books (which we had before)

Otherwise I don't really care about any of the other things; there are too many features I'm not going to look into.

Keep it simple.

I don't understand. You offered to advertise their events for them and they refused?

Right. Most booksellers and publishers don't have their data in exportable formats. I suspect they do it all by hand.

moved from old thread after seeing this new one

After deciding that I really liked the new homepage (contrary to what I believed of the whole homepage idea), I went away for a few hours, and I returned to more changes (and a couple hundred posts on the subject). I now like it even better! The tabs have moved to logical places. The content is interesting (where I believed that it might be a waste of time and space) and load times have been fixed (not to mention some of the content that was going haywire!)

I must once again thank Tim and the staff of LT. I'm glad that I wasn't given sole (or any) responsibility to decide whether the homepage would live or die, because I'm afraid I would have killed it off!

I'm humble enough to admit my mistakes. It just seemed like the whole idea was counterintuitive to the way I use LT. Sorry for my error in judgement!

I sure am finding myself apologizing a lot lately! :(

38. Maybe they see you as competition; they (Chapters/Indigo) seem to have social cataloguing, member recs, etc.

Favorites: Recently Added, Zeitgeist, Announcements, Recently Added by Other Members, Early Reviewers
Least Favorite: Hot Reviews, On This Day, LibraryThing Authors, Popular this Month, Recommendations

I like a cleaner look, so I don't really care for recent Talk topics or covers for recent Connections being displayed. I do use both of those features but I prefer to decide when to use them and would rather not be distracted by having them display.

I do agree with others though that as long as I can customize the page I'm okay with what's there. You've added a lot of interesting things--something for everyone.

The order seems pretty logical, although I'd probably move Zeitgeist up.

It makes sense to have MWYB on the page (especially for new users), but to be honest I use Favorite Libraries more. Although I may share a lot of books with someone, his or her overall library may not be of interest to me. I tend to use MWYB as a first look but only go back to those libraries I've added as favorites. Maybe rather than displaying them all we could have a shorter list with a "show more" link?

I skimmed through the other thread, and although I know you already decided to put the My Profile tab back (thank you), I've been pondering your request to understand why some people might prefer using My Profile. I think comparing the two pages is an apples and oranges issue because one is a public face and one is a private face. When I'm looking at other people's profiles, for instance, I like bouncing back to my own profile and having it appear in the same way as the other profiles I've been viewing. There may be other days when I only look at Your Home, but I like having the option and having them both at the top level as tabs. Maybe a good analogy is Amazon. I have a wishlist, but I wouldn't want to enter the site from my wishlist every time I go there. Sometimes I'm there checking references for an editing project or shopping for someone else and I don't use my wishlist at all.

>rsterling

Much to be said there. It appears not to have availed them much.

It seems I'm coming to this discussion very late, and haven't read all the posts. So I guess these questions might already have been answered. I apologize in advance if this is old news for everyone.

First, I'm wondering what makes the reviews "hot"? Frankly, if this is going to be my main page, I really don't want to see a lot of random reviews of books I might have no interest in, by people I don't know.

Also, I'm not very interested in seeing my "recently added" books - I know what books I've recently added.

Exactly what is the "connection news"? I was under the impression that I didn't have any connections. Are these just people with the same books I have? I really don't see why that feature has to take up quite so much space.

And probably my least favorite new thing is "popular this month" – not something I'm ever likely to make use of, so it's just taking up space, really.

Sorry – I know this must sound annoyingly negative, but this was sort of a shock.

I do like some things. Having the section with all the recent threads from my groups is OK. And the "Local Events" is interesting, although I can get the same thing for my area by looking at the Washington Post Book World once a week.

Personally, I'd like the new page a whole lot better if some of these new features were made optional, similar to some of the other "networking" sites.

I would like to have more filter options in the different areas. For example, to only see the local events for my favorites or to only get reviews for books that are on my recomendation lists...filters that make everything more personal to me.

Also, the type is awfully small and there is a lot of info packed onto it. I would probably remove quite a few items but because the type is so small I also might just default back to relying on the profile too.

On a side note...have you thought about a 'tip of the day or week' for us newbies. It could be a way to draw us into additional features of LT as we gain experience...like the Early Reviewers. Something that we could turn off once we get the lay of the land?

This is a fantastic feature. I love how it shows all the interesting things (like recommendations, connections and all the other stuff) on the one page. I've already tweaked the defaults and can't wait until you've activated the ability to change the default order.

There aren't any sections that I would choose not to display.

But I like that I can change HOW MUCH of each section displays (e.g. I have chosen to have only one Review display and have trimmed the Popular, Recently Added and Connections to show 4-6 items not the default amount.)

Things I'd like to move higher up the page:
* Right Column - Early Reviewers,
* Left Column - Zeitgeist, Members with your books

Things I'd like to move down the page:
* Right Column - Recently added by other members, Featured authors
* Left Column - Local Events, Talk

Also, it would be useful to have the option to display on my Home page some of the modules that are currently on the Profile page.

For example, I would find it really useful to see the following on my Home page:
* Groups - so I can jump directly to that group's talk page.
* Favourite Authors - so I can easily review and modify the list and use it to navigate to the author pages.
* Favorite bookstores - again so I can easily review the list and navigate to the pages.
* Member Connections - I'd like a summary of who I am connected to, similar to that on the Profile page - not just the connection news.

Again, Well done. I think this is a positive change to LibraryThing. As always, you listen to your users and are very quick to respond to feedback - and your dedication to making LibraryThing the best it can be shows. Thanks :)

I like the Recently Added and Zeitgeist. I also like the On This Day feature--just a little taste of history.

I don't personally care about Connection News, Hot Reviews, or Popular This Month.

I think a prominently placed help feature and/or link to the Wiki would be most helpful for both new and regular users.

And, well, I'd like to say that I appreciate that we can all weigh in on these features.

Maybe they see you as competition; they (Chapters/Indigo) seem to have social cataloguing, member recs, etc.

"Seem" is probably the key word here; as far as I can tell, their social cataloguing is completely useless.

Back on topic, it would be nice if we could have more general modules with much more customization. So, for example, there could be a "Reviews" module that we could set to show reviews of books in our catalogue, or reviews of books with a certain tag, or reviews with a certain number of thumbs, or reviews by a few particular people, or whatever filtering we wanted.

>44 CarolO: I love the idea of a tip of the day/week

47: "there could be a "Reviews" module that we could set to show reviews of books in our catalogue, or reviews of books with a certain tag, or reviews with a certain number of thumbs, or reviews by a few particular people, or whatever filtering we wanted."
This and some of the other customization options for reviews mentioned above could be good; I'd be much more interested in seeing bits of reviews if they were connected somehow to my books, my recommendations, my tags, etc.

What I like: All the features on the left hand side

What I don't care about (can't say I DISlike them, just don't care about the info in them): Hot Reviews, random Recently Added Books by Others that I have no connection to, Popular This Month. On This Day is a kind of cool idea, but would be more interesting if it had information beside births and deaths. Maybe something like "18xx: first installment of Sherlock Holmes appears in The Strand Magazine" or "19XX: Ernest Hemingway injured while running with the bulls at Pamplona." As far as I'm concerned, it is basically interesting trivia no matter what it contains and should be somewhere down at the bottom, while I think the From the Blogs should move up top close to the announcements.

What I would love to see: I think fleela's idea of a tagwatch is great, and I'd also love to see a wish list feature. My homepage would be the perfect place for my wish list to pop up.

#50: Great idea about the wish list. I'd love to see a wish list or to-be-read feature on the home page.

The new home page is a nice addition.

Favorites

Zeitgeist
Recently added (mine)
Members with your books

Least favorites

Popular this month
Recent Recommendations
Hot Reviews
Connection news
Recently added by other members
Local Events

What would you get rid of?

Popular this month
Recent Recommendations
Hot reviews
Recently added by other members
Connection news

What order would you put them in?

-Left side-

Profile
Zeitgeist
Recently added (mine)
Talk (forums)
Members with your books

-Right Side-

Announcements
From the Blogs
On this Day
Featured Authors
Early Reviewers
Local Events

If you can imagine how others see it, particularly first-time users, what do you think they'd want for defaults?

Not sure. Maybe a default set-up page when the home page is first accessed. Where they are initially presented with a list of the options/areas with a description and screen shots next to each and they pick what things they want or don't want.

What modules are missing? What could we add?

Talk (Forums). For the "Your groups," the ability to select (from a check list) just the ones I want to follow from all the groups I belong.

Revised search box (with check boxes so you can search your library (default option) and/or the rest of LT)

Section of "Favorite books" or "My list of books" where you could select a certain number of books from your LT catalog and have them link listed for easy reference (like the Recently added section with or without cover option and/or with other book info). Books in your library catalog you often refer to rather than having to search via tags, author, or something else.


On this Day. A choice of things. There are many more things than when an author was born or died and not all book related. This could even be opened up to all LTrs to add info/events/historical facts/and other trivia, like the common knowledge section. Though making it customizable to filter out or list just those categories or events you are interested in would be good. The sectiton name might need to changed though.

Got a bit of a shock when I opened up LT at work today. For a moment I thought I had gone to the wrong site!

I started navigating through the home page, checking out all the information available and I have to say that...I like it! I like it very much.

Having read the talk posts on the change, I can see that many people aren't quite as happy with it as I am, but I think the home page will be a great boon for new members and for members who want to get more out of LT but aren't necessarily sure how to do it.

The main advantage is that it gives an overview of many of the features on LT. Those of us who have been here for a while and are used to the set-up may not remember how confusing LT can be for a first-timer, and also how confusing it can be for those among us who are not generally computer savvy. Anything which gives people a central place to access the features from is a good idea to my mind.

As for what the defaults should be, I think the current set-up is not too bad. On the left-hand side, starting with the profile summary is good, as well as the recently added books field. If anything, I think the Local Events section should be moved further up. I realise it isn't very full for some people, but it does demonstrate to new members that you can use it to find book-related events, something which is not immediately obvious from the "Local" tab unless you click on it, and many people don't go through a new site and click on every tab. If it's not immediately obvious, then it doesn't get used by the majority of first-timers.

On the right-hand side, the first 2 sections (announcements and plog posts) are both useful; most of the others are potentially interesting but don't really serve a necessary purpose. I think they could be in any order at all, provided the first two remain where they are.

As has been mentioned earlier, a couple of new-user friendly modules would be useful - especially anything that linked through to help/how-to and the earlier suggestion of Tip For The Day. Tip of the Day could be useful even to long-term users. There's always something new to discover on LT. If these do get produced, they should be on the right-hand side of the home page, below announcements and the blog posts.

I look forward to the customisable options, and being able to move modules around as I want. I agree with what some earlier users have said about making the reviews module customisable. As it is, it's not very useful to me, but if I were able to see reviews of books in my library, or books by my favourite authors, or books recently added by my connections, or books on my wish list (!) it would have a lot more use and connection to me.

Can't wait for the finalisation of this and what looks like the long downhill ride towards collections (please tell me we're over the hill and finally coasting towards the Collections finish line!)

I second (or third) the help feature, a tag watch, and a way to filter the reviews, etc. (like what _Zoe_ wrote). I look forward to being able to customize the modules more. Will we be able to rearrange them on the page, so what we feel is most important can be at the top? That'd be cool.

I love everything. Thank you. Bringing new things to the attention of users sua sponte is important--I never realised how much.

Small suggestion on Comments:

1. Private comments and invites: to Home page only.
2. Public comments: to Home page and profile both.

I remain your humble etc. etc.

Messpots

Hmm. I agree that many of the bits are useful, but it does make LT look much more like some naff teenage gossip site - whatever happened to minimalist design? The simplicity of the old home page was one of the things that attracted me to LT in the first place. But other people seem to like it, and I suppose it will still be possible to go straight to Talk or Profile.

Little things:
- "Hot" is a very American adjective - it probably needs translating into international English ("popular", "exciting", ...?)
- It's irritating to get recommendations without author names, particularly when the first one in the list is "Collected poems".

In general, I like the left side. I would move "Your Zeitgeist" up to the top and "Local Events" down to the bottom, but it's not a big deal, just my relative weighting of them.

I'd get rid of "Recently Added"...I know what I've added.

I also am not a huge fan of "Connection news" because it feels like spam...someone adds a ton of stuff and I have to look at it...but I can see that it would be useful at times.

The right side isn't as interesting to me. I don't really care about "Hot Reviews", "Early Reviewers", "Recently Added by Other Members" and "Featured Authors".

Others have hit on some things I would really like above: Tag Watch and Tip of the Day (I'm a fairly new user).

Even though I've only been using this site a couple of months, there's one thing I've found myself wanting quite a bit--some indication of normalization for the ratings in a similar library right with the numbers of books shared. In other words, a synopsis of their "Average Rating" histogram so I can tell: a) if they've bothered to rate books, b) how I should interpret their ratings compared to mine. Many of the libraries with similar books have no ratings, making them somewhat useless for me as source of information.

Really very very impressed with this. Much more than I thought I would be when this first came up.

It looks good. Its useful and intuitive.

Favourites so far: Hot reviews, Zeitgeist and reccomendations

Least: on this day, lightboxes... can't move them, don't work in less than full windows, not sure they're actually updating?

Favorites so far: Your Zeitgeist; Talk; Recent Recommendations; Popular This Month

Least favorites: On This Day; Hot Reviews

And I love the idea of Tag Watch.

Could we have the option to see more of our recently added books up top? Maybe 20-25?

Other than that, I'm loving everything so far. Great work!

On the Early Reviewer Module, I just noticed the link to "Become an Early Reviewer..."

I already am. =)

Would there be a way to flip that to "You've Been An Early Review Member Since mm/yyyy"? Or (even crazier) - "click here to see the books you've currently requested?"

Including the current date closing for ER would be nice too - unless we truly are going to the all-ER-all-the-time scenario that Abby had talked about (in which case, maybe my crazier idea would be a link that shows the books you've requested and their individual closing dates).

Totally, totally nutty - the ER module reminds you which books you owe reviews for?

Or even better - shows you when a review is coming close to docking your ability to receive future entries? With a link so that you can report to Abby, "Hey, I never got my book, please don't dock me!"

ETA - once upon a time a million years ago, there was discussion about showing the books that were used to recommend an ER book one got after the request period - that might be another fun piece of trivia in the ER module (Books you've received - with ER data on a new page about what was considered a similar book by the publisher and whatnot).

ETA - Obviously if I'm not an Early Reviewer Member, that link should always be there reminding me I haven't joined the program! (Until future developments allow users to banish the module should they not want to be reminded.)

liking the layout very much as it is. a couple of (probably impractical) additions I'd like:

- the ability to say 'No thanks!' to recommendations from my homepage.
- being able to set the 'Early Reviewers' panel to only display books available to my region

and as this homepage is for me only I'd love to be able to add the 'Recently added' panel (with covers) to my profile where visitors could see it.

Thanks Tim (and everyone else involved) for all your efforts!

So, I finally made it through all the posts in the old thread and this thread. However, I have to admit I employed some skimming in reading this one.

First, My favorites and why:

Recently added: I actually didn't think I would care about this, but I realized that it's an easy way to make sure my recently added books have the right covers. Sometimes I forget to fix them as I'm adding.

Once collections comes to fruition, I'd also like a "recently read" so I can easily rate, review, and add/change my tags.

Recommendations: My only complaint here is that I'd like to be able to see authors and covers as well. Authors are most important. Covers mostly because they're pretty and less as another opportunity for recognition. "Hey, I saw that book somewhere..."

Hot Reviews: These seem to be generally unpopular, but I like them which is not surprising since I was among those who suggested them. Yes, some aren't going to be that great, but some are really well written and deserve recognition.

Like this one on my page now:
"The refined cadence of "Lemony Snicket's" telling of the misfortunes of the Baudelaire children pulls the Series of Unfortunate Events above the mass of quaint children's tales by author's who end up talking down to kids because they assume that they're deaf to wit and prose more sophisticated than picture book captions."

I understand that some people don't want to "read reviews about books I'm never going to read." But how do these people find books to read in the first place, then?

I think the problem here might be that some of the reviews showing up are of books they've already made their minds up about. Is there a way to address this so that the feature can help introduce them to books and reviews they do want to read?

Announcements/Blogs:
My only complaint is that I think blogs should be right under announcements. If there is an announcement first I want to see what it is. Then I go to the blog post to read more. Then to talk to discuss it.

Popular this Month:
I think it's interesting if not really functional.

______________________________________

Features I'm unsure about:

Local: This is almost useless for me. I live in a small college town that doesn't have that many literary events. And I'm pretty much the only user in my area adding them so I'm going to know about them. However, the emptiness made me seek out events to add and maybe that's a good thing.

Connection News: I've always felt like this has potential, but I can't seem to find libraries/users to make me care about it.

Early Reviewers: I see the point and I think it's a good thing for the ER program, but I feel like it could be more useful than it is.

Could we ever come to a point where it can tell me what books I've requested and/or what books I've received and need to review?

Talk: Potentially useful, but I'm going to go look at Talk anyway.

______________________________

Features I'll likely delete when given a chance:

On this day: God, I couldn't possibly care less. Common Knowledge is a rich, rich feature and this is the best way we could come up with to use it? What about recently added awards? That seems more useful/interesting.

Recently added to LT: This is a common feature on sites I know, but what am I supposed to do with it? I think someone suggested featuring users who have recently added books I own. That could be interesting.

Featured authors: Meh. Doesn't tell me enough to make it interesting.

Members with your books: What the hell? What is this god-awful, ugly block of static text doing here? Back, back, back to my profile I say!

____________________________________

Order of things:
The only difference I'm really interested in seeing is the blogs being moved under announcements.

I don't care for the author feature, but if you're going to "feature" them, I agree that it seems weird to have them at the bottom.

I think "recently added to LT" could be demoted to below ER, too.

My thoughts (and, no, I just got here and haven't read the over 300 previous messages on two separate threads):

Congratulations, Tim and Chris, on the new Home Page! It was a long time coming, but well worth the wait. It is indeed an awesome feat that you've accomplished. I cannot even imagine how that page is programmed as it is so very complicated.

I love having such a user-friendly interface on which to begin my daily LT travels. The Home Page is a lot more welcoming than my simply opening Talk and wandering about - as I've always done previously. I think that the fact that the Home Page is so dynamic will bode well for LT. That page should also open up new worlds to casual LT users. I'm also glad to see that authors get some prominence there - finally!!

On the Talk section, I'd like to see the option of Your Starred. In that way, I could use the home page to jump to the threads in which I'm most interested regardless of group.

Custom Covers - Is something wrong here? It gives me a number of 92. I never posted any custom covers. Or does that mean the number of custom covers I chose to use in my library? (answered elsewhere)

I love that there's an announcement spot right on top. Warning: I'm going to be looking forward to see this changing frequently!!

I love Popular This Month. Very cool feature! How do you choose which books are entered there? (answered elsewhere)

I like that LT Local has prominence. I think that we should encourage more LT members to post their local events. The initial frenzy to fill those pages with interesting events has died down, and now there is really a dearth of listings. :(

I like Hot Reviews as well. How do you choose them? (answered elsewhere)

All in all, a great piece of work, Tim and Chris! Thank you so much!!

On the whole I like it. Agree with others who have already suggested wiki module/note pad, tip of the day (useful for 'older' members like me too as I often forget just what is available). I particularly like being able to see if there are new blogs and new items in my watched talk groups without clicking on those pages just to see (and similarly would like any new comments on my profile to be flagged up here even if I then need to go to my profile page to read them) - this may already be included but nobody's sent me any comments recently!

I found myself wanting to click on the recommendations to get rid of ones I wasn't definitely wasn't interested in without going to the recommendations page (liable to be too much of a displacement activity when I should be working!) so would support the 'No thanks' suggestion in 62 if this was possible.

I really like the new home page, even though there's no real "must have" among the modules. The only one I'll be getting rid of as soon as that's possible is Early Reviewers, which just isn't useful or interesting to me.

Some comments/suggestions:

* As others mentioned, the Recent Recommendations would be much more useful, if they weren't just a list of titles. At least add the author, maybe with the option to also display cover thumbs, reason for recommendation, and/or the "No thanks" link.

* Both the "edit" and the "info" icons link to the same lightbox. I found that rather confusing.

* There's some inconsistency between modules: Popular this Month and Connection News display title and author as seperate links, while in Recently Added and Hot Reviews the "title by author" phrase is a single link to the work page.

* Clicking on one of the "All topics | Your groups | Your posts" options in the talk module will refresh the display, but it takes a while, and during the wait there's no indication that something is happening.

Despite that long treatise, I realize I've forgotten to suggest some as yet unseen features I'd like to see added. Some have already been suggested.

Tip of the day/Did you know?: I'm not sure how the "tips" would be populated. User submitted? Some poor LT staff member forced to think up every strange thing you can do on LT? Regardless, this would probably be useful to both new and old members. LT is so feature rich you're always going to miss something. Potential ideas: tagmashes, getting richer data from LoC, the "more" link when adding books.

Fleela's tagwatch: This probably shouldn't be a default. (What tag would you set as default anyway?) However, for us "power users" I can see a lot of potential in this. There are a few tags I can think of off the top of my head that I have enough interest in and the pool of potential books is small enough that I would benefit from this.

I see dead people's books: This has got to be one of LT's most unique features. It may not draw as many users as ER does, but I think it's important. Maybe just a box that lists newly completed/started libraries.

Stalking the powers that be: I don't know how the LT staff would feel about this, but how about some sort of feature that keeps track of what the staff is up to? Again, not a good candidate for a default, but it'd be nice to have some way of keeping track of when Tim is soliciting ideas for a new feature or what's new in Chris's changelog.

And I think that's enough LT daydreaming for today.

More thoughts:

In Your Zeitgeist, CK facts, Venues, Events, and Venue Pics currently point just to CK in general and to LT Local in General. Should these point us to more personalized information about the information we've added to CK and Local? (from message 49 of previous thread)

I'd say definitely!

I'd like to see The Featured Authors moved up and Recently Added by Other Members moved way down.

I'd like a *tiny* link to my wiki page. Most people who use LT probably don't even know they have a wiki page! I'm not particularly interested in a wiki module. I think it would come out fairly unattractive. However, the wiki feature is a great (but underappreciated and underutilized) part of LT.

