We have deployed a new homepage, the first major change to the homepage in 5+ years, screencap below:
Compared to previous:
Here are the main benefits/reasons:
- Displays much more content, similar to how the NY Times, WSJ, etc. do so. Years ago, we offered far less, so it was OK to have a simple single-column layout. The new layout lets us dynamically show 5x more content in many different areas.
- Loads significantly faster, ~1 second instead of the previous homepage about ~3 seconds.
- New underlying architecture. As IPVM is now 14+ years old, the original software architecture we used is no longer optimal for 2020's development, so this is the first implementation of IPVM moving to a new, more current architecture.
Up next will be replacing the reports and discussion views, which cover most visits to IPVM.
Thanks to Duc, Long, and Thang for working on this and making this happen quite smoothly! We'll have more improvements to come and any design problems are my fault, not theirs.
Feedback, questions, and suggestions welcome in the comments.