Do you like the new frontpage without "Commercial" and "Off-topic" posts?

BLF Site-related Issues
1

You can see the archived poll results on the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20221220093741/https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/72534

2

Hi everyone,

I'm trying a new filter for the list of recent posts on the frontpage. I decided to not show posts from the Commercial Sellers' Spot and the Off-topic Chatter categories on the frontpage. I think it gives a better impression to new users and helps us avoid giving undue promotion to commercial sellers. Of course by directly visiting either of those categories you can access the same posts as always. What do you think? Nothing is set in stone, and it's easy enough to change back.

Another change: The /tracker URL is no longer active. It was a duplication of http://budgetlightforum.com/recent-posts , which is now promoted on the "Main Menu" toward the top. Mainly a semantic change for me, because I hate disorder and duplication. ;)

Thanks, have fun!

Edit: I noticed that some very popular commercial posts like the DRY group buy are in the Commercial Sellers' Spot. How about if we move it to Deal Alerts? As long as the group buy is moderated by a neutral BLF member I think it would be fine there, along with similar group buys in the future.

Edit 2: Ok, it looks like most of you would at least like the Recent Posts page to be unfiltered. So I implemented that. What's the consensus now?


CONCLUSION: OK, well, that was pretty conclusive. Almost nobody liked the experiment. So we're back to no filtering on all recent post listings.

If anybody wants to see their own posts, they can click on the "My Posts" tab in their user settings.

Thanks, have fun!

3

...and that's why i voted for the 4th option. In the Recent Posts, i would like to see all new posts. It's the thing i love most about posting on BLF :)

+ 1

4

yeah i'm used to clicking the blf logo at the top to refresh all posts..I like to get all posts..

5

Yes, I like things as they are too. If enough commercial posts started to appear I might change my view, but there haven't been enough so far to be a nuisance. Or, I would think, to give a misleading impression to newcomers/visitors. Same applies to OT posts, which I often read anyway.

6

Agreed, I like having everything on the front page.

7

Same for me. Recent Posts Home Page is one of the reasons I love BLF. I can pick and choose what I want to look at in every forum with just a quick glance. By the way, the Search function on BLF is the best I've used in any forum.

This place Rocks, sb - thanks for asking us and for everything you do.

8

I prefer seeing everything, but its easy enough to change my bookmark to http://budgetlightforum.com/recent-posts, so I'm not going to vote. Thanks again for constantly trying to improve the site!

9

Same goes for me. Please keep it the way it was

10

+1

yes, thanks sb56637 for your efforts, and everyone else for sharing

11

One question though...

Before when I would click on Recent Posts the top of the list has a tab for MY recent posts (I forget the exact label). Is there a way to get that back?

12

+1

I'd like to have it back, too.

13

Off-topic is nice to have on recent posts IMO.

Sure, first page can run away quite fast but you just have to learn to read&post faster ;)

14

I'm interested in the "gear" category and "good deals" from commercial sellers... missing one of those would bug me more, than reading a few spam posts every now and then.

Just a question: Would it be very difficult to filter stuff by user preference? Aren't there Drupal templates just for that? (I have no idea!)

15

Do what you will with the Frontpage, but please leave Recent Posts unfiltered.

I'm McLovin Recent Posts because it isn't cluttered with "Frontpage'd and Sticky'd" threads. (and therefore has much faster load times.)

16

I’m not going to vote, but suggest on the page banner line, if you could make a smaller banner on the far right that links to the recent post page? 90% of the time I’m on my android not a pc, so the larger link of the banner is my goto. Smaller links can be a pain sometimes. I’m always hitting mark as spam by accident instead of the next page in threads by accident. I try to mark not as spam when I do, but may have missed one or two… Sorry

17

CONCLUSION: OK, well, that was pretty conclusive. Almost nobody liked the experiment. So we're back to no filtering on all recent post listings.

If anybody wants to see their own posts, they can click on the "My Posts" tab in their user settings.

Thanks, have fun!

18

Thanks for adding the recent post link to the top of the page, even though with no filter its not needed any more. But as long as its there ill still use it

19

Loading times are much faster on "recent posts" on mobile devices.

20

Unless I’m missing an option, that’s only showing threads I started not all I’ve participated in. I really liked it the way it was. I could click that tab and make sure I didn’t miss anything in conversations I’d been participating in (I don’t care for email notification). Occasionally I’d miss something in the Recent Posts, only to discover it in My Posts.