I'd like to see Talk moved up, perhaps under Recommendations.

Another thing that might be interesting is a list of members who have recently read a book in my library. That is, once the "currently reading" and "recently read" are functional.

You may consider adding the "Also on" section to the home page. It seems like a natural spot for links to other social sites and blogs, especially for people who won't be visiting their profile a lot.

I like "Recently added by other rmembers" and "From the blogs". The rest is just filler. The only one I actively dislike is "Popular this month", I don't need reminding of the gulf between me and fellow humans. :)

Announcements: The right thing in the right place

Blogs: Okay, but I'd move it to the bottom of the page

Popular this month: Yes! I want to see what's coming out and being picked up. I'd expand it if I could. I'd appreciate Popular books this month you might read, sort of a cross between Recommendations and Popular this month, since I know how desperate Tim is to find how to use all that spare computing power.

Recently Added by Other Members: My initial response is I don't care. My second response is hmm. My tertiary response is, no, I really don't care.

Hot Reviews: really don't care. No indecision here, I just want to see it go away. (Yes, I know we'll have that option)

Early Reviewers: I don't need to see a tiny subset of the ER books, especially not the most requested. I don't think this is just me; I have a hard time seeing this as being useful to anyone.

On this day: It's one of those obligatory things that I expect to be there, but don't actually think I'll pay attention to.

Featured Authors: eh. _My_ Featured Authors would go over better, but why do I care about two random authors, LibraryThingambrians or not?

Recently added: good; could be expanded to include names underneath, instead of just covers

Recent recommendations: Eh. Like ER, it gives an arbitrary tiny subset of a large collection of information.

Connection news: interesting. I don't include the noise of most similar libraries, but YMMV.

Local events: interesting, but I'm going to need to have it apply to my favorites, or virtually move into Cambridge. (Or really move into Cambridge, but that's _expensive_)

Talk: again, eh. I'll just go to the talk page...which is practically my default page for LibraryThing anyway

Your Zeitgeist: It's nice to have somewhere, but it's static. It'll go down with on this day.

Members with your books: Obligatory, interesting and useful.

My exact reaction upon opening Librarything today: "Ah, ah, no, why?"

I like the old home page; it was simple, uncluttered, and loaded quickly. The site is navigated easily enough that I don't need everything collected together on the home page. The new page is just too---facebook newsfeed-ish.

If this is going to stay, which I will go ahead and assume is the case, I would like having the option to select which boxes I want to see and remove those that I really don't care about. A good example of a site that does this is http://myespn.go.com/

>72 collsers: In the very first page in this thread, in about 12 places in the first post and in the blog on the new feature (which is linked through your new home page both in blogs and announcements), they've said this:

First, to repeat we will be giving members the ability to remove pieces entirely.

I like the new home page, so long as we can keep our profile page as well.

I especially like the section about the blog, I tend to forget to check it, but this way I can see instantly if there is something there I want to check out. I also liked the zeitgeist and those details, because again, I just don't think to go there.

I'm not in need of the talk section, I only visit my own groups and I go to them from their home page, but I think I'm probably in the minority there, so it doesn't bother me.

All in all, though it's not very helpful, I like the whole thing.

I like the Hot Reviews (though I'd still like to know what makes them "hot"). Here I am in disagreement with those who want to see reviews only for their own books, as I find that looking at reviews of books I don't own (or haven't read) is one of the ways I find what I want to read next.

I like the Announcements and "From the Blog", particularly the latter. This way, I can see at once if there is something new and that saves me going to the blog and seeing what I saw a couple of days ago.

Not so fond of "Recently Added by Other Members" or "Most popular" or "Early Reviewers".

I think "On this date" is kind of fun, and I really like Featured Authors and hope that it will update regularly. I also like having local events here.*

Not being a stats junkie, I can live without "Your Zeitgeist", and I have Talk bookmarked, or access it via the tab**, so I don't need that.

* I'm curious as to why one event has a second, separate blurb to the right of the listing. See http://www.librarything.com/home/lilithcat (the June 25th event at Quimby's)

** It's going to take me awhile, I think, to actually click on the "Talk" tab instead of the "Search" tab! All this moving things around confuses an old broad like me.

The new Home Page is very cool, and I personally wouldn't get rid of anything, as it gives me a chance to see some information I probably wouldn't have come across on my own. It might be nice to rearrange some stuff, but it would be great if a few of these things could be added to our Profile page for others to be able to see.
Could we see the author's names in the Recommendations area rather than just the titles? It would also be nice if we could have an extra column, where we could personalize the Recommendations by setting that column to remember which Tags we would like to see recommendations on.
Thanks again!

>75 lilithcat: I think the upcoming event gets a special feature to the right. Is the 25th date the soonest event?

lilithcat: Hot reviews are reviews that have been thumbed in the past day, sorted by most thumbs. Also, we can't see your home page—they are "private" so we can't follow your link.

Slightly different point: the LT staff are probably already aware, but the new homepages aren't completely translatable yet on the other language sites. (I'm using the French page as a reference.) Some parts are highlighted, but don't seem to be available to change on the translate page (e.g. profile tab, the month in "member since"). Other things that are highlighted and have been translated aren't being reflected yet (is the delay because the translations need more cheers/compliments?). And then there are some things in English that aren't highlighted or possible to translate: in the blue box, "Public catalog•Lifetime member•Member since".
(Also, the text in the light boxes doesn't seem to be translatable.)

RE: modules we could add...

How about a quote or free form notes section?

I really like the new home page!

as regards the features on it, I think I use librarything in a fairly limited way, so personally I appreciate having all that info and all those options put before me as more ways of using the site. I can see how others might not, however, and think the forthcoming option to customise the page is a great idea.

I haven't explored the things on the page enough to say which features I'd keep, remove or move around. but I'd like to second fleela's suggestion of a TagWatch, and also jmnlman's idea of tracking favourite authors.

I agree with the points made about recommendations - that is, including author names (mine certainly look pretty cryptic as is), and being able to dismiss them right from the home page.

the 'on this day' feature would be more useful, IMO, if it had a slightly different format, showing only the author's name and whatever applies to them for that day, with the name linking to more info about them. but I suppose while that would probably incite me to click for more info, it might irritate others... I definitely agree with the suggestion of including more trivia, not just births and deaths. I doubt it's a feature I'd miss if it weren't there, but if it were sufficiently entertaining it would be another way of discovering new books and authors.

anyway, good work, thanks for the improvement to the site!

Favorites and least favorites?
favorites:
Talk, Recently Added (although I didn't think I'd want it), and Recommendations on the left. Hot Reviews, From The Blogs, and Featured Authors on the right (and Announcements is important, but I think that goes without saying.)
least favorites:
although I like the idea of MWYB, the format's always been too off-putting for me to use it. Local isn't much use to me because it's radius-based, not favorites based, which is inconvenient in a big city with decent public transportation. On This Day is cute, but probably not something I'll ever make use of, and to me, Popular This Month and Recently Added by Others are sort of redundant.

What would you get rid of, and what order would you put them in?
Right now, the only reason I'd get rid of something is if I had a different module I was adding. I don't think the page is too big (yet), and I like discovering random bits of news and knowledge, so even the 'useless' modules are kind of cool. I'd probably remove either Recently Added or Popular this Month, though.
My ideal order would be something like:
Left Right
Recently added Announcements
Recent recommendations From the blogs
Connection news Featured Authors
Talk (Forums) Hot Reviews
Local events Popular this Month
Your Zeitgeist On this day
Members with your books Recently Added by Others
(if it were reformatted) (Maybe)
Early Reviewers

If you can imagine how other see it, particularly first-time users, what do you think they'd want for defaults?
See above. I don't think the left-hand column needs much change, but I feel like good features of the right-hand column are getting lost (especially Featured Authors and Hot Reviews, which might help get more people reviewing.)
What modules are missing? What could we add?
#11 Oooh. I really want a notepad application. Some way to let myself know where I left of cataloging last time, or which thread I really wanted to check back in on.
#55 I agree with Messpots on redirecting private comments to the homepage, or at least being able to see comments from the homepage.
#61 Agreed. Please make the Early Reviewers module useful for people who are already Early Reviewers, as well as newbies.

I'm also going to jump on the bandwagon and ask for a Tagwatch module, or (and?) a "A Books With Your Tags" module. An optional module with the screencasts could be a good intro, if you're going to keep making them (someone already suggested that in the other thread.) A module that watches Wikis, Authors, Works, or Tags for edits, combinations and separations would be swell. And of course Collections will bring a whole new set of possibilities.

edited to try to clean up the formatting, and to add a suggestion

I just want to drop in and say that, unfortunately, I have to work on something else today, and probably Monday and Tuesday. Chris will probably be in tonight and he's going to be working full time on this Monday and Tuesday.

Add me to the camp of people who wouldn't have considered this an especially useful feature if asked but are pleasantly surprised by its appearance.

* Most Favorite:
From the Blogs : A quick way to check whether I've read the posts without having to go to the Blog page(s). Dates would be helpful.
Recent Recommendations : Everything there looks interesting, and it's a useful (if dangerous) way to spot check at a glance books that I was not aware of. I rarely go to the Recommendations page because it's too much at once.
Connection News : Similar, and it will be better once I explicitly make connections beyond the default. I'd prefer to see the format changed so it doesn't take up so much space (e.g. for the sake of consistency, make it like Recently Added by Other Members).
Local Events : I live in a big enough city that there are events, but I tend not to explicitly check so it's nice to have them presented to me.
Popular this Month : I like the idea, though I realize the criteria for inclusion might need refinement. Very little on this list is of direct interest to me, but I like expanding my horizons a bit by seeing what interests others.
On this Day : A systematic way to cycle through the scope of LT.

* Least Favorite:
Header : Takes up a chunk of space, and navigates to the same places as the tabs. Forces me to scroll down to sections I'd rather see.
Recently Added : I'm still entering my base library, haven't yet gotten around to newly acquired books, and I tend to enter in organized clusters, so this section isn't telling me anything useful and is just arbitrary clutter.
Recently Added by Other Members : Too fleeting, and too little of interest to me.
Hot Reviews : Nothing here of interest to me, and it occupies too much space.

* Neutral:
Talk : I'd just as soon go directly to the Talk page. But, I could see filtering this section for items of particular interest, and not filtering the main page at all.
Zeitgeist : The items I care about can be found elsewhere. But, it's not occupying much space and it's not bothering me, and maybe as I make more use of LT I'll become interested in the numbers.
Members With Your Books : I like this section a lot, but (without putting much thought into the issue) I prefer it on the Profile page and don't want identical information in two places. But, at the bottom of the Home page it's not bothering me.
Early Reviewers : I haven't been paying much attention to early reviewers, so I don't know whether this is providing information that I'd wish to see frequently. But, its inclusion on the home page has brought it to my attention.
Featured Authors : Don't care, or don't think I do. But it's not annoying and may be another way to expand my horizons.

* Order:
The current order makes sense, and I'd probably want to keep it exactly as is if I wanted all of the sections. When I can remove the sections that I don't want, I doubt that I'll rearrange.

Addendum to earlier feedback: I like "from the blogs," since I check them frequently, but I think that it could probably be made to take up less space, if need be. I would think we probably only need the last 3 posts in each blog, rather than the last 6, since blog posts aren't that frequent. But this is only if you need to save some space there. Alternatively, you could make this editable as well, so that members could set the number of post titles / lines to show in this module.

> 77

No, it's not the soonest event, by a long shot. There are seven events listed before that one. I don't see why that one gets a special feature and the others don't, though I'm expect there is some reason for it. I'd just like to know what that reason is!

> 37

No, blame IndigoChapters. Don't judge the whole country by one book chain. But I do think they made a mistake by saying no.

Hey, I come back after a week, and everything is upside down!
Ooookay, I have to take a look at this... :-)
I never wanted to know how many Talk posts I made... - now it is there for me to see! *brrr*

Connection news and talk/group fields are great! How about adding some functionality to the "currently reading" selection when you edit a book and populate a field with those?

Well, I like what I see on the right hand side (the site links), but can't say anything about the stuff on the left (my links). That part won't load. They load fine when I'm on my profile page (Members with your books for example), but never get loaded on my Home page.

I'm using Mac OS X 10.4 on an iMac Dual Core Processor with Safari browser. The Home page isn't PC-centric, is it?

FWIW (since we're not on this topic yet), I think much of what is on the right-hand side would be very good for the not-signed-in-yet homepage (esp. for new visitors to the site, and perhaps in smaller versions of the modules): featured authors, recently added, popular this month, ER, and also, from the left-hand column, Local events, esp. if it could be made to feature a sampling events from more than one location, or else cycle between different locations from day to day - to give not-yet-members a flavor of the feature.

I think these dynamic modules would be good in addition to some of the static content already the non-signed-in homepage, since the currently featured users, books, tags, etc. give you an idea of the range of users and books on LT.

> 90

The Home page isn't PC-centric, is it?

Shouldn't be. I'm using Mac OS X 10.4.11 on an iMac Intel Core 2 Duo with Safari, and have no problem.

My last 5 most recently added covers do not display in my home page. This is extra weird, cause 6,7,8, etc, which were added at the same time this morning (GMT) are displayed.
This may have to do with them being manual added covers. The cover for book 7 ( Y: The last Man, 10: Whys and Wherefores ) is wrong. I uploaded a different cover which does not display.

I noticed a number of people have suggested a list of their Early Reviewers titles and even a way to track ones for which they owe reviews. My own solution to this would be to tag these books when I get them (I've only recently started tagging my books by source, but wanted specifically to track ER and BookMooch).

Then it's easy enough to click on that tag and see whether you've posted a review, right?

I must say I really, really like the Hot Reviews module, since one of mine just showed up there!!! Seriously, I see someone above said it's been explained how those are selected, but I haven't seen it, and there are just toooo many posts here for me to scrounge around looking for it. Anyone want to fill me in?

I'm joining the bunch who feel the On This Day feature is lame. I never have had much use for the Members With Your Books feature, or the Recommendations, which are never nearly as good as those I get from individual LT'ers in various group discussions. Popular This Month is a dud for me. Recently Added by Other Members --not too useful. I do like the Connection News, and My Zeitgeist. I have no opinion on what new users might like to see --- other than some form of FAQ or other guide to navigating the site. I've been here so long (feels like forever, in a good way) that "new to the site" does not compute!

Bug report, possibly related to message 93:
Since looking at my new homepage for the first time, I've updated two of the covers of my recently added books. They haven't updated on the homepage. (In both cases, I've uploaded my own cover. The books are http://www.librarything.com/work/book/31103621 and http://www.librarything.com/work/book/30956561)

>91 rsterling: I really like your point about moving some of the right hand info to the not signed in yet home page and off of our individual home pages. Great idea!

The more I look at the new Homepage the more I like it.

As far as where things should be: The only one I would move would be to put Featured Authors higher. Well, I might put On This Day higher as well.

The one I could live without is Members With Your Books.

The features as a whole seem to give a good overview of the site which newcomers do need. Some people have suggested that it might be too much but I'm not convinced.

I think this home page is excellent. But to give you more detailed feedback:

Things I like
Recently Added
On the blogs
Automatic recommendations
Local events
Talk
Your Zeitgeist
On this day

Things I don't like
Popular this month - Why should I care? Nothing interests me here.
Recently added - Ditto. Although it this was updated in real time, I think it would be more interesting.
Hot reviews - Ditto. This is nothing to do with me.
Connection news - I don't have enough LT friends to make this interesting.

Things I'm neutral on
Early reviewers - this is my usual gripe that most of what is here is not for my country (UK). For this box to be useful, it must filter by my locations. It would also be good if it showed me books I'm most likely to like.
Members with your books - I can't see the point of this on a home page, really. It's fine of the profile, but doesn't work here in my view.

What you need to do to make this better (IMHO!): Is make it more relevant to me. As it stands, much of it isn't relevant. So I want information geared at me. So, for example, popular this month, recently added, hot reviews - why not restrict this to books that are tagged like mine, or books that occur in the libraries of people whose libraries are similar to mine, or something. But random books are of little interest to me, I'm sorry.

Things I like:

The Search for my library
Annoucements
From the blogs
Popular this Month
Recent Recommendations
Connection News (set w/friends and interesting libraries)

Things I'll be removing:
Recently added by other members
Hot reviews
Local events
Talk
Early Reviewers
Members with your books
On this day
Featured authors

Neutral:
Your Zeitgeist

Add:
Links to Wiki (especially help) and Common Knowledge
Tip/Info/Stat of the Day/Week

You could remove the secondary navigation from the Profile page without it bugging me. I don't think it needs to be in both places.

I'd like to see covers and authors with my recommendations like with Connection News. The title alone doesn't do much for me. Maybe just with the first one if it would be too processing intensive. I'd also like to be able to click a "not this work" for ones I don't want.

Covers with Popular this Month would be nifty, too.

The not-signed-in question is a big one. I'm going to give Chris a chance to play with it.

Then I'll probably do A/B testing for new members, based on IP or whatever. We do almost no LT metrics, but I do know the sign-up percentage. That needs to go up, not down with any change.

97 - just to be clear, in #91 I didn't mean moving these. I meant putting them in both places. When the personalized homepage becomes customizable, users can decide whether they want to see these, and which ones; but on the not-signed-in homepage, I thought those in particular might help draw new users in.

I've read through most of the thread here and went back to study my home page. I have mostly used library thing as a listing place of what I've read and not so much to find other books, friends, etc. So all this is kind of new to me. Here are my thoughts.

Love: Announcements, Blogs,

No need for: Recently added by other members, On this day, featured authors

Questions/Comments:
Connection News - how does this get figured? Mine is mostly filled up by one member and not one that I know anything about. Seems like it should either be folks I've listed as friends or who have similar books. Also, too much space taken up with this. Just do top 5 or something.
Recommendations - how are these calculated? This will help me to know how useful this area is to me.
Hot reviews - I like the idea of this, but like others, want to what 'hot' means. Seems more helpful if there were reviews on books similar to my library.
Early Reviewers - love this section as I love ER! However, would want to it show that I am an ER, maybe the books that haven't gotten many requests instead of the most?
My Zeitgist - LOL I don't know what the majority of that means! Is there a help for that?
Members with my books - since there is so many, that section is always so overwhelming to me and not really helpful. Maybe limit the number to 20 and then I could pick the next 20 if I wanted?
Talk - is there an option to pick which groups I want to see? My groups doesn't include the standing groups (like ER) so I can't choose that as far as i can see.

Where would comments be on the home page? Or would I still go to my profile? I am assuming profile would go away since alot that was there is here.

Thanks for all the hard work I am sure this involved!

#103:Just a small remark on the profile part: I'm sure that the profile won't go away since this is your public face on LT. The home page is for your eyes only, so taking away the profile would take away a lot of the social side of LT. Tim tried taking away the profile _tab_ and caught hell for it.

BTW: http://www.librarything.com/home/timspalding has seven parts of it loading forever when I look at it. Am I the only one who has that problem?

On the featured authors, could you make the "(member X), author of Y" not highlighted? Highlighting it is a bit odd.

First, in general the home page is a very good idea. Many LT features were out of sight, out of mind. Putting previews of them in one place is useful and I will probably change my web browser link from the catalog to the home page.

My short response to Tim's opening question is that I like the left hand side and have little use for the right hand side. For me, the beauty of LT is in using my books to find other books that might interest me. Expanding out to everyone's books and interests defeats this purpose.

But even on the left side, you put this information in front of me and I start thinking of ways to make it more useful (at least to me). Be forewarned, much of the following is more about the underlying features than about their placement on the home page.

Editing modules
It took quite a while before I noticed the question/pencil symbols appearing as I hovered over the right hand corner of the modules. I'd prefer these to display permanently.

LT Local
1. I'd like to see the city and state after the name of the venue, and perhaps the distance from my location. I don't necessarily recognize all of the venues in my area by name.

2. For a bigger thought, I'd like to be able to set a second, wider search area, but restrict it to events related to authors in my catalog (or something similar). The notion is that I would be willing to travel farther to see one of my favorite authors than to go to a book club meeting.

Connection News
Aggregate recently added books. The fact that one of my interesting libraries added any particular book is not that interesting. However, if 6 of my interesting libraries added the same book over the last six months, that would be interesting.

Members with your books
I'd like the option of displaying my interesting libraries list in addition to, or instead of my members with your books list.

Recently Added Books
I'll add my voice to the chorus asking for a currently reading module in place of or in addition to recently added books. I don't think this would require collections, it could all be done with the currently underused "date acquired," "date started," and "date finished" fields. In my mind it would work as follows.

First, there would be three lists on the home page: recently acquired, currently reading and recently finished. The dates associated would be shown and editable on the home page.

To facilitate the recently acquired list, a box for editing the date acquired would appear in the "quick edit" section of the Add Books page.

To facilitate the currently reading list, there would be a dedicated "Add to currently reading" search box. The box would search your own catalog and clicking on a title in the result list would change the date started to the current date, adding the book to the currently reading list (any book started but not finished is being read currently). The date could be edited after the book is displayed on the list.

Finally, next to each currently reading book would be a "finished" button. Clicking the finished button would change the date finished to the current date, moving the book to the recently finished list. Again the date could be edited afterward.

Ideally these lists could be displayed on the publicly viewable profile page as well.

I don't understand the wish for currently reading on the home page. Nobody else can see it but you and you know what you are reading, right?

I second these requests:

Edit module icon permanent instead of appearing when hovering over the module

Aggregate recently added books (or make it a feature we can alter - choose how many in our chosen connections should add before it hits our page or something to that effect)

I also think that, eventually, having the option for a search module would be great. It could expand to offer all of the search options the search tab does, and collapse for a generic site-wide search, or maybe utilize a drop-down menu to select the parameter you'd like.

In response to the Early Reviewers module: ER was definitely a key feature that sold me on my membership - I reasoned that even if I only scored three good ER titles over the course of a lifetime membership, it paid for itself. Little did I know that the free books would be a nice perk, but nothing compared to the great community of readers I'd soon meet.

I think that it's only fair that the LT novices get a deliberate and thorough introduction to ER, especially given how much LT has grown; they're going to have a much harder time snagging books than members have had in the past unless the publishers start increasing the number of copies pretty significantly.

> 107

I agree. I generally know what I'm reading, though I must admit that there have been times when I have gotten distracted by other books and a month later found one with a bookmark in it and thought, "Oh, gosh, I forgot I was reading that! I'd better finish it now!"

Fortunately, that's rare.

>107 Morphidae:
I don't understand the wish for currently reading on the home page. Nobody else can see it but you and you know what you are reading, right?

I did ask to have the lists displayable on the profile page as well, but beyond that I'd like the feature for two reasons. One, I may start a book, put it aside and forget about it. Keeping track of books I start would be useful. Two, it would be an inducement for more people to enter this data, which would allow LT to make use of the data. What books are being read by the most people? What books are being read by people on your connections list? What books are being read by people who own a particular book? If more people entered the data, we could sensibly ask these questions.

One basic idea of LT is that by making it easy for people to catalog their own books, we can build a database that allows for interesting connections to be drawn between books and readers. Similarly, making it easier to keep track of current and recent reading would create more opportunities to draw those connections.

#107 Nobody else can see it but you and you know what you are reading, right?

Actually, I don't always know what I'm "reading," since I tend to pick up books in the middle of books and then forget about the first one, or have several reading projects going on at once, such as for class. I agree, though, that this seems a bit silly for a module. When Collections roll around, I imagine that it'll be fairly easy to pull up my "currently reading" collection if I want to see or edit that information.
I wonder if a lot of people are still subconsciously conflating the homepage with the profile? I know I keep on coming up with publicly viewable modules I want on my profile, now that the pandora's box of customization has been opened. Watch out, Tim!

edit: Oops, eromsted posted while I was typing. I hear the argument for making "currently reading" more visible as a way to encourage use. Maybe "Currently Reading" or "Recently Read" could be a toggle on the "Recently Added" book bar? I'm curious, though, as to how it would be tracked? Dates? Currently Reading checkboxes? There's a whole lot of differing answers that have been debated (heatedly) in various threads.

</i>>

Tag closing

There's no question that, when we have it, we'll add currently reading to the profile too, probably as an option. But we're not adding Kant's birthday.

First off, bravo! This really better showcases everything that happens each day at LibraryThing and gives all members more reasons to log on daily to see what's new.

Your planned tweaks (ability to move modules around and/or delete them) is all I would ask.

I would be interested in a "New books by authors in your library" module, but I imagine that would require mucho programming to prevent variations on existing works (i.e. foreign language editions or misspelled titles) from appearing. For instance, clicking through my author cloud, I discovered that Curtis Sittenfeld and Frank Portman had new books coming out this year, and I wish that could be streamlined somehow into one feed.

>110 eromsted: and 111 Ah, okay. I get it now.

#114 I would be interested in a "New books by authors in your library" module, but I imagine that would require mucho programming to prevent variations on existing works (i.e. foreign language editions or misspelled titles) from appearing. For instance, clicking through my author cloud, I discovered that Curtis Sittenfeld and Frank Portman had new books coming out this year, and I wish that could be streamlined somehow into one feed.

this would be a fantastic feature (even if it did pull up variations on existing works - they'd be simple enough to say 'No Thanks!' to as with Recommendations)

What about a 'Featured LTer' something similar to the Featured Author. Maybe randomly generated with a teaser like:

Recently added a review on ___ by ___.

or

Recently posted a comment on ___ topic.

or

Recently added ___ by ___ to their library.

and I am sure there are many more interesting things that could be used to pull a featured LTer.

Of course, you may want to have an opt in/out feature for the shy or more private members.

*giggles* (sorry Tim, it's a habit, I giggle constantly)
re Currently Reading... very recently I was going back through my To Be Read tag (it's the easiest way for me to figure out what I want to read next), and I came across one that I'd marked "currently reading" back when that checkbox was first introduced, and I had promptly forgotten about it.
.... How long ago was that?? lol I have now happily returned to reading that book.

I love the homepage. Love love love it. I keep fiddling around with it instead of actually getting work done (like entering this pile of books on my desk!).

My favorite part is seeing the books I have recently added. As someone else pointed out, it adds color to the page but it also makes me happy to see all the great books I have waiting for me.

As I play around with the homepage more, I do have some questions (and yes, I HAVE read every single post in both of the threads, but my memory isn't all that great, so apologies if this has been explained anywhere):

In the "Your Zeitgeist", the "unique tags" link sends me to my regular tag page. Therefore, I'm not exactly sure what "unique tags" means. Tags that only I have? Tags that I only use once? What? If it's specifically called "unique tags" then shouldn't it go to a section that shows my unique tags?

... And I can't remember my other question.

I've seen that some people don't like or care about Connection News, but I LOVE it. I really have very little to do with my Connections, as in I never go to that page or think about it, but seeing that on the homepage, I've already found 2 books to put on my wishlist because one of my connections just added them and they look interesting... never would've seen them otherwise.

I also like the Talk module, I have it set to Your posts, and it's so much easier to get back to recent threads then going through Groups and stuff like I used to.

120: Unique tags is the number of different tags that you use. So by taking you to the tag page, it is taking you to a list of all your unique tags.

I haven't read through what everyone else has said, so I don't know if any of this has been said yet, but I like that it shows when I have a new comment (I would like it if I got a new comment message no matter where on the site I was, because I spend most of my time in the groups, and if I'm there I have no way of knowing that I have a new comment). I like the talk module. I would like to have a "my groups" module, sometimes I want to go straight to one of my groups homepages rather than go straight to a thread. once I found out I could exclude my 50 most similar libraries, I liked the connection news. so far I haven't used any of the other modules, but I don't dislike any of them so far. I just though of something, I would like to be able to search my library straight from my homepage, that would eliminate having to go through an extra step when I want to view a specific book or group of books.

122 I would like to be able to search my library straight from my homepage

Try the search field in the top module:)

Thanks for moving the blog module up!

I'd like to see a "Refresh" link on the Talk threads module; while I haven't been watching it carefully for a long enough time yet, it seems that while the Unread posts number does change reflecting my visit to that page, it doesn't seem to add new posts. Or maybe there just haven't been any? :-/

I also would like to see a way to limit reviews to books tagged like my books or recommended to me; that would be awesomely useful.

The idea of a "new books by my favorite authors" would be fabulous, too.

While I agree that having more than birth and death dates would be nice in "On This Day," as I understand it, the info comes from Common Knowledge, so there would have to be fields for the other kinds of data, and people would have to put it in before it could be pulled out. So, not likely to happen any time soon, eh?

*What are you favorites and least favorites?
I really like the recently added section because I have mine setup with small covers and it looks like those fancy color-bars you'll see on people's blogs. Though I think that it's pointless for me to know what I recently added since I remember from when I added it to my catalog. To me, I'd think the recently added section would be more appropriate on our profile pages so others can see what we recently added without digging through our libraries with the option for to disable it completely for those who don't like it.

My least favorite items is actually everything on the right side except for the "On This Day" section. Thankfully since we're getting the option to remove boxes, that will take care of this problem.

*What would you get rid of, and what order would you put them in?
If we were given the ability to reorder and organize it how we'd like, everyone would be happy. :)

*If you can imagine how other see it, particularly first-time users, what do you think they'd want for defaults?
I'd say everything on the right side so they are more aware of everything LibraryThing can offer. I already know of Early Reviewers, the blogs, etc, so all those boxes to me are a waste of space, sorry.

*What modules are missing? What could we add?
For the Member recommendations section of the Recent Recommendations box, I think it's important it says what book in our library the recommendation. Knowing that I'd be more curious to check out these suggestions than receiving a list of new ones without an explanation of by which member and which book in my catalog it's coming from.

#123 re 122 I hadn't noticed that yet, thanks.

I also like the announcements and blog modules, I never remember to check the blog unless there is an announcement, and it's nice to know about all the great improvements that are being made to the site.

Dear Tim,
I like the new look home page, still getting used to it.

Just a small suggestion...

Could you move "help/faq" to a TAB on the top line of the home page?
I would also be nice if "help" had a SITE LAYOUT page, ie. what pages live under
each of the tabs etc. Ultimately it would be good is these were "klickible" and the
help sub-system had a number for each item (also clickible) and...
Sorry getting carried away.

It would be nice if LT Local showed events at venues I've marked as favorite. My favorite venue has events scheduled all this week, and none are showing up on my home page. I suspect that it may be because I'm in another city (only 10 minutes away though). Do I need to change my location in my profile to make these events show up?

#129 you can edit the module to show events within a larger radius.

I've decided that I'll remove Featured Authors just to be rid of the yellow boxes.

>130 rissa: - Thanks, rissa. That fixed it!

I love it! One thing I did just notice, however -- while it's still possible to edit/change my profile image on the Profile page, it doesn't update the image on the Home page. Didn't see that anyone has reported that yet, so...

>131 _Zoe_: I will as well. Is that a bug or are they supposed to be highlighted?

I'd like to see the "Popular This Month" module become a "Popular This Week" module. If that doesn't happen, it's going to to become a boring feature rather quickly (...for me, anyway!).

I'd like to eliminate the entry "????" (Born) from "On This Day". That entry adds no useful information to that particular module.

On "Featured Authors", if the authors are "new", I'd like to see the "new" button being used instead of the author's information just highlighted in yellow. The yellow highlight just looks kind of sloppy and doesn't tell readers anything.

>131 _Zoe_:, 134

Obviously it's a bug. The yellow is coming from the translation function.

It's fixed now.

Favourites:

Members with your books
On this day
Recently added

Least Favourites:

All the rest

Why? There's too much that doesn't relate to my interests and that functions as a sort of dilution of the specificity of my opening page. It reminds of the commercially-focused pages of amazon, which are full of best sellers and other things that are of no interest to me.

I like the profusion of information and possibilities on LT but would prefer to go find the modules I'm interested in, and not have my page intruded on from the start by a host of titles and comments I'm not interested in. So I look forward to being able to delete most of the modules, without wanting to discourage you in your bibliographic enthusiasm.

>136 timspalding: Um, that wasn't obvious at all. Have you already forgotten the old homepage?

>135 SqueakyChu: I agree that "Popular this week" would be much more interesting.

128: I also think it would be good to make Help/FAQ more prominent, but I wouldn't put it on a tab unless we got rid of at least 2 others (since apparently there are too many tabs now, especially for people using low-res screens/browsers). But a little link and/or question mark at the top of the page (next to username/signout), combined with the proposed "how-to" and "tip of the day" modules, could be very useful.
As for some kind of guide to the site (that would incorporate a site map, as 128 seems to be suggesting), this sounds like a good idea, and also something that would make an ideal project for the wiki - an extension of the existing help/faq page there.

136 - bug related to translation: that's what I assumed. I'm still seeing the highlighting, though.

From the other thread.... "Actually I think the wiki page is two clicks away from my LT home page, so that makes the LT home page a bad choice."

Can we have a wiki module? Or at least a link? It took me half an hour of trolling through talk threads to figure out how to get to my wiki page. Needless to say, that's not encouraging me to make use of it. Ease of accessibility would be nice!

Also, it's kind of strange to me that "Account/Profile Settings" is on the Profile page instead of the homepage, since that seems like a clearly private function.

Wow - I go to the lake for the weekend and look what happens! I really, really like the new home page - it's what I've been waiting for. I also like the fact that it will eventually be customizable. I pretty much like everything, so I'll just list some ideas and comments. I apologize if I'm repeating - there's a lot of information to digest between the two threads.

1. Fleela's Tag Watch idea is great. I would like to use it two ways. One would be to see what books other people add with tags I specify (i.e., all books added to LT with the tag "gardening"). Using multiple tags would be even better (i.e., +fiction, +19th century). The other would be to generate a list of my own books under (or instead of) my own Recently Added. Specifically, I could see watching my own TBR - that would give me a list of my TBR's right on the home page.

2. I would like to see the comment features moved to and/or replicated on the home page. Since some people want to continue to use the profile page as their main page, perhaps it could be replicated on both. However, I would personally like to use my profile page as my face to the outer world and my home page as my "go to" page for my own LT use, so having the comment functions on the home page would help to consolidate all important functions.

3. Top Reviews and Recommendations: Add the average star rating.

4. Recommendations: Add the author. (Selected Poems is currently my #2 automatic recommendation. It would be nice to know who the poet is without clicking away from the page.)

5. A place for my own customizable information:

-- A place for my own links. On my profile I have a link to my 50 Book challenge thread and my 2nd LT account (wishlist). I put them there when my profile page was my LT landing page. Now that I've switched to the new home page, I would like to have them on the new home page, too.

-- And/or a free form "notepad" which can include HTML for links. It could also be used for notes of any kind.

-- And/or an easy link to my Wiki page or an ability to edit my wiki page in a small window in the homepage. Or a link with a snapshot of my wiki page. I don't currently use my wiki page but probably would if it was more visible - I keep forgetting it's there.

6a. Talk: Add Starred as a choice.

6b: Talk: Maybe this could just be selected threads, then you could go to the full Talk screen for all your groups. For example, the home page could just follow a few threads - some might choose the Green Dragon, some Recommended Site Improvements, some Combiners, etc. - then the "full" Talk page is all the groups.

7. Connection News: When collections arrive, it would be great to follow Recently Read.

8. Early Reviewers: Show this month's deadline. Show the books I requested rather than/as another choice besides "most requested."

Edited for clarity.

-- A place for my own links. On my profile I have a link to my 50 Book challenge thread and my 2nd LT account (wishlist). I put them there when my profile page was my LT landing page. Now that I've switched to the new home page, I would like to have them on the new home page.

This worries me. I'm concerned that the new homepage could make people less social by encouraging them to put everything in a private place, rather than a public place.

Is Popular this month calculated daily over the past 30 days or is it really only calculated once per calendar month, but then that would really be Popular last month, wouldn't it. I don't imagine that means Popular so far this month. So what does it really mean?

>143 _Zoe_: Yes, I could see that being a concern. Personally, I plan to continue posting my TBR and Recently Read covers on my Profile Page, and have no plans to eliminate any links.

However, the primary reason I put those links on my Profile page - especially the 50 Book challenge link - was for my own use. I have the 50 Book Group set to Ignore, which means it ignores my own thread, even though it's starred (that would be a good thing to change, too, but that's a different topic). Because there are so many posts to the 50 Book Group, I'd have to dig to find my own thread. And I personally don't care if anyone reads the thread or not - it's for my own edification. So, I put a link on my Profile, which I used as my home page until today.

So, I didn't put those links there to be social at all - especially the 50 book thread. They were there almost 100% for me. And those are the types of links I'd like to have my my new home page - links just for me - shortcuts.

Edited for clarity.

Also, it's kind of strange to me that "Account/Profile Settings" is on the Profile page instead of the homepage, since that seems like a clearly private function.

You're right. It's moving—after I split it up into account and profile settings.

144> ...and another thing on Popular This Month. I'd also be interested in the raw numbers of books being added even if they are mostly Harry Potter. Could we get a toggle to see the raw numbers.

Oh, and one more thing. For both the weighted and raw numbers I'd like to see the actual numbers in the list (even though they likely won't be in order for the weighted list).

Is Popular this month calculated daily over the past 30 days or is it really only calculated once per calendar month, but then that would really be Popular last month, wouldn't it. I don't imagine that means Popular so far this month. So what does it really mean?

It's daily, over the last 30 (?31) days.

The problem is that the data is so noisy. People enter their libraries, mostly, so detecting "newness" is hard. Popular this week would include all sorts of titles that were just "incidentally" popular—because ten Asimov fans joined this week and none last. If "Popular this week" included all sorts of odd title, would it be as attractive?

I'm thinking of trying an algorithm based on movement up the chart. That is, the Host probably moved up 10,000 popularity spots in the last month or so. I'd need to play with the algorithm and check out the results to see if it really worked.

>142 Talbin: Yes. I especially like 2, 5, 6a+b, and 7
I would personally like to use my profile page as my face to the outer world and my home page as my "go to" page for my own LT use, so having the comment functions on the home page would help to consolidate all important functions.
Agreed. The homepage seems to act as a collection of peepholes into information that's already on other parts of the site: can't our comments be part of that? I know Tim wants comments on our profiles so that others can see them, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that I should ever have to visit my own profile except to edit it.*

*Not that I wouldn't want to visit it, or that I think people should be using the homepage instead of their profile, just that I shouldn't have to.

So, I didn't put those links there to be social at all - especially the 50 book thread. They were there almost 100% for me. And those are the types of links I'd like to have my my new home page - links just for me - shortcuts.

I know, but they had the side benefit of being visible to everyone else. Even though you weren't particularly trying to be social, putting the links there still contributed to the general social atmosphere of the site. I think the site will be a lot less interesting if everyone abandons their public profile pages in favour of a private homepage.

>148 timspalding:

I think being able to track movement would make that feature much less static. I love watching things go up and down in popularity.

Yeah. I need to figure it out more. You can't count mere popularity index, since a book can move up 100,000 or even 1,000,000 spots very easily. The closer you get to #1 the harder it is. A simple cut-off—everything above 10,000, for example—would too strongly favor moves on the lower end of that.

Anyone have an idea what algorithm would produce what we all want—a list of books that are hot because they're hot, not because of some statistical cooincidence?

> 143

I'm concerned that the new homepage could make people less social by encouraging them to put everything in a private place, rather than a public place.

The site should have the flexibility to allow people to be as social, or asocial, as they want to be. That the new home page will allow people to move things from the public profile to the private home page is a plus, not a minus.

Even though you weren't particularly trying to be social, putting the links there still contributed to the general social atmosphere of the site.

You forget that for many people, the social aspects of the site are not the primary reason for being here (some of us joined before the social aspects even existed), and that the only reason some of the information you see is public is that it can't be private unless the entire library is private.

I do not, however, think that you need to worry about "everyone abandon{ing} their public profile pages in favour of a private homepage". Some might, but I doubt it will be anywhere near "everyone", or even a majority. In fact, you may find that some people who took everything private in order to avoid some things being public may alter their behavior and dip their toes in the social waters.

Defaults are important, not just what is possible. For example, LT has open catalogs by default. If it had closed catalogs by default, it would be a very different place. In fact, I think it would have never become anything worth speaking of. That was certainly the pattern with Del.icio.us. There were online bookmark storage systems before. Del.icio.us added little, but the default was open. Kaboom.

Bug:

The title links to reviews on the member home page do not work (missing a slash); the (read) links are fine.

Example:
Aids Orphans Rising
http://www.librarything.com/work/review31989473
http://www.librarything.com/work/review/31989473
http://www.librarything.com/work/5126486

I would get rid of Hot Reviews and Members with Your Books. I'm not interested in reading member reviews for the most part except when I'm interested in a particular book. Members with Your Books is covered in the profile page and again it's not something I'm interested in.
I think for defaults I'd keep "Recently added", "Recommendations", "announcements," "from the blogs," "local events" and the Talk posts. I'd like to customize what I see in the Talk section more though.

Just clicked through to the home page and got this message at the very top of the page, everything seems fine otherwise

x Warning: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /var/www/html/home.php:49) in /var/www/html/home.php on line 59

157

Fixed. Debug code.

>150 _Zoe_:/153 Thanks, lillithcat - you've described my own thinking very well! I personally like keeping up my profile page, and I'm constantly fiddling with it. That's why I'm also glad that the tab issue was resolved - lots of people take pride in their "outer" face on LT and like to customize their profile page.

And my main point is more about having an area to keep track of LT-related things for myself, things like links, but also notes, HTML code shortcuts (I have a separate Word document for this now), etc. If not a notepad, then an easy link and/or view to my Wiki page where I could keep that sort of ephemera.

One thing I would like to see is to also include combining data in the Zeitgeist section. It makes sense if Local and CK contributions are going to be listed there.

>160 collsers:

Agreed.

Sorry I'm not doing more today. In theory, I'm supposed to be ignoring Talk and working on something else. But I can't resist.

I'd like a way to see new unique books, then we could combine half of them with the right work.

Oh, and a refresh button for the talk section, then I wouldn't absentmindedly refresh the whole page just for that.

>162 infiniteletters:

For a given author? The site-wide stream would be just unbearable!

>1 timspalding: "we will be giving members the ability to remove pieces entirely. "

When's the ETA of that? And does it mean for all the modules, or just some?

I have struggled through both these long threads and not seen what seems the obvious (to me, anyway)answer to these changes and issues:

Design the page in modules and then offer a smorsgasbord of features and options that people can populate as they like and lock in exactly as they like it. Then you'd know (from your own backside stats) what people wanted and in what order and in what level of detail. The way we currently can populate our own library views would be the model I'm thinking of.

Perhaps you could try gentle pushes of the non-chosen features from time to time if having them is important for bizdev reasons.

The one suggested module that I would absolutely adore would be the notepad idea.

My own choices, as noted a couple of hundred posts ago, would be to have no other info on this so-called home page, except the tabs to go elsewhere. As none of the info in any of the modules is useful to me in how I use LT. I just object to being involuntarily deposited on a page that takes so long to load before I can head on my way to the only pages I ever look at which is the Add books page and the Groups page. I think the obvious solution for a user like me is a simple pair of bookmarks to those two specific pages, which as soon as I am back on my own computer is how I will handle it.

It's ironic that such a bloated omnibus page seemingly designed to engage more LT'ers in the features will result in driving at least some of them away from contact with the features and more isolation.

I really, really, treasured the lightness of the previous LT pages (both in the sense of shorter loading times, and less stuff shoved in my face). Now it's become the visual equivalent of a carnival barker's cacaphony, in short more like the Amazon model overloaded with chopped-up boxes of factoidal pseudocontent.

cobb

163: For favorite authors, or maybe just some of them? Or even ones that aren't combined from yesterday, which would be a smaller number...

The site should have the flexibility to allow people to be as social, or asocial, as they want to be.

Well, yes. But I feel like the homepage is being promoted a lot more than the profile page, as evidenced by the temporary removal of the profile tab. Some people carefully think about what they want to be private and what they want to be public, but not everyone does. That's where the defaults come in. And it looks like the push is on for the default (i.e., location of least thought and effort) to be the private one.

164

I promised within ten days. I think it will be sooner.

I think all will be removeable, except maybe the silver one at the top—which embeds links to upgrade your account and etc.—and the announcements section.

Bloated

You don't like the content. The size of the content is, as explained and indeed as demonstrated with exhaustive and time-consuming comparisons, at or below the home pages of most sites today. It is on par with other LT pages, and well below that of our competitors. We are and remain a fairly "light" site, but not one motivated to appeal to dialup users when extra bits will make the page better for the 95% who are not. Ultimately, dialup is a very small slice of LT's user base. I cannot make appealing to dialup users the determining factor in how the home page or any page on LT is designed.

except maybe the silver one at the top

Will we at least be able to make this one smaller? It takes up a lot of valuable space and contains nothing interesting, at least if we already have a lifetime account.

I'm OK with the silver box staying. If all the others are removable... I'm good!

> 158

Tim, userpic isn't showing; instead, I get:

Warning: fopen(http://www.librarything.comuserpics/lilithcat.jpg): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found in /var/www/html/inc_photo_upload.php on line 94

>168 _Zoe_:

"At least"? "A lot of valuable space"? It's 100 pixels high! Help!

>170 lilithcat:

Fixed. Sorry about that.

I'm getting the same userpic error that lilithcat reports in #170.

I like the silver box. For one, it's a quick reassurance that this is MY page; for another, it has useful links to the places I'm most likely to want to go (and the all-important book count!)

Zoe (166), I think the homepage is being heavily promoted now because it's new; the excitement should subside in a week or two, except the continuing dribble of posts from people who only log in every few weeks.

>173 lorax: Lorax

The pic is okay for you now though, right?

*What are you favorites and least favorites?
Favorites: Talk and the options for all, my groups, and my posts. love the chance to see other active groups' threads, and to see all of my groups at once.

Also my own recently added books, particularly if this will translate well to mobile LT - I often need to see what I've just purchased in order to either (a) avoid a duplicate or (b) obtain a proper piece of a series when I'm at a bookstore.

Least Favorites: Members with your books (interesting statistic, but more profile than homepage material, in my opinion), and "recently added by other members" - really the only additions that matter to me are the ones by members I've somehow highlighted (friends, interesting libraries, etc.) or the books that people are adding in droves, which appear in the most popular category. This module just seems a little superfluous to me.

*What would you get rid of, and what order would you put them in?
I'd probably only get rid of those two to start, if any; I don't have a hard time focusing only where I care to give my attention on home pages, and this setup puts all of the ones I'll probably use most often on the left and the others are almost like banner ads along the right - easily ignored. If I had to choose from scratch instead of having a default setup, I'd select Talk, Connection News, Local Events, Announcements, and my Recently Added, and possibly throw on Popular This Month.

*If you can imagine how other see it, particularly first-time users, what do you think they'd want for defaults?
I say give them everything and let them pare down; that way, they're not missing out on something by not seeing the module live, and only having the option to select it from a list with maybe a screenshot where it might not convey the usefulness of it.

*What modules are missing? What could we add?
I'd love a word game module of some kind, but I'm not sure what that would require. Also, I thought that showing the stars for a "connection news" recent rating would be cool (which was why I came back over to this thread in the first place) but then I saw that they do show up on the link to Tim's home page. I'm running Firefox 3 and don't see an option that I need to select to make it happen - any ideas?

>171 timspalding: Yes, but there's absolutely nothing of interest in those 100 pixels. I'm actually more concerned about the horizontal space, though; there's almost enough empty room to fit in a whole other module there, and I'd like to do so.

>173 lorax: That's part of it, but it's also been suggested that anything we currently use on the profile page could be shifted onto the homepage, or at least added to the homepage as well. It seems like there's at least some attempt to permanently shift users too away from the profile and toward to homepage.

I completely love having 'Announcements' and 'From the Blogs' at the top right. It's useful to see those, and see right off the bat what new things are happening in regards to the site.

I have no interest in, and would like to be able to remove:
popular this month
recently added by other members
hot reviews
early reviewers
on this day
featured authors

Fun for me- but need tweaks made to:

Local Events- two tweaks-
1-I see no reason to have the second column here for an event picture. Wastes space- I prefer one line per event, two if needed. This is currently two as default, because date/time are on separate lines. There is also an issue with how some venues display- one venue name is so long the event title doesn't show up.
2-I had used my state as my profile location, but in local it brings up nothing. I switched to an exact zip code for that feature so I'd actually get events listed, but I would like to be able to put something more general in the profile field.

Connection News -
I see that we can choose to have 'friends' 'interesting libraries' 'private watch list' 'top 50' as choices in this category, but can you group them this way in the list? Like you have done under Talk- 'All topics' 'your groups' 'your posts'- you can click to see the listings change.

and speaking of
Talk- I like having it on the home page.
BUT something that gets me irritated when I look at the 'Talk' tab, and even more with 'Talk' in a small area on this home page - there isn't a difference in displaying the groups I belong to vs. the groups I watch. They are all tossed into 'your groups'. If I wanted them that way, I'd join them all, wouldn't I? I want to keep track of some groups once I've found them (the watched groups), but I don't want to have to see what is happening in them all the time. Please make another slice for viewing purposes.

>166 _Zoe_: I'm very hopeful that once collections comes, the next thing will be widgets that we can use on our profile page - currently reading, recently read, etc. That will help make the profile page more dynamic and therefore more used.

I don't think that you have to limit the over-all site to the level that would make it most convenient for dial-up users. But I think you ought to make sure the site can be configured by dial-up users to be useful for them, even if they have to shut-off, or constrain, certain features.

For instance (using a non-LT example) some sites open with fancy, graphics-heavy flash montages. For those users with a slow connection this often makes it impossible to even latch on to the site since the size of the files overloads the connection, even if one would be willing to wait patiently for them to fully load. A smart site will have a little box to click for slow connectors, that skips this and jumps directly to the main body. Often being able to load the less-heavy portions independently allows later connections to grab the visuals since enough is already in the buffer.

I know you are a lighter site than your competitors, but they shouldn't be the standard you are aiming at. Universal access, or at least the broadest access possible should be the goal. If your competitors don't get that, then too bad for them, and hooray for you!

Also, FWIW, the actual text of the features is not the problem so much as the underlying programming doodads (how's that for non-tech speak?) that run it, especially things that update on their own. Those are costly in terms of connection speed. For instance (using the non-LT example above) the same set of still photographs will often (even if it takes forever) download, but having a tricky rotating fade-in/fade-out display will bring things to a halt.

But, if I spy that little slow-connection option box, I'm in heaven since it says to me: we welcome everybody.

When users can kill off (or leave empty) unwanted modules, or even just set the defaults to zero, then things will be better. And for those of use who use the site in peculiar, circumscribed ways ways, well, that's what bookmarks are for.

I am sorry if I offended you by describing the page you have been working so hard on as bloated. It's true the features (even if I was on a T-1 line) wouldn't interest me, but in reading the comments I see many others also would slash half a dozen or more off. So, the error, if one has been made, is as always in offering too much and then seeking feedback from all of us. It truly is rare to have such riches combined with such responsiveness, which is probably why we all are so passionate about the site.

cobb

Tim is there any chance for users to be able to develop their own modules? Maybe even in a limited sense where we could just plug a box that will display whatever html we want to put there?

I realized that what I would like to see on this page is a random book quote I've collected. That's not something that there's going to be a huge demand for, but it would be pretty easy for me to whip up for myself if I had the ability to do it.

>179 bcobb:
So, the error, if one has been made, is as always in offering too much and then seeking feedback from all of us.

What I don't think you realize is that many of these features were suggested to Tim by members when he asked as he was developing the page.

Anyway, I'd much rather be presented with a plethora of features so I can choose those which interest me than three boring features trying to please everyone.

#180 Amen! I'd like to be able to put in a few links, so this could be a stepping stone to some of the areas that haven't been "moduled" yet.
If you do this, could you please allow the same same subset of html as one of the existing places on LT? (Talk, profile and wiki are three different subsets methinks.)

Just wanted to add one more vote for "currently reading" and "recently read"!

Tim is there any chance for users to be able to develop their own modules?

Yes.

177> I noticed that on the edit page for the Local module there is a place to put your address and a checkbox for whether to use that address in your profile. This sounds like what you wanted.

As long as it will be possible to remove boxes we don't want I have no opinion on what is the default.
But I do have a recommendation for the "On This Day" module... Include the date for those of us in different time zones. I have no idea whether it's today or yesterday for my time zone.

I'm not sure whether this is a function of the new home page (which I like a lot) or something else.

When I click on "unique tags" in my zeitgeist I would think I'd get tags used only by me, but I notice that "science fiction" is listed under the results. Now, I'm reasonably sure I'm not the only one using that phrase as a tag.

177, 185 - yes, I think you need to edit the profile first, then edit the location to something more specific in Local, without clicking that box.

187. I think the unique tags means your total number of tags used (each tag counted once). Tags, above that, counts the number of times you've tagged, so each tag X the number of times you've used it.

No complaints about the left side of the home page.

On the right side the only things of interest to me are:

Announcements
From the Blogs

Several comments.

First - I have a problem with 'unique tags'. Currently, that takes you to the page that everywhere else in LT is called 'tags'! OK, so does the link just above it which is called 'tags', but...My opinion is that it should be 'total tags' going to your tag cloud and 'tags' going to your tag page. There have been very few comments on 'unique tags', but I think every one has been confused at least a little.

Second - on the right, the edit icons show up on all the green bars when you hover over any (ie, hover over 'from the blogs', which doesn't even get an icon, and the icons appear on Hot Reviews, Recently Added (by others), Popular This Month, and On this day). On the left, the edit icons show up only on the bar you're hovering over (well, sometimes when you're in the module).

Adding my vote for a Favorite Venues option for Local - a 5-mile radius around my home shows nothing, a 10-mile shows venues I don't know in places I don't go. I have favorites up to 45 miles from my home, which I go to or near regularly - it would be nice to see their events.

Favorite and not-so-favorite modules:

Order on the right:
Announcements
Blogs (show fewer - 1-2 each?)
maybe Recently Added
maybe On this day (these two because they change)
maybe Hot reviews (not very interesting)
ER (more interesting if it changed, or showed my requested books, or something)
Featured authors not very interesting
Popular is not interesting - I'd dump it.

Order on the left:
My library
Talk (preferably with a limitable set of threads, though My Posts is OK)
Zeitgeist (fun!)
Recently added (switchable to Currently Reading, Recently Rated?...)
Recommendations (pretty much yawn, but OK)
Local events (possibly interesting if I can put it on favorited venues)
Members with your books (very yawn. I glance at it once any time I go to my profile and thereafter ignore it...don't need it here)
Connection news (OK, now that it's just friends and interesting, it's better, but still not my focus on LT)

Second (many later than that, but that's OK) the request for a scratchpad and a Wiki link - or a scratchpad on which HTML works would do it. My profile has a lot of notes-to-myself about how I've structured my library - what my tag coding means, what the rating stars mean, like that. I'd really like to have that on my homepage.

For Talk, I'd like either to show (or be able to show) my Groups (not the threads in the groups, but the groups) with a mark (bolded?) to show if there's unread threads in there; or be able to limit which of My Groups will show me threads, at a minimum. Green Dragon is fun to read when I have time, but the threads in there totally drown out BookMooching, and even New Features and Bug Collectors. If we're going to have this little tiny Talk display, it needs to extract a useful subset of Talk so we can actually see what we want to see. (and someone may set it to only display Green Dragon threads - but the selectability is what's important).

Overall, I think the new page is great - there are bits I won't use, but there always are. There's a lot of functionality there and more coming (Currently Reading!), and once we can rearrange and delete, it'll be darn near perfect.

ETA - re: edit icons showing up on green bars - I'm on FF3 on WinXP

would it be possible to have new 'talk' posts by our 'connections' listed, either in the Connection news or Talk (forum) panels?

What's interesting in reading these posts - in addition to good suggestions about how to make individual modules better, or what new modules to add - is the fact that for all those who say they like one set of modules and don't like or won't use the other, around the same number of people say exactly the opposite. I don't know if anyone has been keeping an exact tally, but I think I've seen some support for everything on the page (and, except perhaps Announcements, every module has someone who will remove it when possible). Although it might not help, then, to figure out what should be default, that all suggests that overall, you've done a good job catering to different kinds of interests in LT, and that, once the page is customizable, most people will probably be pretty happy with it (with some exceptions and quibbles, which is normal).

Just a few comments - I'm slow to adjust to change.

Like the books on connections- especially note and link to review.

like glimpse of talk - especially choice of links

like stats - there can never be too many stats

191 - generally, members' posting activity is not something that's been public on LT, I think by design, and out of concerns about privacy and too personal tracking. There has been a bit of discussion about that before (you can't search for posts by particular users, for instance, and you can only see talk stats for yourself). Personally, I like it the way it is, and I'd probably participate less in talk if I thought someone could follow my every move and every post. I know that's how other forums are run, but it hasn't been the way this one works, and I think there might be an outcry if it changed...

Sure glad that we will be able to delete elements of the page. I'd just like a VERY simple way to see MY books.

>196 theoakes:, Me too. Right now it is ridiculously busy.

>196 theoakes:

The home page doesn't do that, though. It shows you some recent books, but it's not intended to replace your library. Can't you just skip by it, then?

What's interesting in reading these posts - in addition to good suggestions about how to make individual modules better, or what new modules to add - is the fact that for all those who say they like one set of modules and don't like or won't use the other, around the same number of people say exactly the opposite. I don't know if anyone has been keeping an exact tally, but I think I've seen some support for everything on the page (and, except perhaps Announcements, every module has someone who will remove it when possible). Although it might not help, then, to figure out what should be default, that all suggests that overall, you've done a good job catering to different kinds of interests in LT, and that, once the page is customizable, most people will probably be pretty happy with it (with some exceptions and quibbles, which is normal).

You are the voice of reason.

The entire new home page is suh-weet!

Especially the stuff on the left.

I could do without "On this Day," though.

I'll also second what rsterling said upthread: Recently Added "is least functional, but I like that it adds color and images to the page."

>198 timspalding:

I plan to quibble no matter what! I'll blame you for my male pattern baldness if the homepage is perfect and doesn't present anything for me to complain about!

>200 DanoWins:

New research suggests Propecia prevents prostate cancer—and website complaining!

Re: my query about rating stars in the community news above, they're showing up at home (Mac OS X), so maybe it's just a PC thing? At any rate, if it was a deliberate fix, thank you. If not, well, I probably shouldn't be on LT at work anyhow, I suppose. :)

Tim,
Thanks...that'll kill two birds with one stone. Aww, but now I'll have to start buying Propecia! See, told you I'd find something to complain about!

In general, I think I like the page, although I look forward to being able to shuffle things around a bit. I'm way behind in the discussion, so apologies in advance if this has already been addressed. These are all related to the Talk box.

It frustrates me that there's no way to go directly from that talk box to the talk page without either scrolling up or clicking on something else first. Now, scrolling up isn't a big hassle, of course, but it just seems like there should be a more direct way to get there.

I also wish there was a 'refresh' link or button. It seems like clicking on "your groups" or whatever refreshes it, but that's not obvious.

Lastly, would there be any way for that talk box to only show the most recent threads with unread posts? It's likewise frustrating to have ten threads listed and have half of them be already read - seems like a waste of space.

204: Only unread posts? Ooo, what a good idea. :D

#204
Good idea about only unread posts, though I find that the high-traffic groups (like New Features) are swamping my far more numerous low-traffic groups, so I haven't seen a listing yet for a group with no unread posts! (Unless I JUST finished reading it.)

I suggested a "refresh" link yesterday, I think - glad to see some support for the idea! It would be nice to update just that module without waiting for the whole page to re-load.

I need to add "starred," a refresh and a way to get into Talk without going back up to the tab. That's three, at least. This UI is getting very crowded.

Tim, would be it possible to break up the first link on the left-hand side of each Talk listing? So that the group name and the title of the thread link to their own appropriate pages?

>208 kgriffith:

No. I think that's too confusing, in the final analysis.

I get an error message and my photo doesn't display on my new homepage, though it works on my profile page. The error message:

Warning: imagecreatefromgif(): 'picsizes/7f/a6/b262237eae254d8495fd4a2feab86111.gif' is not a valid GIF file in /var/www/html/inc_photo_upload.php on line 274 Warning: imagecopyresampled(): supplied argument is not a valid Image resource in /var/www/html/inc_photo_upload.php on line 282

The more I read this thread (and the other one), the more it seems that, if it's all going to be pretty much customizable, maybe the question isn't what we'd keep or get rid of, but which features are most important to have in the list from which we can select, and in what ways do we want to be able to tailor them.

A suggestion for the silver box, perhaps helpful to those who think it wastes space. Could it be editable, to add a line of personal links? Customization would be a table of label and url lines. Could you also add by default a link to the User Wiki page on the line with Your Library, Tags, Add Books, and search?

(On the other hand it may be that it just looks like there's lots of room there to me because I'm on a 1440x900 widescreen monitor.)

I really like the new Home Pages - thanks, LT! I still have some comments. I haven't read all replies, so apologies if I'm repeating some stuff unecessarily.

>>>What are you favourites and least favourites?

Favourites: Announcements, Talk, Connection News, MWYB. Local Events could be useful, once I settle somewhere. :)

Least Favourites: Early Reviewers, Hot Reviews, Featured Authors, On This Day.

>>>What would you get rid of, and what order would you put them in?

I assume you mean, when we become able to customise, what will I remove? In that case, Early Reviewers, Hot Reviews, Featured Authors, On This Day. If you mean, what should be removed by default.... probably nothing, or else people won't know it's there? Show them everything once, then they can modify their Home page to suit themself.

I like the RHS column the way it is now, although personally I'll probably remove at least the bottom 4 sections once the home pages become customisable. I would be happy to see Local Events move to the RHS column, but that's probably because I'm unlikely to be living anywhere where there are a lot of events to be listed.

My preferred order for the LHS column would probably be: Recently Added (purely for some cover candy), Local Events, Talk, Connection News, MWYB, My Zeitgeist. But I would have to try it to be sure.

I'd also like an options to have covers, Author info and, even more ideally, the top x number of tags for that book appear with the titles in the Recommendations list. I'd also like it if, when in one-column mode (ie if I have only Auto recs and no member recs set to apppear), the Recommendations with long titles would span the entire width instead of being cut off.

>>>If you can imagine how other see it, particularly first-time users, what do you think they'd want for defaults?

Personally - and particularly until I learned the differences between each section - I'd think there are too many overlaps in the recommendations / hot reviews / early reviewers, but that's probably just my bias speaking, since I don't tend to read those sections at all. I just don't access books via random reviews.

And, not in any way a criticism, but I find the ER section (currently) particularly irrelevant if you are not in the UK/USA/Canada.

BUT, as I said further above, I don't know that removing anything from the default is beneficial either.

>>>What modules are missing? What could we add?

Love the idea of a Tag Watch, particularly if it had an alert system we could set to automatically display how many books were tagged with 'X tag' since last view, and then click through to the list of titles.

Also like the 'What I Am Reading Now' idea, and then there is the permanent wishlist item - a 'My Wishlist'. :) A Scratch Pad would suffice in a pinch, although preferably only as a stop-gap until a "proper" Wishlist could be added.

When customisation is implemented, I would hope we would also have the ability to choose which modules go in which column.

I would ideally like to change/modify the 'Talk' section a little. I would like to have the option to show only Bookmarked Topics with unread posts in the 'Talk' section on the home page (ie as another option along with: All topics | Your groups | Your posts | Bookmarked topics). This is essentially the Starred Topics; I just prefer the name bookmarks. :) It would be good if there was also a Bookmark This Group option to populate this selection, if I should so choose. That way, I have even more control over what appears there, and if I'm following a particular conversation/group I can instantly catch up on new stuff without having to click much further, or wade through all threads in all my groups.

I also like the idea of being able to have multiple locations appear in 'Local Events'. For example, if I travel regularly, I might want to have several cities that I watch for events.

If Connection News could have another option to follow member names only as per an inputted list (rather than "my friends" or "my private watch list"), I'd like that too, although it wouldn't be at the top of my list.

I'd like the MWYB section to be smaller, but "expandable" by one click. That way I can scroll past it more quickly. :)

After a quick scan of the thread, some other ideas I liked were:
- Newbie module
- Filterable reviews (if I could somehow only see reviews of non-fiction books, for example, I *might* be more inclined to view that section).

I've uploaded a new picture to my profile page but it doesn't show on my home page, is there something I'm doing wrong or am I not able to change the image on home page, Deni

>191 anxovert: - generally, members' posting activity is not something that's been public on LT, I think by design, and out of concerns about privacy and too personal tracking. There has been a bit of discussion about that before (you can't search for posts by particular users, for instance, and you can only see talk stats for yourself). Personally, I like it the way it is, and I'd probably participate less in talk if I thought someone could follow my every move and every post. I know that's how other forums are run, but it hasn't been the way this one works, and I think there might be an outcry if it changed...

I take your point, and in other forums which have such a feature I don't recall using it, but with literally hundreds of LT Groups I don't have time to read every single thread.

As users need to grant their permission to be listed as a 'friend' I wonder if it might be possible to highlight posts by friends?

sorry if this has been mentioned already...

if I hit the 'ignore' button on a thread in the Talk (Forums) panel on my home page, the 'ignore' status doesn't stick and the thread reappears when I refresh the page. this doesn't seem to occur on the full Talk page.

Reccomendations Module:
At the moment this just links to the work that has been recommended. It would be better if it also showed the original book that's recieved this recommendation.

>217 reading_fox: Assuming that reading_fox is referring to the member recommendations, I'll second that request. The origin book is, if anything, more important than the book being recommended.

Also threads with only flagged posts be removed from the talk list? A spammer filled up 7/10 of my "Your groups" list this morning.

And I'll third (at least) the observation that book covers I've added recently are not displaying in the "Recently added module." A custom cover I added before the home page existed does display.

Yes...covers of recently added books. I started a thread about this a while back, but nobody responded to it. I guess it was being discussed (a little) right here. I thought maybe I was the only one that had this problem.

Overall I really like the home page. I've modified a few of the modules and will do more layout and changing when we can customize more.

What I like - almost all of it.
From my point of view, I'll be keeping:
-Recently added (but reduced #)
-Recommendations (again reduced #)
-Connection news (but will probably use the full version more so I can toggle between the libraries better, reduced it's a good quick glance though)
-Local events (reduced in size and will likely move to the bottom)
-Talk with the modifications discussed above. Would use it more if it could filter on unread or between groups I watch and those I've joined. Configuring it for members to add Standing Groups would help. It's a concern that if members weren't early joiners, then they won't see the standing group posts at all via Home page?
-Zeitgeist - LOVE IT, plan to move it up and look forward to more stats in there!
-Members with your books - Keeping for sure

Right hand column has less of the love:
-Blogs yes, thanks for including a quick summary of posts from both blogs
- It can stay but less listed
- Recently added, ...yep can stay
-Hot reviews - Planning to remove. - Early Reviews. Planning to remove. Would put back once more Australian publishers get involved but for now it's mainly feeling like a kid with no money watching others in a sweet shop.
- On this Day - Sigh, it could be so good but right now is just boring. Maybe if literary awards or other CK-ness got added down the track?
Featured authors - going, (sorry)

Other module suggestions I'd grab in a flash - combiners module, scribble pad (then I can remove those private comments I post to myself), TAG WATCH!

... and another ball in the air. I'd LOVE a module that let me select certain books and authors I have and provide a feed for when they're touchstoned in Talk or have CK added, or links added to the author webpage. That would rock.
Would NOT like it if it defaulted to all books/authors in my library as the HP would just over-run it. Food for thought anyway.

Thanks Tim & co for putting together such an interesting new feature, and ringmastering the varied response with grace under pressure (on the whole :-)

I don't have anything that hasn't been said before but I'll add my votes.

What are you favorites and least favorites?
Favorites:
- Recently added because I often forget whether I entered a book or not
- Recommendations especially thanks to the new "new" feature.
- Connection news
- Members with your books - probably my favorite LT feature
- Popular this month - even given Tim's concern about how valid the info is, I find it interesting. I would probably prefer weekly though.
- Early Reviewers - even though I'm not interested in the program, I like at as an "upcoming books with buzz" feature.

What would you get rid of, and what order would you put them in?
Everything not mentioned above:
- The profile box. I saw above that Tim may make this unalterable. I don't understand why. Very little of it changes for me, like whether my catalog is public or the date I joined. Your Library, Tags, Add Books, and search are all easily accessible elsewhere. Besides I don't have a picture and am not interested in seeing the silhouette with a question mark all the time. I'd really rather give the screen real-estate to something else.
- Local events. I don't use it (unless I missed some movement on having location private and being able to enter events anonymously)
- Talk - Too much info in too small a space. I'll just go to the talk tab. I might keep it if it had a place for "Your Starred".
- Zeitgeist - Not interested in a continuous update
- Announcements / Blogs - That's was RSS is for
- Recently Added & Hot Reviews - Too random. Many more will be not interesting to me than will be interesting. More targeted ones are done with Connection News, although a Hot Reviews list of only books in my recommendations or Members with My Books might be nice.
- On This Day & Featured Authors - nothing wrong with the feature just not interested.

If you can imagine how other see it, particularly first-time users, what do you think they'd want for defaults?
Starting with the above as a base, for new users I'd change:
- Leave the announcements and blogs. They are not well publicized elsewhere and will allow users to check them out.
- Dump Early Reviewers. I know it gives prominence to the feature, but unless it becomes more international - I don't think it's very welcoming (too much of tease).
- Leave Local with the current message that there's no location if it's not set. Good advertisement to the feature.
- Set connection news to only show friends and interesting libraries as the default. Too much of a who the hell are these guys feel to "similar libraries" list unless you know what's going on.

What modules are missing? What could we add?
- I really like the TagWatch feature.
- A groups module showing links to the groups you belong to and the last X groups created.

Out of town and late to this, so just answering Tim's questions in #1:

Favorites: Connection news, announcements, from the blogs, note that I have a new comment, my zeitgeist, recommendations

Least favorites: Popular this month, recently added by other members, hot reviews, Early Reviewers

What I would get rid of: all the above, but I'm not saying you should get rid of them, just that they're what I'll get rid of.

What new users might want: Sorry, I don't have a clue.

Will think some more about what I might want, after I read through all the posts.

Dear God, how do I turn all those little wretched widgets _off_?

"Until now, sign-in threw you into your catalog"

That was what I liked in the first place! I use LT to catalogue my books. I realize I am probably totally in the minority here, but I detest the new look.

You should at least give us the ability to remove the widgets, or boxes, or whatever these are. From the blogs, Thingology, Popular this Month (GOD no), Hot Reviews (no no no), Most requested books -- no. Just no, okay? I really hate being bounced onto this page when I log in. I will do nothing but flee it as quickly as possible.

This is really disappointing. (And it looks horribly cluttered.)

>223 the_red_shoes:

How are people still missing the posts which clearly state that the modules will soon be removable?

>224 DaynaRT:

Magic powers of obliviousness?

There was some discussion, somewhere, I think, in one of these threads, about whether or not there could be a setting built in where people could decide what page they would go to by default after login. Not sure if that discussion ever went anywhere. But anyway, yes, everything will be customizable, and many things removable, as noted elsewhere.

I agree that the links for Your Library, Tags, and Add Books in the silver books are pretty silly given the tabs for the same things right above them.

I wonder if the settings for the modules can be saved in cookies. The reason I ask is that the number of items that makes the screen look good on my bedroom computer is different than on my living room computer which has a different size screen (actually it's a flat screen which doubles for the tv).

221> - Local events. I don't use it (unless I missed some movement on having location private and being able to enter events anonymously)

Locations can be private (that is you can set the private one in the locations feature and have a more general location or no location on your profile. I don't know about anonymous events.

Thank you, rsterling. You answered my question about a default page :)

229 - yeah, I'm not sure if this is something being considered or not. You might want to check on this thread or the part one of it, because I can't remember where/whether I saw some discussion about this or what the outcome was.

First off -- to redredshoes (223) -- you can still go directly to your catalog. Just go to http://www.librarything.com/catalog/redredshoes.

Second -- the home page is interesting, and I can live with it pretty much as it is. Connection news (What others have added to their libraries, ratings and reviews) right now is relatively meaningless for us. The reviews would be of more interest if more of them were actually reviews instead of catalog-style book descriptions or table of contents. Local events is interesting but seems to be a bug in it today. It was working early this morning, but right now it shows "no location supplied" although we have a location specified. Talk and Zeitgeist are nice-to-haves. Members with Your Books is pretty meaningless to us. On the right side everything is pretty straight-forward -- except that Recently Added by Other Members is duplicative (already in profile).

Tim, on the continuing discussion about the "Hot/Popular This Month" Module -- Rather than some kind of a complex algorithm, would it make sense for this to actually reflect books currently being read rather than books entered. Books currently being read could be based on a started reading date of the past XX days.

Really like the idea of a "Tag Watch" as a new feature.

Like the idea of being able to customize reviews shown -- perhaps base that on Tags and/or Dewey Decimel classification (broad 3-digit class). Would make the reviews displayed more meaningful, especially if there are certain topics of special interest to someone right now.

Like the idea of a "What I'm/We're Reading Now" module.

Final comment, several people have talked about some video training. I personally don't know that the video is crucial, but some kind of a separate features module that provides better information on the website would be helpful -- in effect, an expanded FAQ section. For example, small stuff such as having no idea of what Tag Mirror is, except that there is a place to click it on, and the page shows up blank. And bigger issues like having no luck at all in figuring out combining.

Bottom line, think you have done an excellent job in putting this new "Home Page" together. The fact that there is so much variance in what people like and dislike shows that you tried to anticipate a wide range of needs. And ultimately providing the ability to move modules around, expand or shrink them, or eliminate them entirely, gives us all the ability to personalize it. Terrific job on everything.

John

231>

Using date-started would (1) decrease the volume of data by a couple orders of magnitude -- most people don't use it -- and (2) turn the statistic into "Books currently being read by people who use date-read", which would skew the data.

I would be in favor of a "books currently being read" based on the status rather than the date, however.

At this point Zoe will pop in to suggest that giving greater prominence to the date functions would increase their usage. :)

While redredshoes (223) may have missed the "you will be able to turn this off" notice, I'm otherwise very much in agreement.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I use LT pretty much just for cataloging. To see this facebook-esque cluttered "Home" page is a major turn-off, and I'll probably end up ignoring it and staying with going straight to my library -- that's where my LT bookmark is anyway. I'll use the Home page instead as a collector of all the information previously scattered under the myriad of Profile sections. With that disclaimer:

Favorites:
* Recent recommendations
* Connection news (but this ought to default to NOT including top 50 similar libraries)
* Local events
* Announcements

Least Favorites:
* Popular
* Recently Added
* Hot Reviews
* On This Day (this especially -- it's a cool use of LT aggregate data, but it feels so much like one of those little widgets you put on a page just to have another widget on the page, y'know?)

Also, what's with the little member info box? I know who I am, and "Your Library" "Tags" and "Add Books" are already tabs, right where I like 'em. The search box might be useful, I guess, but if I want to do library-things and not homepage-data-aggregation-things, I'll go to my Library.

What would you get rid of, and what order would you put them in?

I'd dump pretty much all of the whole-site widgets, keeping only Announcements and maybe Early Reviewers.
I'd also dump Talk (which is probably awesome for those involved, but it's not something that would have any use for me) and Members With Your Books.
At that point the default order would be fine, although I might jump Local Events up to the top -- I live in an area where this box is generally not going to be crowded.

If you can imagine how other see it, particularly first-time users, what do you think they'd want for defaults?

I think the order is okay, although if you're actually interested in promoting the Early Reviewer program via this page you should move it up above the fold.
Frankly I think the default should be ALL available widgets -- a default user is far more likely to remove a widget than search out a widget to add, so as long as you think a widget might be useful, it should be there by default. Even though people like me will immediately get rid of most of them, it's the easiest way to present the full range of widget possibilities and make sure none get ignored.

What modules are missing? What could we add?

Instead of (or in addition to) Hot Reviews, I'd love a Reviews widget that was based in some way on my Recommendations list. A well-written review is a treat to read, sure, but I'm more interested in reading reviews that might influence my choice of books, and that's far more likely to happen if the review is about a book in my Recommendations list.

#221: Group module, yes. And please include groups, I'm member of, groups, I watch and groups I've been put into by force.
If there is place for taking notes like: I'm considering these groups: FAQ, Sitetalk, ... and maybe for suggestions from LT ... , it would kill off one of my wiki subpages.

>231 GHTC-KC:/232 Important caveat - what I'm about to say is based completely and totally on my own opinion and speculation.

Extrapolating from broad hints left here and there throughout Talk by LT staff members in the last several weeks, I believe that they will be introducing Currently Reading and Recently Read as status buttons - a check box you can use to indicate a book's status. I do not believe they will be using the date fields to populate these features. I think this will be rolled out as either a.) a precursor to collections, or b.) as part of collections. I have a feeling these will enable data streams and widgets that can be used on the Profile and Home pages. However, I think that LT staff will wait a bit to ensure that a significant enough portion of the LT population is using them before using the status buttons to power any major features or recommendations.

168: Re silver box at the top, I agree -- it takes up space without providing anything I care about.
171: 100 pixels at the top of the page is frustrating if stuff below it is more interesting but doesn't fit on the screen. (I have two monitors and _still_ I'm irritated by unused/unuseful space because there's so much that I want to see.) Right now (may change?) the links in the silver box are duplicated by tabs, and I don't have or aspire to have a picture. What with the LT banner and the tabs and the silver box, the dynamic home page content of interest to me doesn't begin until 1/3 way down the page.

> 235

Currently Reading and Recently Read already exist, as checkboxes on the Edit Book page. Or are you suggesting they'll be accessible elsewhere?

Personally, I *am* using the date fields, because they're accessible directly from my library, without having to take the extra step of editing the book (and the checkboxes are at the opposite end of the edit form from the dates).

While I can see that it would be detrimental to remove the status flags entirely, because they could be simpler and more accessible than setting the entire dates, I think it be nice to have Currently Reading set when the date started is entered, and cleared on date finished. If the user wanted to change them manually they'd be able to do that as well, but it'd be nice to have them cascade rather than forcing me to enter two fields.

>238 wimble: I'm at work so I don't have time to look up all the posts I'm about to reference, but here's a bit of a recap on some of your comments.

Yes, the Currently Reading check box exists on the book Edit page. Also included is To Read. Recently Read does not exist as a check box. However, at this time none of these check boxes do anything besides be a check box.

The dates are accessible through your library, although there was approximately 2 months where they did not work and you may or may not have lost data. About a week ago, Tim fixed the problem and restored most data, but there was an issue with some of them. You will need to poke though the posts in the Bug Collectors group to find the specific posts about it. At this time, there is still a problem with multiple dates showing correctly in the catalog (sorting is off). Here is the thread about this issue - it includes links to another thread with lots of discussion about previous problems: http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=39429

There was a long discussion about auto-filling the dates when someone checks the Currently Reading checkbox. In fact, the check boxes were deactivated because that's what they did initially and there were all sorts of unintended problems and consequences. There were some bugs, but also several users did not like having dates automatically filled for them. No one has discussed filling in the Currently Reading box when you enter a date (as you do), which is an interesting idea.

ETA: wimble: I hope I don't come across as sounding like a know-it-all or that I'm dismissing your comments. Somehow, along the way, I've become interested in the date issues here on LT and have ended up following them closely. Between me and another user, _Zoe_, we seem to have cornered the market on dates in LT (and not the good kind of dates, either, although I shouldn't speak for Zoe! ;^) )

One of my biggest issues with the Zeitergist as it stands now is that few of the titles link to anything relevant. They should link to your CK facts, your venue pics, your venues, your recommendations.

I thought I should note that my custom covers have now appeared in the recently added section. Good.

My recently added covers are correct now as well. Thanks!

Well, since I'm expected to give a response here.... ;)

Using date-started would (1) decrease the volume of data by a couple orders of magnitude -- most people don't use it -- and (2) turn the statistic into "Books currently being read by people who use date-read", which would skew the data.

I would be in favor of a "books currently being read" based on the status rather than the date, however.

This makes no sense. Why would skewing be a problem if the date fields were used, but not if the status were used? The same goes for your first point; even a status-based list would have much less data.

Plus, it's all about the presentation of the feature (I know, I'm so predictable). The date fields are hidden away at the bottom of a disorganized edit page, don't appear in any of the 5 default catalogue views, were seriously broken for a long time, and are constantly proclaimed to be useless by the LT staff. Goodreads has plenty of date data. LT could have plenty of data too, if they cared about it.

As things stand, I'm guessing that there's more data in the date fields than in the status checkboxes (and incidentally, I wish the zeitgeist could be expanded to include more interesting data like those numbers). But of course, the claim that status is so much better is based on expected improvements to the status feature, while the claim that dates are insufficient is based on the current treatment of dates.

>239 Talbin: *grin*

Checked in here after an absence of several days, and I almost thought I was on the wrong site.

Favorites
Extended Members with your books list – I love it!
Local events (Note for those who say Local is empty – pitch in and help! Pick a favorite bookstore and add a few events per week. If everyone did that, Local would be much richer.)
On this day – but I agree with those who say it should be expanded beyond births and deaths.

Least favorite
Hot reviews – sorry, I have absolutely no use for this
Popular this month – likewise
Gray box at top is a waste of space – I haven’t posted a photo (and why would I need my own photo anyway?), and the links are redundant to the tabs above.

Things I like
Recent recommendations – 4 titles in each column, with link to more, is about right.
Connection news (although I could do without seeing NEW! after each item – it reminds me of breakfast cereal, which is always NEW! and improved)
Quick links to All Topics/Your groups/Your posts in Talk
Early Reviewers – to let new members know about this program right away
Zeitgeist
The “updated every xxx” designation after some elements
Announcements and From the blogs – because I forget to look there (here again, I question the value of showing NEW! after most items)

Indifferent
Recently added – I know what I added, and if I forget, I can go to my catalog. (As noted by others, it does add some color to the page, but how many copies of my default cover do I need to see?)
Most requested early reviews – these are usually not the titles I find interesting.
Short list of talk topics
Featured authors
Recently added by other members (mildly interesting as an indication of the diversity of interests among LT members)

Order
Left column: Local events (if you miss these, they are gone), Talk, recent recommendations, Connections, Members with your books, Zeitgeist
Right column: Announcements, From the blogs, On this day, Early Reviewers, Recently added by other members

What to put in defaults
No opinion here.

What to add
I agree with the following suggestions by other members:
Tip of the day
Early Reviewers: closing date for current batch, and warning if missing reviews jeopardize one’s chance of getting a book in the next round
Notepad
Average star rating for recommendations
Option to bypass all of this visual clutter and go directly to catalog

> 239

Sorry about getting the existing "To Read" box mixed up with the non-existant "Recently Read". You're right, of course.

Yes, I'd object if clicking the check-box filled in a date: I finish a book, and do something else (frequently, turn out the light and go to sleep). I might not get around to clicking the check-box until the next day, at which point, it would fill in the date. And be out by an entire day! So wrong! :)

On the other hand, the other way around is just a short cut from the detailed information to the more vague. And the boxes could still be ticked manually so they still work if the dates weren't used. I'm surprised they don't to be honest. It's how I *expect* LT to work. I'm used to it just doing what I expect, it's a bump when it doesn't.

You come across fine. I didn't want to wander into the middle of a discussion where, clearly, people knew what they were talking about. I knew I knew what I was talking about, but that might have been old hat to you ;-)

ETA: Oh, I hadn't even twigged that the date fields could hold multiple dates. I've only been keeping track of my reading dates since last June, and I've not had cause to re-read anything yet. That does, potentially, complicate cascading the data, since it means the start and finish dates need to be matched to create date ranges, and then work out whether the book's currently being read. Or worse, I could start reading it multiple times, without finishing it!

> 232 (via 243)

I'm with Zoe here. I *don't* check the "Currently Reading" box for the reasons I gave above. So by only using that for analysis, you're skewing the data in the opposite direction. Possibly not by so much, but still skewing.

The dates have the advantage that they can be sanity checked, if the user starts reading a book, but forgets to say they've finished it. Anything which was started more than X days ago (say 3 months, 3 years, or whatever value you desire), and still doesn't have a finish date on it could be listed to the user, and they could confirm that they have, in fact, finished it.

The simple checkbox, on the other hand, can't be sanity checked. If it's checked yesterday, or 3 years ago, it all looks the same, so the only way the user could be prompted to correct it would be to list *all* the books they're allegedly reading, most of which would be fine. So that'd be a really irritating check. (Of course, it may be that the system keeps the date the flag was changed, and could use that to generate a check report. But in that case, the flag date is effectively just a different form of the "date started")

But anyway, it wouldn't be impossible to have both working, if that was wanted.

I know collections aren't up yet, but until then, how about the ability to customize the "Recently Added" module by tag, so that it becomes "Recently Tagged X".

That way I could have a list of my recently finished books (all tagged 'read').

"Recently Added" doesn't mean much to me because I'm adding books all the time even if I'm not reading them in that order.

Love the new home though!

>228 jjwilson61:

Locations can be private (that is you can set the private one in the locations feature and have a more general location or no location on your profile. I don't know about anonymous events.

Thanks, I guess I got the two things combined in my mind. Maybe I'll give that a try.

I am having a slight variation of the no cover showing up on the home page problem.

In the recently added section, I have my chosen default blank cover. I just added a book with no Amazon cover according to LT - though it is just published and had an Amazon cover.

I added the cover from Amazon, and it shows up in my library, but it has not made an appearance on the home page. It may be a caching thing, but I would think it should cycle pretty quickly, otherwise why put it on the home page. Adding a book and having to add or fix the cover is a pretty common occurrence. Waiting hours/days weeks for it to correct itself will just make the cover area look like missing teeth.

Popular This Month is just boring if it doesn't change. I don't think you have to worry about some Asimov freak adding all their books and it taking over, or anything similar. If you cycle through fast enough (1 day is probably good), the junk will be gone. After 1 day, maybe even before, you just stop looking at it. If you have a month/several weeks of not looking at it, you have just killed interest in the module.

Overall, I love the new homepage; apologies if any of this is repetitive.

*What are your favorites
Recently Added, Connection News, Local Events, On This Day, Members with Your Books (which I'd ideally move up to just below Connection News)

*and least favorites?
From the Blogs, Popular This Month, Hot Reviews, Featured Authors, Talk Forums

*What would you get rid of, and what order would you put them in?
Early Reviewers, Featured Authors, Hot Reviews, From the Blogs, Talk Forums

I don't know if this is feasible but it would be wonderful if users could arrange their home page as they'd like, with as many or as few of the modules as they like. Also, a "what I'm reading" bit, as mentioned by others above, would likewise be fantastico.

Could most popular this month, week, day, or hour run off an algorithm like Amazon's Movers And Shakers? I know LT doesn't have sales ranks to base from, but could something take the place of sales rank? I've found some of my favorite books I'd never heard of before from skimming M&S. Some will only show up once and others will show up time and again. I find more stuff from M&S than I do from the Top 100 which seems to feature popular stuff that can stay on the list for months.

Defaults:
On the left hand side in order...
Recently added
Recent recommendations
Talk (Forums)
Members with your books
Your Zeitgeist
Connection news
Local events

On the right hand side in order...
Announcements
Recently Added by Other Members
From the blogs
Popular this Month
Hot Reviews
On this day
Featured Authors
Early Reviewers

thanks for this innovation - I like it :)

Love the new home page.

I think it could be improved by adding clearer descriptions/definitions of what each module represents when the user clicks the ? icon. For example, the "Recommendations" module appears to be based on books in the user's (ie the homepage person) library rather than random recommendations but this isn't stated under the ? icon. At the moment it may be a bit confusing for new or infrequent users to figure out how all this info got on their LT homepage.

BUG: this was reported already by Freelunch in #216, but in case you missed it, Tim:

if I hit the 'ignore' button on a thread in the Talk (Forums) panel on my home page, the 'ignore' status doesn't stick and the thread reappears when I refresh the page ... or when switching to another view (starred, your posts, etc.) and back. Ignore works properly on the main Talk page, and changes made there are reflected immediately on the new Home page (after a refresh, that is).

Thanks, Tim, for the very cool new feature.

Most useful: everything on the left.
Least useful: Recently Added by Other Members, Featured Authors

A suggestion for improving the look of the page: I agree with some others that the new Home page is somewhat "busy" in look. I can imagine it will only get worse as more new modules are added. I know you plan to give users the ability to remove modules, but how about adding the ability to collapse/expand the modules, similar to an iGoogle page, for example?

That way users could keep the modules (or widgets or whatever your calling them) on the page, but collapse them down to just title bars to preserve a clean, streamlined appearance. When I want to focus on just one or two things, I don't want everything else on the page competing for screen real estate (and my attention) -- but I also don't want to have to remove the modules entirely.

Thanks again for the new page. It's a much better entry to LT.

Now the home page has been up a few days I'm finding that I avoid it as it has too many features that don't interest me and just function as noise. Once it becomes customisable it may come to replace the profile page for me as it certainly has a better-looking interface. It would be nice to have the choice not to be directed there on log-in.

Favourite/least favourite features = what I'd keep/what I'd remove. Stuff that I'd ditch asap: Recent recommendations, Popular this month, Recently Added by Other Members, Hot Reviews, Early Reviewers, Featured Authors. Stuff that doesn't particularly interest me but doesn't really annoy me either and I'd probably keep but move to the bottom of the page: Recently added, Local events, Your Zeitgeist, On this day.

So my home page would end up quite minimalist in appearance but then I count myself firmly in the anti-social, unsophisticated user camp :p

Translation/link error:
In the "Early Reviewers" box, the SUB1 link in the following sentence links to the english version of the month name, so that the english name of the month is shown in the other languages:
"The batch includes copies of books."

I like the 'Hot Reviews' section but would like an option for 'No Quote' as well as short, medium and long as I like to know what's reviewed but don't read reviews until I've read the book myself. That's just a mini-quibble though!

Idea for Featured Authors:
I think "Featured Authors" should be modified to make it more interesting. Otherwise, it's just pictures of two people whom we don't know. How about using just one author (since you change it frequently anyway) and a line or two of interest? Perhaps use an interesting fact about the author's life or quote a line or two from one of the author's works. You could get this information when you sign up new authors so that this module won't have to be created manually.

Maybe people have mentioned this before, in which case I apologise in advance for not fully reading the preceding posts .... but as the Home Page is the portal (which it has firmly become ensconced as in my usage already), could we have an 'Edit Account Settings' option on there. It's a bit annoying to have to return to the Profile page to edit my account settings.

This may have been mentioned (like klarusu, above, I apologize for not having the stamina to read through all the posts), but I would prefer to have a list of my groups instead of the listing of Talk threads. I can easily go to Talk to read the most recent threads, but it would be handy to have links to my groups on my home page.

Edited to correct typo.

Performance on the home page seems a bit slow, particularly every time I change the settings of a section.

Also, it would be great if I could choose which sections to display (not just how many items to display in each section but, e.g., can "Hot Reviews" entirely). It would also be awesome if I could arrange which sections I want to appear where on the screen. (I'm thinking something along the lines of iGoogle.)

From the first post of this thread:

First, to repeat we will be giving members the ability to remove pieces entirely.

klarusu
Tim has said at one point that he is going to move the 'edit account' option to the Home page as soon as possible. Most seem to agree that is a good thing to do.

The featured authors are highlighted again. FYI.

>246 fetchseven:

I second fetchseven's request! Until the collections feature is ready, could you make the "Recently Added" home page module function more like the blog widget? I would use this immediately to have a list of my recently read books. And others might enjoy using the module differently (random or recent books tagged X).

Cheers!

I'd like to second the idea of a tagmash module. Something like "X Most Recent Tagmashes".

I am puzzled by the turning clogs (or whatever they are) on home page. What am I supposed to do with them?

Turning clogs? Maybe I'm still jet-lagged, but I just took a look at my LT homepage and didn't see anything that could be described as "turning clogs".

268 - The turning cogs or whatever they are tell you that modules are loading, if nothing loads then you should post here because it may be a bug.

I love the term "turning clogs."

There is no use. The site has unfortunately been slow today because we lost "memcache" last night. It has been steadily building up the cache and should be about normal now.

Just an FYI. Local events still seem to not be working on my home page.

Have a location set. Have number of miles specificed. And I know for a fact that there are local events in queue for that location. But, home page shows that no location is selected.

>272 GHTC-KC: You might want to try posting in Bug Collectors. As this thread gets longer, specific bug fixes may tend to get lost in all the other discussion. Also, when you do, you might want to mention your browser and OS, as local events are working in my home page - it might be something specific to your setup.

272 - This was mentioned on Monday in the other New Home Page thread, Tim said he'd told Chris about it so I guess they're working on it.

Chris thinks he fixed it. I'll message him.

Local seems very wonky.

I have an event and it comes and goes on the home page. I had an expired event still listed at the top of the local page for about a week after the event.

somethings outside my mile radius show up, and some that are in it don't ?

>276 FicusFan: FicusFan

As suggested above, these problems will get more attention if you post them in Bug Collectors.

Do you have any favorite bookstores or libraries outside your specified radius? If so, events for those locations will show up.

I posted about my bug (search radius apparently resets itself daily, to bigger than I want) in Bug Collectors and mentioned that there were others, specifically referencing messages 272 and 276 on this thread.

How about a different form of early-reviewers module? The present one is focussed on recruiting reviewers, but this is not hugely useful for those in countries not currently available, or those who (like me) would never get round to writing a review...

A "results from the early reviewers" module - perhaps showing which ER books have recently received reviews, or are highly rated, would let the rest of us learn more, and perhaps help the publishers get a bit more of the buzz they want - for those books that the ER community think are worth it.

>279 TimSharrock:

Interesting ideas.

I won't comment on the ability to re/move sections.

Here are my thoughts on the usefullness of various sections

Top Profile Bit
I know who I am, and #books, status and member since is vaguely interesting (but at least is grey and very small)
Links Your Library/Tags/Add Books is completely redundant, there are tabs for all these not 100 pixels north!
The Search box is useful though it should be noted that this searches your library only (maybe an option to switch between different searches would be useful?)

Recently Added
Like it

Recent Recommendations
Like it.
Maybe add "by AN Author" with link to author page?
For Member Recommendations add which book it was recommended for

Connection News
This is good, but there seems to be a problem with ratings being shown

Local Events
Add events at your favourite venues and those events you have shown an interest in

Talk
Add option to view only Starred threads.
Also, it may be an idea to allow people to view only new threads, or only threads with unread posts

Your Zeitgeist
Love it, but should links to directly to your CK facts/Venus/Events etc?

Members with your books
Nice, especially the fact that we can increase over the 50

Annoucements
Unless this is going to have things other than links to blog posts, then I'd get rid of it at the first opportunity

From the Blogs
Allow members to reduce/increase number of posts shown.
Also, show date stamp for posts (or new! label)

Popular This Month
&
Recently Added by Other Members
Vaguely interesting, but a link to the history of these
month-by-month or minute-by minute would make is very interesting indeed
Also, a way to limit these to books you might be interested in (by your tags) could be even better

Hot Reviews
(This looks like it's going to be self-perpetuating, review shown here are more likely to get thumbs up, right?)
Allow users to specify any/all of the following
Reviews on All books (as currently)
Only reviews on my books
Only reviews on books recommended to me
Only review by people I know (connections news-wise)

Early Reviews
I'm like a kid in a forbidden candy shop with no money
Maybe only show this to people who are eligible?
Or only show books to people who are in the eligible locations?

On this day
Some way to link to all listings for this day would be nice?
Allow users to chose from
All my authors
All my favourite authors
All authors on subjects I like (this would have to work on tags I suppose and would have to match up current users tags vs. tags on author's books)

Featured Authors
Fine

I have added a couple of small features to Home-Local:
The listing can now include events from your favorite venues, regardless of where they are.
The listing can now include favorited events, regardless of where they are.

I did a pretty extensive rewrite of the home location functionality for Local. It had a lot of baggage attached to it because of the evolution of Local from a small partnership project to a major LT-only project.
I've tried to strip out that baggage to make Local easier and faster to improve. Of course, that means that I wrote tons of new code and bugs may crop up. I'll squash them as soon as I can find them.

I'm also working on a customization solution for the Home page layout. It's not "the" solution, but it will do until we can get a sexy solution figured out some time in the future. I'm hoping to have the quick solution out the door by Friday.

>281 Donogh:/282
ooh, that was quick!

281: All good comments.

I'll answer your comments about the modules that I made (although I may be working to fix bugs and add features to the others too)...

The "me" silver box at top:
The reason that we include a picture and your member name is because that box gives the page a sense of "place." We all talked about it and every single one of us liked the box there instead of not. It also gives us a place to provide items that we know are going to be on everybody's home page. The only real item like that right now is the comment alert that shows up when you have a profile comment, but we may want to put different items there in the future. Having a place to do that is important for us.
As far as the links in the silver box. I agree with you 100%. I lost that vote. :) But I won the vote for the small grey text (I like it there because it also gives you a sense of ownership and belonging to the page).

Local: You'll notice that I was already hard at work putting those two features in. yay!

Zeitgeist: Yeah, I'd love to link to personalized versions of each of the items (your CK items, the events you've added, etc.) but we don't currently have pages for some of those items. Until we build out those user-centric pages then the best I can do is link to the global CK or Local pages.

On this day: I think that we could probably allow customization for "all my authors" and "all my favorite authors" but the reality is that the data for that module is very sparse. If you selected those items most people probably wouldn't get any entries for most days. But it's something to think about. The tags idea is an interesting one but is a pretty big request.

> 284

I think that we could probably allow customization for "all my authors" and "all my favorite authors" but the reality is that the data for that module is very sparse. If you selected those items most people probably wouldn't get any entries for most days.

Perhaps that would encourage folks to enter data in the CK fields!

Apologies, I'm not going to read the 286 messages in this thread (and so will probably repeat something from above:

Favorites:
1.) The connection news updates. I love this addition. It's lead me to check out quite a few books.

What to add:
1.) In the connection news updates: some designation whether the user is an "interesting library"/"Friend" or whether they simply fall in the "members with your books" category. Currently it's confusing.
2.) A listing of my reviews that were recently thumbed
3.) An explanation of what a "Hot Review" is...(well, I see now there is an explanation here in post #78)

Again, sorry if it's been mentioned before ....

Would it be possible to have a 'Refresh' button on the 'Talk' module like there is on the Recently Added to save having to refresh the whole page to see the latest posts?

Ooo, another module idea. What about displaying new coverpics for your books (that others uploaded)?

> 288

Clicking on the link for the active view in the talk module (e.g. "Your groups") will refresh the view.

I didn't expect to love the 'recent additions' module but it's growing on me. I'd like to have it on my profile page. I know others discussed how to copy the code over but it would be static. I'd like it to refresh automatically.

>290 snurp: - Ahh, it does indeed. Many thanks!

I like the new home page in general. I'm not too sure about "hot reviews," though. I like the "Reviews of your books" or whatever the exact title is on my profile page because those change frequently, and they're always books that interest me. In the hot reviews section, though, a book about recovering from childhood incest and sexual abuse has been up there since yesterday. I'm sure it's a great review, but this is, thankfully, not a topic of interest for me. At least one other review seems to be hanging around as well. I wouldn't mind if these reviews came and went quickly, but it's not useful to have reviews of books that don't interest me sticking around for days.

What about random reviews instead of hot reviews? That might mix it up a little more.

Surely this review
http://www.librarything.com/review/32486186
showing up in Hot Reviews
is an anomaly though?

Wow, I'm completely overwhelmed by the number of posts in this thread, so I'm sure there are things I'm missing. However, I came here because my recently uploaded covers are not displaying. The ones I uploaded yesterday still show the generic or incorrect covers. A couple of folks said theirs were now correct; is it a caching issue? I'm willing to wait if I know they're coming.

#289, an update on newly uploaded covers would be fun; I have a lot of old editions. However, with my new, trusty scanner by my side, if I dug out a book to confirm the uploaded cover was for my book, I'd probably just scan it. OTOH, other people could take advantage of my scanning frenzy.

To "me, too" several others, I would dig the covers of new additions on my profile page. (Dig? Did I just channel George Carlin?)

I'm sure it's been mentioned, but I'd love to be able to rearrange the modules. That's always the first thing I do with anything; check the preferences and play around.

I LOVE having the blog posts link on the home page.

The reviews, eh, unless there was some way to make them relevant to my library (books I have, books on my recommendation list, books I've given star ratings, books I've reviewed, books in my husband's account, books I've written ;-)

As far as factoring popularity into the spotlighted authors, hey, give us niche-market, one-book-wonders a break here, ok? Heck, ya got just under 1000 LT authors; showcase three a day and everyone gets their shot once a year.

Ugh! Horrible! (Insert here string of foul words you would not allow me to post.)

It looked so weird that I closed the window, thinking I'd logged into something else by mistake. When I logged in again and got the same horror, I immediately began looking for how to default to my Profile or Library page. How? Help!

Well, I have given the new page a bit more time and attention and my latest thoughts are:

As I said somewhere up the line earlier, I generally like the stuff on the left side of the new 'home' page and I like being able to edit them. Donogh above has some good suggestions.

*Recently added: I could take or leave this, but it's kind of pretty and visually it breaks up text. Better: recently read! (based on those dates we log on the book's page). It would also be nice to have this feature somewhere on the profile page (since some of us laboriously code in book covers...it breaks up all the text on the profile page too; makes it real purty!)
*Recommendations: Not interested, loved being able to zero this. If you want to start giving me recommendations based on my recent reading, I'd be interested; but recommendations based on books bought and read in the 70s and 80s is just icky.
*Connection news: This highlight loads way faster than the full list! It's a nice glimpse of what my friends are up to.
*Local Events: I like this.
*Talk. I've tried to use this but I like being able to see my list of groups and navigate to them from there. Some groups I visit daily, others weekly...etc. Perhaps I need to play with this more but at the moment not sure this offers me more than a highlight.
*Zeitgeist. Like this.
*MWYB. Like this, like having 'recent' back. thanks.

Right side:
I like the announcements and "from the blogs" feature but that's about it. Will look forward to being able to zero out or edit some of the other fields to make them more interesting to me (again, Donogh seems to have some great ideas in #281 above).

I think of the new home page as a work page - something like the cockpit of a plane. However, I'm terribly attached to my Profile page which I would liken to my home - it's been decorated and made comfy for both me to work out of and for others to visit me. It is the first place I go because my messages are there. That's where my lists of groups and friends are which is what I primarily navigate from. It's clear that I won't be going to the home page first while my messages are on the profile page.

However, should my messages, friends and group lists also show up on the home/work page I might convert. Until then, I'm attached to the profile tab (which again, I thank you for returning to us), and the profile page is still what's bookmarked.

(I do appreciate all your hard work trying to refine and make LT even better - even if I don't agree with some of what you come up with.)

Insert here string of foul words you would not allow me to post.

We allow horrible words!

We're going to provide such a switch, for those who find it horrible. I'm afraid I'm not on the home page today, so it's up to Chris, who is working on the ordering part, which is wanted at least as much.

Is anyone else getting the "Welcome to LibraryThing/Here are some options to get started" box at the top of their homepage after they log in? I thought I might have messed something up - I logged in to a new account to test something, then logged back into my old one, and now the box won't go away. I realize there's a "close this box" link, but I'm guessing this box isn't supposed to be there for non-new users.

Yeah. I need to fix that.

You gonna pay for that account, buddy? ;)

297 avaland>

oooohhh, recently read. I like that idea!

233: "While redredshoes (223) may have missed the "you will be able to turn this off" notice, I'm otherwise very much in agreement."

Like redredshoes, I've seen that we will be able to turn off particular widgets within the Home page. What I want (and I suspect RRS & others feel the same) is to circumvent the Home page entirely.

Agree with aqualectrix that I use LT mostly for cataloging. I also like the Groups, but that is the one thing I cannot find on the Home page. So I like my Profile page, which shows my Groups--and without even scrolling.

I am sure that a Groups module will be coming as Tim has stated a goal for the home page to be a central place for navigation of the site. He has explicitely stated that there will be a way to make it possible to specify that the catalog or profile page be the default page after log in.

>303 Karen5Lund:

What do you use about the groups? Not Talk? Do you prefer to use the Talk that's embedded within each group?

Even a Your Starred option would help.

Sometimes I want to go directly to a particular thread, for example my 888 Challenge thread, as easily as possible. Having lots of quick ways to get there is very helpful.

I thought perhaps people were wanting (the option to have) a list of their groups on the homepage.

>307 rsterling:

I think a list would be useful, but again, I want to understand what that's being used for. There are varous reasons for that.

>308 timspalding: Tim, I use the current profile list to jump straight to the main group page for each of my groups. Some of them don't have regular posts so I can't link easily from 'Talk' and sometimes I don't want to go into the group from the 'Talk' side. Also, it helps me keep a track of which ones I'm in! Does that help?

Yeah, it does. So, I think a module for groups you're in should fit the bill.

Default or not? Hard to say.

#308, Tim, I would use a Your Groups module so I could just go to particular groups for Talk instead of to the general Talk page (which I have set to just show threads from my groups) and to review the groups I'm in (kind of like the info that's now on the profile page).

What do you use about the groups? Not Talk? Do you prefer to use the Talk that's embedded within each group?

My default view is all topics. I "ignore" the threads I have no interest in, but there still are a lot of subjects for me to quickly scan over to decide which few to read; however, that's just fine and what I want for reading new messages. But, when I want to make a comment on an ongoing thread in one of my groups, e.g., New York Review Books, it is much simpler for me to go to my profile, click on the group, and easily spot the thread I want than for me to switch to "my groups" view of threads and then search through the multitude of threads to find the one I'm looking for.

So, in short, having the group list is a really useful tool for locating a desired thread in a group that isn't as thread-prolific as others.

>310 timspalding:

I use groups the same way as Klarusu and would also appreciate being able to easily open their group page from my home page.

Also, would it be possible to add some or all of the tabs or links to the bottom of each LT page or screen...or even a (back to the top) link? I would find that useful.

My default view is all topics. I "ignore" the threads I have no interest in...

Wow!

I think the obvious question here is why not go to the Groups tab to get a list of all your groups. For me the answer to that is that the Groups page takes too long to load and I avoid it whenever I can, which is most of the time.

>315 jjwilson61:

THANK you. That's the best way to approach these things. Maybe that's the real problem. Are you on dialup, btw? (I know at least someof the problem is not that.)

No, I have a high-speed connection, but a lot of the time I'm using a computer with a remote keyboard that has a joystick instead of a mouse, which means that it's a pain when I have to mouse from one end of the page to the other.

I just tried the Group page and the load time wasn't too bad so maybe there was another reason I avoided that page. Perhaps it's the location and format of the list of joined groups. The list doesn't even start until half-way down the page and there is so much space between each group that I am forced to page down to find the one I'm looking for. The group list on the profile is much more compact but I can only see half my groups until I click more.

I hope that helps.

>315 jjwilson61:/316

I am on dial-up and that's why I never go groups (or worse, talk) when on my own computer.

What I'd really like is to have something that displays the info in lower, yellowed-in box on the groups page, i.e., the groups I've designated as watched.

The now-eclipsed entrance page (pre-home page version) made this info visible as simple list. I could then click on a chosen group and look at it alone, not the intermingled mishmash of posts from all my watched groups, a la New Home Page module. (Which, I admit, is now even less organized due to my need to lighten up every module to get the page to load at all.)

cobb

>318 bcobb:

You only want watched, not joined?

>314 timspalding: Why wow? I do the same thing.

>314 timspalding: Me too.

315/317: Maybe the list of "your groups" could be moved to the top of the Groups page?

And yeah, it would be handy to have more of the static lists (groups, favorite authors, friends/interesting libraries/watchlist, etc) as an option on the home page.

303: Tim has said that they are working on a feature to set a particular page as a default page after a login. I'm still happy that it loads to something other than the catalog, but people will be able to set it back to the catalog, profile, etc.

> 314

That's my default as well. Although I'm a member of scads of groups, I often check out interesting-sounding topics in other groups that I would not see if I limited myself to "My Groups".

>320 Morphidae:

Wow, though. That never crossed my mind. Seems like too much. Then again, posts cluster a lot into topics, so "ignore" can be effective.

No wonder you guys seem to be everywhere ;)

>324 timspalding: I ignore a lot at the group level, too.

314 etc.>

I suppose if people are either members of or ignoring the super-high-traffic groups (Hogwarts Express and Green Dragon) an "all topics" default might be reasonable. It's not my default, but I dip in now and then to, as lilithcat says, look for interesting topics in groups I don't know about.

I prefer Your Groups as an everyday way to use talk but about once a week or so I look at All Topics. Sometimes this leads to my adding still another group to my watched list.

Anyway a module that would give us either or both listings of our joined and watched groups would be used by me.

I'll add my vote to having some choices of how to set groups/talk options. My default is to open Talk in a separate window and set it to "my posts," but I also check my groups occasionally and less often, All Topics. That's how I stumbled on the incredible pictures posted in a geology thread, although I know nothing--really nothing--about geology. Still, serendipitous.

305: "What do you use about the groups? Not Talk? Do you prefer to use the Talk that's embedded within each group?"

I like to visit each group individually. (Well, particularly the Tea! group, which is very active.) I don't like seeing only the most recent posts selected out, almost randomly, based on chronology; I like to see them all in the context of the group. You know, like dropping into my neighborhood tea shop when I feel like having a cuppa and some chat. Or going to the bookstore to see who's reading what this week...

(OK, maybe you could alert me to the rare time somebody other than me posts to Disaster Buffs....)

Edited to say that klarusu (309) said it very well, except I'd already replied to Tim (305) before I read it. The way Groups works now from the Profile page suits me perfectly. I see all my Groups and choose the one I want to visit; from there I choose whatever threads are new and interesting at the moment.

I generally go to the Talk tab (which (is supposed to) defaults to Your Posts), read those, then in one of them go up to the top of the topic and click on the group name there. That gets me into that group's top page, from whence I can see the list of my groups on the right. I'm embarrassed (but not very) to say that I had never seen that that list was also on the Groups page - I only go there when someone in a topic I'm following mentions another group that sounds interesting and I need to find it (as I just did for Bookmooching). I do 80% of my reading and 90% of my posting in groups I've either joined or watched, so they're on that list - the list on my profile is completely useless to me because the three groups I use most are all standing (watched) groups, which don't appear there. I do occasionally post in groups I haven't joined or watched, so My Posts has ones I wouldn't see if I _only_ looked at that list - but not very many.

This usage is why I keep asking for that list (or an equivalent one) with groups-that-have-new-posts marked, so I can just click into the ones that actually have something to read.

On another subject, and maybe this has been mentioned before, but I find the Search box at the top of the home page very confusing. From it's placement, I first thought it meant to search to add a book. Then, when I realized it didn't, I was surprised to find it only searched my library, not LT as a whole. I applaud the quest for brevity, but in this case I think it needs to say "Search your library."

As experience with the new Home page accrues, I find that I ignore several features, which I'd be happy to see gone:

Hot Reviews
Featured Authors
Popular This Month.

I'll also second what a couple of other people have said about the little gray icon with the question mark being a waste of real estate.

I'm becoming addicted to Recently Added By Other Members, though: It's so easy to keep hitting the Refresh button, like a rat in a lab repeatedly hitting the cocaine lever to get its little pellet of crack. I've already followed up on a couple of books with interesting-sounding titles and added them to my "Get this" list.

Cool.

I like avaland's suggestion in #297 - provide an option to replace "recently added" books wit "recently read", working from completion dates. Some of my "recently added" books are wishlist items, and most of those I actually purchased won't get read for months or even years. Using the completion dates would also encourage members to fill in those dates.

To expand on that, I will second those who have suggested a "currently reading" list, with an option to use either the "currently reading" check box, or the start date field.

Three bugs:

* The title of one of today's featured authors shows up as No title, while the work actually does have a title

* I set "Members with your books" to ten people, but when I switch from weigthed to raw or recent I get the complete list and not just 10 people. Switching back to weighted doesn't help in restoring the original 10.

* On my profile page the "Members with your books" list apparently also depends on the number you set for your home. Atr least on my profile page it's a short list with a see more option while on other profile pages I see complete lists. I find this slightly annoying as it's sort of information overload for me.

Talking about information overload: that's my current feeling with the new home. There's too much data there for me to process. In other words the data in the page that I want to see is sort of the proverbial needle in the haystack. However, to be clear: I very much like the idea behind the new home.

I also like the idea of a group module. I guess that has to do with the way I read the groups. I go to the group page and click on some of the groups I'm watching or subscribed to. I read the groups in this way, because I also watch groups that interest me, but that I only want to read once in a while, not all the time. So the list of messages posted in "your groups" is too cluttered for me.

It would also be nice if we could show "recently read" in Connection News, via dates :D

For groups, I think the solution is to make it possible to view Talk for exactly the groups that we want to (which is not necessarily the same set as all the ones we're in/watching).

336> That would certainly help me.

#310 I would like a link to each of my groups on the home page. sometimes I want to go in to check my smaller groups, which are always completely eclipsed by the Hogwarts Express, and sometimes when I go into the HE, I want to read posts that are on the second or third page, or one of the threads that's linked on the main page, or check to see if there is anyone in the chatroom. also, when school is in session I have a slower internet connection most of the time (not dial-up, just a really slow old network) and I would like to go through as few pages as possible to get to my group's main page and still be able to check for personal comments and announcements on the way.

My homepage won't stop loading (nothing in left column loads - turning cogs keep going, and going). Fast DSL connection/no problems before/other pages fine.

339 - same here. can click on defining links (all groups, your groups, your posts) in chat to get it to fully load, but otherwise, lots of pinwheel action.

#339 - Mine too; am I correct that you folks are working on it right now? conceptDawg mentioned something earlier about doing some fixes/new tweaks?

#305 - Tim, I use the profile group list, Group main pages (especially the list at the side) similarly to klarusu and others above. Most of my groups are low traffic, and don't often show up on my home page. It would be great if something like the yellow box at the side could come over to the home page.

I'm getting your profiles now. I hope you are too. Maybe Chris pushed something incorrectly and then fixed it. He's "away" in chat now, so I don't know.

I'm not sure I need this, but it seems like a bug: I still don't see my photo/avi on my home page, though it looks fine on the profile page. The black box in its place works as a link to the profile page, though.

Also, despite my having edited it several times, and the fact that it's correct on my profile, the home page insists my location is Boston, MA, which it is not.

I haven't pushed anything tonight so it wasn't a code change that I am aware of. I'm guessing that the database was just being slow for a while. John's been working on it tonight.

Seems better now.

342 & 344> I guess it was the php error I posted about over at bug collectors and which seems solved now:

http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=39863

Also a sucker for viewing 'All Topics' on 'Talk' - I think I'm just nosey! No, seriously, because I like to dip in and out of things....

But, I digress ... one thing I would like in a Groups module would be the ability to leave individual groups by clicking there and also to search 'Groups'. I agree with #315, I know that the Groups tab provides the functionality, but I never tend to go there. Possibly because I'm already using the 'Home' as a one-stop-shop entry to LT and extra loading and clicking's not necessary. I like the fact that from there I can monitor everything and link to everything.

Edited to be more demanding ;)

Why can't the Home page be totally customizable? MyYahoo! page manages to do it. You can choose modules, order of modules, number of columns, themes, etc. I'm not asking for all that, but the ability to choose and rearrange the order of modules doesn't seem like it should be impossible....

I would also like to be able to choose whether to hide individual books in my library, rather than making the entire library either public or private.

And how about the ability to rearrange the display of group posts. I'd prefer to see the newest first, not oldest first.

If I think of something else, I'll be back!

Thanks to the programmers for all the good work done so far.

I'm with the others who view Talk by All Topics. For many of the reasons mentioned above

And agree with >336 _Zoe_:.
I'd love a talk module that lets me select the groups I want to see posts on. (not necessarily those I've watched or joined + the standing groups I can't join anyway). That way I could use the talk module to track smaller less frequently posted groups without their posts being swamped by other groups I'm in.

348: What a great idea: customization of the home page. Noted. {end sarcasm}

>ejj1955

Someone else had the same problem. The user image displays in your profle, but it can't be resized by the graphics parser. This isn't an easy one to fix. My copy of Photoshop, the gold-standard in such things and quite expensive, can't open it either...

#323, I wouldn't mind seeing recently read books, but as somebody said earlier, I am really loving seeing books people on my friends/interesting libraries lists have added and I wouldn't want to lose this. It is really fascinating and I've found many interesting books that way already.

As for recently read, I may be in a minority, but I don't indicate which books I'm reading; if this is more generally true, I'm not sure how interesting this information would be.

On the other hand, I MIGHT check the Currently Reading box (and even remember to uncheck it) IF the book I'm currently reading would show up somewhere like my home page or profile, or be a feed to people who have me on one of their watch lists.

As for recently read, I may be in a minority, but I don't indicate which books I'm reading; if this is more generally true, I'm not sure how interesting this information would be.

There are plenty of people who do indicate it; I regularly go to multiple catalogues to check what people are recently reading, which is exactly what Connection News should be helping me to avoid.

All the other types of news would still exist anyway. Nothing would be lost by adding in Date Read.

Bug(s)

There is no Save button on the module edit screens for Connection News, Local, and Your Zeitgeist.

ETA: Oh, and for the record, I like the new homepage and look forward to tweaking it.

I'm surprised that it never occurred to Tim that plenty of people just stay on "All topics." I mean Talk doesn't move all that fast. I'd get bored so quickly if I limited it to just my groups.

In fact half my groups are groups I've joined because you had to join to post.

>297 avaland:, 302, 352, 354

(at least I think we're all discussing the same thing...)

I would like to display books I've recently read on my LT profile or home page, blog, Facebook profile, forehead...

I would like the widgets/modules/tools/doodads that generate this list of recently read books to give me the option of using the Date Read field to order it.

I would like to do this without impinging on the right of other members to decide not to use the Date Read field or display their books in this way. LT and let LT, you know?

Developers, pretty please with a cherry on top? Thanks for all your hard work and patience.

Tim - is there any way to indicate which blog posts are new (to me)? I just glanced at my Live Bookmark feed and realized there were two new posts in Thingology which I'd missed on the homepage - which is partly because I don't look at the right side of the page much, but I think it's also slightly harder to scan for new stuff in what looks like a paragraph. Bolded, or something? Or a little new after it? That's easy, what's hard is it telling whether I've seen those posts before.

348, Welcome to LibraryThing!
On your first point, customizing, see the first post and others in the thread: this is coming, and very soon, exactly as you wish.

On making individual books rather than library public/private - this isn't so much an issue for the homepage (the homepage is private, your profile and catalog are public, unless you set the catalog to private), but I also like this idea, and it is something that has been suggested and discussed on Talk before. There is a feature called Collections that is coming soon; it would be nice if that allowed allow some groups of books (collections) to be made private, but I don't know how complicated this would be.

On rearranging group posts, I'm not sure what you mean - I guess you mean in individual threads? You can click on the column headings on the Talk page and on the Home page to rearrange the order, and the default is new topics and topics with new posts at the top. Within topics, if there's a new post, you're automatically taken to the bottom to the new post(s).

For non-homepage-related questions and suggestions about LibraryThing, these groups are good places to start: Recommended Site Improvements, FAQ, and Bug Collectors.

What will constitute a collection? Anthologies like Library of America volumes, or compilations of short stories, or Readers Digest Abridged books, or ACE Doubles, or series such as LoTR?

Things that have been suggested for Collections are Wishlist, Currently Reading, each member of a family could have a different collection, Read-but-not-owned.

>360 geneg:, collections are subsets of your library -- things like a wishlist, or a library that's shared by several family members, or the list of books that you don't physically own but have listed in order to review them.

On what collections will be: There have been other threads on this, and I hope there is further discussion as the feature gets developed. Maybe we should move this to another thread, though. (Personally, I hope that collections includes both some "set" subsets like wishlist, currently reading, etc. and the ability to have user-defined subsets. E.g. I might want to catalog all my old children's books, but I want to somehow keep them separate from the rest of my catalog, esp. for purposes of calculating shared books, recommendations, etc.)

PS - when people talk about Collections in Talk, they're more than likely talking about that upcoming feature (subsets of your books), which has been tentatively given that name. Anthologies and compilations are another issue, which has also had some discussion, but from what I understand, this would be difficult to implement (in terms of separately cataloging each part): this issue usually goes under the name part/whole issues. Series, on the other hand, we have already: http://www.librarything.com/blog/2008/01/new-feature-series.php

Thanks for the information.

As I understand it, the intention all along has been to have a few pre-set collections (wishlist etc.), but mostly to allow people to define their own. Still, I'll second that rsterling put it really well, just in case I'm wrong.

365 - done

Quick post here:

I'm very pissed at my computer right now, because it decided to DIE on me Sunday night, I have been without internet since then, and I'm missing so much awesome discussion! I was really getting interested in the homepage, and now I can't mess around with it until I get my internet back. *long sigh*

How to tell you actually DO like the new homepage, despite misgivings: After two days of no-internet, you start whining to be allowed to go to the library just to play around with the new homepage.

Least Favorites: this new homepage seems less personalized to each member and geared more toward the whole LT community. Although this could be a good thing for connecting, I feel it lacks the personal touch of old. I also do not like "recent recommendations" being so prominent and I would get rid of "from the blogs".

Favorites: hot reviews, connection news and talk forums.

I would like to see "member connections" and what other member libraries they find interesting back on the page and also the "about me", "about my library" and "reviews" back on the page. It makes it more personal (see above...least favorites).

369 - the things you list in your third paragraph are still available on the profile, and the profile is still what other members see when they look for you (they can't see the homepage, which is just your personal and private portal into LT). Is it that you'd like to see the things you mention in your 3rd para on both the Profile and Home pages?

#351

Tim--if it's a size problem, would it be possible for me to fix this with my original image and then reload it? If I knew what size would be acceptable to both pages, of course . . .

I'm actually more bothered by the location issue. Why does the home page insist I'm in Boston? I mean, I've been to Boston, but I don't live there. Or close enough to need to know local book events there.

I believe Chris said on another thread that he'd fixe the location problem. Have you tried it lately?

My recently member-uploaded covers still do not display in my homepage. They do show in my catalog.

rsterling- I didn't realize that what I am seeing as "my homepage" was actually not what everyone else was seeing. I just brought the page up and the new homepage was there. Guess I will look into things a bit further before adding my 2 cents first next time. :)

I fixed the location issue (at least through all of my testing it looks like I have). But you will need to edit your location to set it to your real one.

#375

It's like . . . magic. It worked.

>ejj1955

It's not really size. The system sizes and resizes images in a bunch of places. It doesn't resize on the profile unless the image is too large, so we're not running into the problem there. It's basically a problem with your image. Wherever you got it, try saving it again. If you yourself have a graphics program that will read it, try opening and saving under a different name. The last-ditch would be to take a screenshot of it, crop and reupload it.

I tried a different image entirely--fine on profile, blank on home page. Ultimately it doesn't matter, since the home page is just for me--what matters is what's on the profile page--my "public face." At this point, I might just change it frequently and see if by chance I hit on one someday that shows up on the home page. Or not, whatever!

I would like to report that Chris is almost done with the ordering and omitting piece. It works really well—a pop-up with drag-and-drop. He'll be releasing it Monday, I think! :)

I eagerly await the ordering and omitting piece. The new member home page brings forward a large number of pieces that I do not use and it emphasizes features that do not interest me. Once deployed, the ordering and omitting piece should let me remove irrelevancies and distractions.

i've just seen the new member profile page - and I must first say WOW!
It looks great - and I realise that a lot of work must have gone into it...

but... a lot of stuff in there isn't related to "me" - pretty much everything on the right, really...

I do like the rest of it, though

>379 timspalding:
Please please please make sure the Save and Cancel buttons (all of it for that matter) will be accessible to all of us on it! We still have the issue with the buttons being off the screen on some of the Edit pop-ups for the Home Page and the Member Recommendations. Looking forward to being able to make some changes. :-)

I really like the new member profile page. So first off, thanks for introducing this great feature.

Like many of the above members I share favourites:
- Talk
- Today
- Blog
Makes it easy to connect with the latest and most relevant parts of LT.

Least favourites, or least useful include:
- Authors
- Recommendations
- Popular
I never read what's popular or recommended, I like browsing better and I happily browse covers, titles, tags, authors etc.

What modules are missing? What could we add?
- books tagged with my tags (or similar)
- browsing capabilities of new books (or newly added books), such as interesting covers (similar to what flickr does with interesting photos???? would this unfairly favour cover design? but that's o.k., there are visual people among us!! it *would* be interesting!), new books by authors we read, etc.

Really like the personalised portal though.

I really like the home page overall. Will like it much better once I can customize to my heart's content, particularly as suggested by #255 above re ability to collapse/expand modules, as the editing features available now only allow me to reduce but not entirely delete stuff that is of no interest to me (recommendations, popular)

One potential bug to mention: I'm finding that the default (?) home location of Boston keeps showing up in Local periodically despite my inputing/saving my personal info (Toronto, ON)...this happened a couple of times on my profile page in the beginning too, but it's now stable; home page Local is still very iffy.

My one suggestion, now that we have both a public and a private space on LT, is to move the detailed Groups membership info from the profile page to the home page. This probably won't go down well with those that feel it's too cluttered to begin with, but it's a privacy thing.

My concern is that when spreading the word about LT and inviting others to join, people are directed to view the inviter's public page. And while members have control over the content of the wording in the "about me" and "about my library" and can be as discreet as they wish to be, listing the groups they belong to puts them in a situation where they may be inadvertently outed, or stigmatized, or otherwise have to explain/justify facets of their personal lives or interests or struggles. Friends may be cool finding out you belong to "Raving Atheists" or "Genderqueer" or "Altered States"...your boss? maybe not so much. Ditto casual acquaintances knowing you are part of "Depression and Anxiety: Books that Help" or "Christians, Spousal Abuse and Domestic Violence." TMI IMHO.

... on the other hand, I've found a lot (most?) of my groups by following interesting profiles there. There's as much public interest to groups as there is to any of the other means we have of finding common ground with other LTers.

Seems like public listing of members on the group page is less likely to cause distress than public listing of groups on the member's profile page.

>305 timspalding:

"What do you use about the groups? Not Talk? Do you prefer to use the Talk that's embedded within each group?"

My laptop and I are trapped in the local coffee shop waiting for a thunderstorm to pass, so I am reviewing some of the comments here.

To my embarrassment, although I thought I knew LT pretty well, upon re-reading Tim's question to me I realize that I had not known there was any other way to get to the discussions in Groups except through the Group!

Talk? What's that? Oh, it exists on its own.... (An inch wide and a mile deep, is that my problem?)

So perhaps I can give a clearer answer: Yes, I go through the Groups list in my Profile to get to the Talk within a particular Group, not Talk as a whole; and I like having My Groups (member and watching) listed in the right-hand column for easy switching among Groups.

> 386

"Seems like public listing of members on the group page is less likely to cause distress than public listing of groups on the member's profile page."

I wasn't aware either listing caused anyone distress. I like both, and for those groups I'm not sure I want to publicly commit to (that sounds extreme, but you get my drift), I "watch" them for a while, drop in occasionally, and eventually either join or drop them.

Hi,

I'm trying to just have my connection news not show anything until I can remove it entirely, but at the moment the "save" button of the edit window is below the edge of my screen, even when I try to scroll down as much as I can, so I can't actually make _any_ changes to that widget. Just wanted to let you know.

My one suggestion, now that we have both a public and a private space on LT, is to move the detailed Groups membership info from the profile page to the home page.

I really hope this doesn't happen. I don't see why data that people currently have publicly visible should suddenly become a privacy concern. It's already possible to watch a group rather than joining it if you don't want it to show up on your profile.

389>
"I'm trying to just have my connection news not show anything until I can remove it entirely, but at the moment the "save" button of the edit window is below the edge of my screen, even when I try to scroll down as much as I can..."

I had that problem on my work computer (shhh! probably shouldn't admit I was visiting LT from work) and used F11 to change my browser display to full screen so it was visible. F11 again to return to normal view. (This works in IE & Firefox; the rest of you will have to figure it out.)

I've tried to do the same with Connection News, and although I uncheck all boxes and click Save, the changes don't stick.

I would like to have the ability to hide or show all of the elements that are now available. The way Netvibes lets you build pages is an example. My primary use of LibraryThing is to manage my books and after reading a book to see what others thought of it. Thus most of what has been added to the home page is of little interest to me.

>391 Karen5Lund:

F11... YES!!! Finally an answer! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

>394 OsideNative:

You're welcome (times three)!

It's always good to know that my techie skills, small though they are, can be helpful.

A caution: This might not work for everyone--it varies with the size of your screen and any defaults to larger fonts you might have. But worth a try.

For those that it doesn't work for, perhaps temporarily changing your screen resolution through the Settings panel may help.

>393 countrylife:: "Would it be feasible for members to have an option: either one or the other or both?"

Good idea if it's not too much of a hassle from the systems end, as it would address my original concern, which focussed on degree of choice available re personal information. Not just within the LT community (perhaps not even primarily within LT...I too agree with the sentiments in #385) but when inviting "outsiders" (for lack of a better term) in, since the invite identifies you by your real name.

Right now, members have the option of listing as much or as little personal info as they want under most of the public profile page categories. Fave authors/bookstores/libraries, "about me/about my library", "also on" as well as one's real name, location and email address can all be left blank if so desired. But the Groups list is automatically populated, and is also one of the first categories shown---and therefore one of the first potentially read. Watching a group rather than joining, as suggested in #390, would get around the issue, true, but may do groups a disservice by skewing membership stats.

I have no personal stake in this matter, but as someone with an interest in FOI/privacy issues I've been mulling this over for some time. With the introduction of the home page, I thought I'd raise it in this forum as 1. I think some members may be uncomfortable knowing that their religious/political/sexual/whatever interests, as indicated by the group name, are de facto publicly available and 2. the new home page may be a means to resolve this, though I'm not sure what the optimal solution would be. The "either or both" pages as suggested in #393 works. Or the full list could be on the home page with members being able to select which, if any, of their groups they'd like to also appear on the profile page.

>397 EAG: Watching a group rather than joining, as suggested in #390, would get around the issue, true

Not true. Currently, on the Group Zeitgeist page, in the "members also in" section, people show up in 1) groups they are in, 2) groups they are ignoring, and 3) groups they are watching. So, "watching" a group is not as private as many people think. It is a bug that has been around for a while (for me, every time I've checked since the Group Zeitgeist page was reintroduced).

>398 christiguc: Yes, but that's a bug, not an intentional design decision. The solution is to fix the problem, not to develop a different feature.

Are you sure that bug is still there? I'm not showing up on the Zeitgeist for any of the groups I "watch" but haven't joined.

(edited for typo. One of these days I'll learn to proofread before hitting submit.)

>400 rsterling:

Yes, I just checked before I posted. You don't show up on the "watched" group zeitgeist page, but you show up under a "watched" group in the "also in" section of the zeitgeist page for a group you are in.

>399 _Zoe_:

Yes, you are right that it is a bug, but privacy features as a whole should be looked at. If you say that the solution is to "watch" a group, it should be a functioning option that does fix the privacy problem. But I completely agree with you.

399, 401: Also, if the group restricts posting to members only, watching won't help much.

Had the recently added cover problem again yesterday. Added a new book with (according to LT) no cover on Amazon. It was a recently published book, and did have an Amazon cover. I had to change it. My blank default came up on the homepage and didn't switch to the new cover that I uploaded into my catalog until today. Very annoying to see the blank sitting there when it is wrong.

Can't there be an update button for the covers, or make the computer check the cover again if you switch from cover to list back to cover ?

Also having a problem with local: I have changed it from the default 5 events to 8, 10, even 20 and there is no change in the number of events. It stays at 5 even though there are more events on local that are at favorited venues, and that I checked as interesting. I checked those options on the box in the homepage as well, and reloaded. No change. I will also look for the local thread in Bugs and post this.

I like the recently added and wouldn't want to lose it, but do like the idea of recently read.

Would like to see my books cycle through recently added, as well as others.

Really want the modules on the right to cycle faster.

401: Thanks for the clarification: I didn't realize it was doing that. I know for a while I was showing up on the "watched" group Zeitgeist page, under members, but when that part got fixed I assumed the bug was fixed entirely.

for some reason some of the text in the featured author module is in spanish, anyone else experiencing this?

Yes, mine's in Spanish too.

> 396

Believe me, it doesn't. We've tried.

As a (sort of) new user, I find it very frustrating that it says "Automatic (20 new)" under recommendations (and even shows some of them), but recommendations just says "You do not currently have enough books to generate automatic recommendations. It generally takes 10-25 books."

#407
Oh, dear, sorry. On my screen, I usually have only just enough of the box to click it, so I look forward to this getting fixed too!

408: I think another day should fix the lag on that. In the meantime, you can view your recommendations by tag.

Click "show your tags" under "Other recommendation lists", then click a tag to see some. :)

>370 rsterling:, 374

home page vs. profile

WillowOne, I don't think the difference between home page (member's private view of LT) and profile (public LT view of member) is very obvious. I was confused by this new home page feature ("Is this replacing the profile or what?") and had to look into things quite a lot (i.e. read this lengthy Talk thread) before catching on. Maybe its function was nailed down in the first Talk thread (I skipped straight to this second thread), but the blog post uses the word "profile" ambiguously and the video doesn't explicitly state the difference.

LT, as you present more exciting home page or profile developments it would be helpful to have a quick summary recapping their purpose and function. Looking forward to it!

*What would you get rid of, and what order would you put them in?

My preferred order, left side:
Gray ID box
Zeitgeist
Recently Added
Connection News
Talk
Recommendations
Local Events
Members with Your Books (makes me dizzy!)

Right side current order is fine. I'll probably hide the Hot Reviews, Early Reviewers, and On This Day modules for less busy look.

*If you can imagine how others see it, particularly first-time users, what do you think they'd want for defaults?

Definitely keep Announcements and Blog box prominent. Also (you may already have this) prominent links to the "Welcome" tour and Help documentation would be indispensable for new users. (More prominent links to Help, Wiki, and other documentation would be helpful for not-so-new users too.)

*What modules are missing? What could we add?

A tool like the blog widget with additional option of ordering a list using one of the date fields. I'd use it to make a Recently Read list appear beneath Recently Added. My Recently Read list would be books tagged "read" reverse chronological order by Date Started field.

A Recently Tagged "x" in LibraryThing widget would be cool.

On the current home page, the top tabs, the sub tab bar, and the gray ID box links have a lot of redundancy. I guess the repetition is meant to ease the transition, but I find it busy and confusing and would like to see the navigation streamlined.

Thanks for all your work!

Unfortunately we are not currently storing a timestamp when you tag something. We could do it but it would be a pretty big structural change to the system (tags being our largest data store and are touched by many many features).

That's not to say that we won't do this sort of thing in the future (tag watch).

413 - what about using something like what's at the bottom of the tag pages: the lists of "recently tagged X" and the RSS feeds. How are those generated?

E.g. for the tag "feminism":
tag page: http://www.librarything.com/tag/feminism
xml http://www.librarything.com/rss/tags/feminism
html rss http://www.librarything.com/rsshtml/tags/feminism

>#397: "Right now, members have the option of listing as much or as little personal info as they want under most of the public profile page categories"

Uh, no, definitely no. I have no opt-out option when it comes to LT generated Recommendations, which do give the appearance of reflecting on me and my library. It stinks big time.

414: That's a possibility but for technical reasons I'm not sure that is the perfect solution. It very well may be a suitable one though.

415:

Clearly your desire for privacy will never be satisfied unless you take your library private -- nobody in their right mind would think LT-generated recommendations are all for books you would approve of, but if you're still worried about this it really seems that your best course of action would be a private library.

> 391

I had that problem on my work computer (shhh! probably shouldn't admit I was visiting LT from work) and used F11 to change my browser display to full screen so it was visible. F11 again to return to normal view.

This doesn't solve the problem with the "Add a recommendation" box. It just increases the overall size of the entire window, but does not reveal the missing parts of the edit box.

410> It was not a question, "how should I do this"; it was a statement, "this is something that I, as a quasi-newbie, found really annoying." It should be fixed, instead of telling the tiny percent of users who ask how to work around it.

419: It's a system lag problem, generally, although it's odd that it shows them in one place but not the other.

Also, the vast majority of people on these threads do not work for LibraryThing and so do not have the ability to fix anything. So offering work-arounds is the best they can do.

Now that "Top Tags" are listed, I'd prefer to see them listed in descending order vertically - rather than horizontally.

I like that you moved the "Featured Authors" up. However, I'd like a reason to click on them added. Perhaps CK can have a box with "One Interesting Fact" or "Quote from a Book" (or even place of birth) which can then be incorporated into the home page. Otherwise, no one author stands out from any other if you can't tell the content of an author's work from the title of his/her book.

Favourites and least favourites: Connection News is both. I like seeing the new additions of my chosen interesting libraries and friends, but every day some random member's books are also included. Who ARE these people, and what's up with that? They seem to be people on my greatly expanded list of MWYB, but that doesn't mean I care about what they are adding. The random member who showed up yesterday shares only 81 books with me -- that may be a fairly large chunk of her library, but it's not a lot of my 4300+ titles and frankly her taste doesn't interest me. Also the NEW! after every listing, give me a break, that's visually intrusive and redundant. Unless I have totally misunderstood the CN section, it contains new information by design.

I like having "Your Zeitgeist" in plain view -- instead of having to drill in past profile to statistics for the information.

I'd do away entirely with Most Popular This Month (this is basically bestsellers and the information is posted at my library if I don't care to read the book section in a newspaper or check online) and Hot Reviews (why would I CARE?). If you wanted to post reviews of MY books, or reviews by people on my friends list, well, maybe.

Nothing ever happens in Ontario apparently, and that is probably the case in many parts of the LT world, so that module certainly doesn't need to be as high as it is, if it is even necessary. I might leave it on the page just in case something ever happens. Maybe.

I like making the blog links readily available: the titles are like newspaper headlines to give an idea of what may be happening with LT so we won't get major surprised like logging on to "HOME PAGE! What's that! And WHY is it taking forever to load?" Which it does...

Recently Added by Other Members is vaguely interesting. Seeing some obscure title show up might conceivably alert me to an interesting library, so I see some utility there.

HTH.

You can now customize your Home page.
The link is next to your member name in the silver/grey box.

You can move items and turn them off and on to suit your fancy.

Yay, we can customize. Works great, although I predict people will want to move things between columns. I want to keep a lot more of the stuff on the left than on the right, so it's kind of annoying to have to scroll so much for everything on the left-hand side.

And since we've got some new modules in there...can we also get (a) our combiner stats added to the zeitgeist module and (b) a module for the helpers' log?

The left and right are 'different.'

The left side is stuff related to you and your catalog.
The right side is stuff culled from the total LT universe.
That's why we aren't allowing moving across columns, although we may end up moving tag watch to the right column (where it probably rightfully belongs).

>423 muumi:, I'd bet those "random" libraries you're seeing in CN are news from your most similar libraries. You can uncheck that, and see news only from the friends and interesting libraries you've chosen.

> 424

Not if you have IE6/XP. Same lightbox problem as with "add a recommendation".

Yes. I mentioned in the other thread that I would work on the lightbox later today. I've been up for 26+ hours now and I'm the only developer this week. Doing my best.

> 429

I think we were posting at the same time. Thanks for the response.

You may have different ideas for the left and right columns, but that's small comfort for those people who mostly want things from one column or the other. It may break your sense of order but to some people that isn't as important as being able to maximize their screenspace. Please let people put modules wherever they want on the page.

Tag Watch is superb!

The left and right are 'different.'

I know, that's sort of my point. In the initial comments on the home page there seemed to be a lot of people who only cared about one or the other and wanted to customize to get rid of like the whole right-hand side.

>432 DaynaRT: Actually, tag watch is a huge disappointment. It suffers from the same problem some tag searches have, the inability to specify an exact multi-word tag. I'm interested in ancient history, but it doesn't work if I put quotes around it; with no quotes, it brings up books tagged "history" as well. I imagine that there are plenty of people interested in science fiction who are equally frustrated.

>434 _Zoe_:
Actually, its exactly what I had hoped for.

>435 DaynaRT: Well, it's nice for you that you're only interested in single-word tags. I tend to hope that features will be fully functional for everyone, even if I can achieve what I want with the limited functionality there is. (The lightboxes don't work for everyone? Oh well, it's just what I wanted!)

>437 DaynaRT:
It is nice, thanks!

>434 _Zoe_: ->437 DaynaRT:
Actually I think the ability to do both would be very useful.
Like _Zoe_ I would like to zone in on specific multi-word tags, but like fleela I would also like to cast a wider net (without having to specify every single possible tag on history)
I notice that the tags you have specifically listed show up in bold...

>431 jjwilson61:
Allowing switches between left and right seems reasonable, but how about if someone wants an extra zone? or to change the widths of the two zone we already have (actually this one seems inevitable)

>430 lilithcat:
While programmatically-wise I believe a lightbox has certain (ok a lot of) advantages over a pop-up, the problem with the action-buttons is pervasive. Once Chris gets a decent night's sleep I suggest it be next on the list (as it's affecting a lot of the site's more recent/best features, e.g. User Recommendations)

This was brought up by someone else over in the "Customize your homepage" thread (or whatever it's called), but doesn't seem to have shown up here. The Early Reviewers module currently says something like "July's batch is closed, come back in the beginning of August for a new batch..." The months are off by one.

#434 - science fiction works fine. It hasn't generated any just fiction hits - I doubt "science" is frequently enough tagged for me to see it if it does happen. I love Tag Watch.

Does it auto-update or do we need to refresh?

I'm not a big fan of lightboxes either.

Yeah, the tag search problem has come up before. The problem is that Tim and/or Chris want to be able to use the same algorithm for all their searches; it's less confusing that way. And for title searches in particular being able to match on any word or part of a word is very helpful (and also the way google searches work which many people are familiar with).

But tag searches are different in that in many cases you don't want to match only part of a tag, such as Science matching Science Fiction. You could solve this problem in two ways that I can see. The first way is to make tag searches have to match exactly and if you want to match parts of a tag you have to use wildcards (Science*). The other way would be to have some way of saying that you only want an exact match. Quotes might work, but some people already use quotes in their tags. They could also add a checkbox next to the search box if you want an exact match.

434, 441. I tried the tag watch with ancient history, and I got some books tagged "ancient history" and others tagged "history", but the ones it pulled up that were tagged simply "history" were about ancient history - so the "ancient" is doing something. Is it possible tag watch is also searching titles or subject classifications? Or perhaps did these books have the tag "ancient history" before, but it's been deleted? (Is this actually working on the same algorithm as the tag search, or not?)

A couple of suggestions for the new tag watch module:
1) is it possible to have more horizontal space for titles, and less for tags? Seems lopsided now
2) is it possible to include who (which member) added the tag to the book?

Suggestion for "from the blogs":
Can you make this editable, so that we can decide how many posts to see from Blogs and Thingology (like the other modules are editable). This module takes up a lot of vertical space, and as someone who checks the blogs regularly, I only need to see the latest 2 or 3 blog posts to see what's new.

I hadn't noticed the tag search issue as I've only used single word tags so far. I'm interested to know what the rationale behind the search algorithm is. I tried a few multi-word searches. I tested ancient history which, as rsterling said, brought up books just tagged "history" but all of which were ancient history related. I tried science fiction and didn't get any results which didn't include that exact tag. I tried Japanese fiction, just to try something new, and although I have my settings at 10 results, only 5 turned up, all with the exact tag, despite there being over 20,000 instances of the tag "japanese" and who knows how many for "fiction".
I also tried searches of single terms which commonly appear in multi-word tags eg. science. Not a single science fiction result turned up.

As far as I can see, the tag watch works brilliantly. I certainly haven't had to sift through irrelevant results (other than if people have tagged their books with something strange). What sort of tag watch problems are others having?

Thanks for the ability to customize one's home page. I have done so.

>403 FicusFan: Ficusfan. I had to change my local events to 50 miles to get a bigger list of events. I'm not sure how far ahead we can see dates though.

>rebeccanyc (I've lost track which message # you were). My suggestion was to be able to replace the row of recently added covers with a row of recently read covers pulling them from the completion date on the book's edit page. I believe someone else was suggesting being about to see your friends' recently read books in the connection news. That would only work, of course, if users were all marking their books read with the date (I happen to have started to do it when I add my comments (or what is commonly called 'reviews').

>my ideal in customization would to be able to replace many of the topics on the right side which I removed, with something of more interest to me. Maybe links to articles about authors, books...etc. i.e. interview with Margaret Atwood in the Toronto Star HERE. "Neil Gaiman and the Graphic Novel" on the Book Show (Australian ABC)...and so on. It would have to be member contributed like events, but wouldn't that be COOL!

I believe someone else was suggesting being about to see your friends' recently read books in the connection news. That would only work, of course, if users were all marking their books read with the date

No, it would still work if only some users were using date read. Plenty of my friends and similiar libraries have pretty much abandoned LT and aren't entering books; plenty don't use ratings or reviews. Connection News works fine with whatever's there.

I don't know what's happening with Tag Watch, but even if it is somehow choosing works that should be tagged ancient history, it should be showing that tag, not just history. Something is weird.

On trhis day neads to be updated daily. It is still showing events from yesterday on my home page.

>422 SqueakyChu:

Yes, I would prefer down in columns as well.

Also, a slight bug... capitalized words sort at the beginning, then lowercase, rather than intersorting A and a.

conceptDawg: I tried out all the edit options for each module and (today) moved them around or hid them. Much oohing and aahing was involved. Amazing work! The home page is so rich!

>429 conceptDawg:
Thank you for addressing the lighbox issue.

>428 lilithcat:
I have noticed that F11 did not work for me on the new customization lightbox. Then I realized if I hit F11 before I clicked on the link to customize, it worked. If I clicked it after the box was already opened, it didn't.
May work for some.

Edit capability is a great improvement to the home page. My own page would look better still if I could get rid of this message which has been present from day one, and which I thought would have been fixed by now:

Warning: imagecreatefromjpeg(): gd-jpeg: JPEG library reports unrecoverable error: in /var/www/html/inc_photo_upload.php on line 270 Warning: imagecreatefromjpeg(): 'picsizes/d7/0c/c9251028347bc7f14574fe73af1690a8.JPG' is not a valid JPEG file in /var/www/html/inc_photo_upload.php on line 270 Warning: imagecopyresampled(): supplied argument is not a valid Image resource in /var/www/html/inc_photo_upload.php on line 282

And if someone could take a moment to correct 'unique' tags to, for example, distinct or different, that would be a small satisfaction - it's been mentioned a time or two higher up.

Edited to correct typing.

452: This sounds like what other people are referring to as the "lightbox" problem (they can't see the whole thing, and can't see the save button). See earlier in this thread and in the customization thread for discussion. Conceptdawg said he's working on it today. (And he'd probably be interested to know what internet browser you're using.)

453: where on the page are you getting that error message? I don't have it, and I haven't noticed others reporting it, so it might be something specific to your books, your settings, your browser, or something. (Which is not, of course, to say it shouldn't be fixed!)

Being able to see local events on the new home page prompted me to enter events at my former place of employment. However, I can't seem to figure out why the July 2nd event's title doesn't show up on the home page. It seems to be ok on the venue pages. I've gone in on the edit pages to look at how some other venue's events have been listed (how they used each field), but I still haven't figured it out...yet.

>450 rarewren:

I second that emotion. The home page is amazing now. And I can't get enough of tag watch. Absolutely love it. Thanks to all involved in making this happen.

>455 rsterling:

Top of the left-hand column, in a box that also incudes a black rectangle (instead of my profile image, I suppose) and my username and my membership status. FF/XP.

Love the new stuff on the homepage

> 456

The title doesn't come across from the local page. I left you a comment on a workaround on your profile. I also reported it several days ago in Bugs.

>453 affle:

You error message looks like it is having problems with a .JPG file. Tim said some of the Avatar pictures are bad files and need to be re-uploaded by the user (you) because they can't open them, even though they may be ok on the profile page.

Could you be one of them? Does your avatar picture show up ?

If not it could be a bad cover somewhere, try changing your recently added books to list view. Not a solution, but a stop gap until its fixed. Maybe you should also post the problem in Bugs.

Edit:

YOUR TOP TAGS:
I changed the tag sorting to Alpha and it makes no difference, the tags are scattered all over. What is the method (I can't tell from my page) are they supposed to sort across and then down, or down and then to a new column ?

TAG WATCH
I like it, but I don't want to see every single tag that appears for the book that matches the tags I am looking for.

For example one book that matches the vampire tag has 10 lines of tags with 6-7 words per line. Its a mess. I only need to see the tags I am watching and I will click on the book if I want more info.

>460 FicusFan:

Many thanks, FicusFan. Re-uploaded and all is well.

>461 affle: Glad to hear it.

More on the new Tags Modules at the bottom (for me).

The spacing is odd. The titles are crammed in so that Title and Author wrap and take up many lines (shortest is 3 longest is 6), and the Tags themselves are listed at 10 across before starting a new line.

It would look better if the Title/Author had more room and the Tags less. They can wrap because they are shorter fragments. Though if you did away with the extra tags you wouldn't have to worry about wrapping.

I am only watching two tags now, and it takes up a lot of length. It would seem that you should compact them because if you are watching multiple tags the page will go on and on forever.

Customizable...Home page... so...cool! Musn't...black....out!

Thank you, amazing LT folks.

I think you can take the "Beta" off the official site name now!

>453 affle: tag stats in Your Zeitgeist

I don't understand the labels "Tags" and "Unique Tags." Does "Tags" mean total number of instances (any) tag has been applied? Does "Unique Tags" mean number of distinct tags used?

How about "Total Tags" and "Distinct Tags," maybe? Labeling is hard.

I have, since today I think, a somewhat strange title at the home page:
.span id="tr3521422318" class="trans".Home./span. | LibraryThing
It showed alright here as "Home", so I replaced the by .
is something misspelled in the source?

I hope message 426 is not the last word on moving modules between columns. I've now deleted the right hand modules that I didn't want (thank you) but all I garnered was an expanse of white space.

> 451

Thanks for the tip! That does work (though, obviously, it shouldn't be necessary). Nice to have a workaround until it's fixed.

;-))

#465 follow up
this strange title at the member home page occurs only at LibraryThing.nl I checked at LT.com and there it is normal

Is it just me (and/or XP&IE), or is the member home page slow (again)?

I don't visit the Home Page much, so I just noticed that on Windows XP Professional/IE6, the words "Gallery" and "Find Friends" are sitting on top of each other, and are fairly illegible as a result. It's like that on the Profile page, too, as well as any other page I go to in that particular group of tabs.

Also, when I edited "Tag Watch" to stipulate specific tags, I lost the Home Page. It went blank. I had to exit and come back to it, and it took quite a while to fully load.

Hmm, seems to be working okay now.

After a little sleep I feel much better.
I'll try to answer as many as I can in one post....

448, re: On this day
Fixed.

434 et.al., re: Tagwatch
Tagwatch wasn't supposed to be released quite yet. I had to release it because it was enabled by accident during the push last night and a few people had already selected it in their prefs. Disabling it caused more problems than did releasing it a little early. You'll see improvements to it over the next few days.

As for how it works: it uses an exact search for whatever term you put in. So if your tagwatch is ancient history then it is going to search for that. You don't have to use quotes. You may see some items that are not exact matches because the tag that you selected might be combined with other tags. For instance art history is also combined with history:art I think. So books tagged with that also get returned (and bolded correctly, thank you). The whole tagwatch mechanism is a bit of a question mark since we don't actually store timestamps for tag modifications. We do store a list of modifications to each tag, but all of the data that you are seeing there is just what is stored in our cache so it will disappear every once in a while and the history for a tag might be reset. That's the best that I could do without doing a major architectural change to our DB.

422, re: Top tags across vs down
We'll probably get that done. It's pretty low priority at this point but we had already mentioned it being an option.

452 Yes, there is an 'Save' button that you must hit to accept the changes. I'll be addressing your problem today/tonight when I work on the lightbox issues (and hopefully solve them in short order).

465, reAh. A translation error. I'll look into that one and fix it.

>470 lilithcat:
I had the page go blank when I edited "Tag Watch" followed by extreme slowness on re-open, but it was slow before editing, too.

Will see how it's doing and come back if it's still a problem.

Results It seems to be doing just fine now, but if this slowness happens every time the page code gets tweaked... well, that can't be good.

The reason it slows down is because most of what this page does is hugely processor intensive. The only reason we can do this page is that we are using caching for everything to some degree.

When you change your settings it may have to regenerate the cache for certain items. That may, in turn, cause it to slow down for a second.

re #471 thanks conceptDawg, member home page looks fine now at LT.nl

>464 rarewren: I don't understand the labels "Tags" and "Unique Tags." Does "Tags" mean total number of instances (any) tag has been applied? Does "Unique Tags" mean number of distinct tags used?

Yes, they are your total tags and your unique tags. Adding "Total" as it is on your statistics page might be useful. "Unique" is a common term used in database queries to filter out duplicate values.

I have a small feature request: Might it be possible to add a edit option to the Blog module so I can say how many posts I want to see? With all the long topic headings of the blog posts the module takes up quite some space and I'm usually pretty up-to-date with reading the blog posts, so quite some unnecessary space for me.

I agree with the request to limit the number of blog posts listed.

Possible bug?: When I move my cursor on the left side to edit one of the modules, the ? and the edit pencil appear for all the editable modules on the left side. (As opposed to the right side, where the pencil and ? only appear on the module that I am currently moving to edit).

>478 christiguc:, the right column gives me all the editable modules too, but there noticeably fewer editable ones on that side.

If that's not the problem, I'm on OS X 10.5.3/FF3 -- you?

Well, as I said the complete opposite of what I meant. . .

Possible bug?: When I move my cursor on the right side to edit one of the modules, the ? and the edit pencil appear for all the editable modules on the right side. (As opposed to the left side, where the pencil and ? only appear on the module that I am currently moving to edit).

XP/FF

D'oh -- never mind, then! I looked at your post, and said, but that's just what I get on the right side...

Re: "Unique Tags" label in "Your Zeitgeist

>475 trollsdotter: Yes, they are your total tags and your unique tags. Adding "Total" as it is on your statistics page might be useful. "Unique" is a common term used in database queries to filter out duplicate values.

Sorry, I realize now that rsterling, nperrin, and others explained these stats further up this thread.

The thing about "Unique Tags" is that I pause and puzzle, "Number of tags I've used only once, or number of different tags I'm using?" For this reason, I liked affle's suggestion "Distinct Tags" or some reexamination of those tag statistic labels to make them more self-evident. Whatever labels are decided, it would be great to use them consistently on both the home page "Your Zeitgeist" module and the Statistics page.