Hi WTMers,

As you know, at the moment when you first come to the site you get given a random snapshot. Naut has said they would like to completely rethink this and have a new flashy, attention grabbing start page, a "front" of the website as it were. Naut suggested I open a thread in the forums to see if we can brainstorm and get some ideas together. So let your creativity fly, this is a chance for you all to help make WTM even better, and a chance to make your mark on the site, having your ideas possibly implemented.

[EDIT: added from Naut's post below:]
We intend to have 2 new start pages, a general one which everyone fresh to the site (= logged out) will see and a personalized ond (= logged in) with lots of user-related info (like latest shouts on your snapshots, new fellow requests on your profile, etc, etc) and why do we want to do this? We'd like WTM to become a full feature movie community. The new features of wtm 2.0, especially the possibility to shout at everything made us realize what a big phatt friendly kickass community, we have become. The snapshot quiz will always be the backbone of the operation WTM but we've got some nice new features in our mind which have nothing to do with the quiz.
[/EDIT]

Some ideas I have thought of, feel free to discuss, pick them to pieces, set them on fire and throw them out the window.

I was thinking the page could be laid out much like the lounge is at the moment, with the usual news etc.. but with some added features;

1) Picture of the week
Perhaps the highest scoring picture of the week, or a random high scorer from the archive, or maybe even voted by users out of a selection. Perhaps memorabilia [edit: Or an awesome upload?] could be awarded to someone who has a picture featured as a POTW. The highest scoring images are usually awesome looking, and to be honest fairly easy, so would be a good way for a new user to immediately grasp what the game is about and get sucked in.


2) User profile
As there are many social networking style features of the site, how about featuring a randomly picked user profile on the front page? Perhaps every week / 2 weeks we could feature a new user on the front page, they could answer some questions about themselves, favourite movies, directors, interests, what they like about WTM, etc.. This would help people meet other people with the same interests etc.. and enhance the social aspect. Again, perhaps memorabilia for being featured? We could come up with some general questions everyone has to answer on their profile and then pick them at random maybe?


3) Contest details
Perhaps feature the latest contest winner on the front, link to the winner's profile and brief overview of whats happening in the vault atm, active/upcoming contest etc..


4)STATS!!!!!
Yeah we all love stats :) More stats than you can shake a large pointy stick at. The stats can differ if you are logged in or out.
-Logged in would give your stats
---avg score of your pictures (shots in archive)
---avg shouts on your pictures
---avg favourites per pictures
---forum post count
--- loads more which I am sure you will all come up with :)
(would be good if all these stats are featured on your profile as well so we can compare - as everyone is so competitive ;) )
-Logged out would show general site stats like
--- amount of pictures submitted
--- amount of shouts
--- amount of users currently logged in
--- blah blah blah you can come up with some better ones I'm sure


5) Top 3 forum threads
Link to last 3 updated forum posts (just thread titles, last updated time etc.). I feel this will promote the forums, and get more people involved. Not enough people use these forums, and they are a good resource, would be nice to draw attention to them.


6)Dynamic content
perhaps 3 images updated on-the-fly, like
-- Latest submission
-- Latest FF entrant
-- highest scoring image in FF
or a (non-spoiler) shout from an image picked at random and alink to the image. Again, I am sure you can come up with something better. This site is essentially all about the stills and the movies, so would be nice to see a few images from the game featured on the front, along with the contest winner, picture of the week etc..
Another idea dynamic content, A list of the ranks and the latest person to hit that rank. Again, this would draw attention to peoples profiles and get everyone checking out each others profiles a bit more, enhancing the social side.



OK, in my usual style I have gone on far too long, the verbal diarrhea is kicking in again. So now it over to you to pick these ideas apart, and come up with some of your own!

Maybe add a more direct link to the chat as well, to the start page? Including a list of people currently logged in maybe, if that is possible.
Another thing I'd like to see to the personal startpage/profile, is your shots that are currently in new submissions with the rating and number of votes/solves/shouts next to it, that way you can see which shots have a good chance to go through, without having to go to the page of each shot.

It would also be nice to have a page for best-rated movies and best-rated shots (both all-time and weekly/monthly).
Maybe with a link to this on the frontpage.

It could also be nice to see the best rank you have had in stats

All great ideas. Keep them coming!

All the ideas about your personal, logged in start page are awesome. Although the main focus is about grabbing the attention of people visiting the site for the first time, so any ideas on holding their attention on the non-logged-in page would be great.

Another one for the "logged in" page, would be a line at the top, "X unread shouts" and "X fellowship requests", although this is best for your own profile.

Naut, you mentioned making the site a full featured movie community, so how about a way to catalogue and rate your DVD collection onsite? So I could look at, for example all of Asmodai's millions of DVD's. All DVDs could link to Amazon, so its a way of finding new movies, and buying them with WTM getting a referral. ;)

The only drawback I can see is I could look through someone's DVD collection to see what films they may have posted. Perhaps limit it so only people on your friends list can see your collection.

maybe use the highest scoring picture of the week and the 3 pictures of the last 24 hours...

Maybe you can do something cool for somebody on their 'WTM-birthday': the day they started playing. An awesome upload could be nice, or they could be featured on the start page that day. I'm sure there's lots more you could do with that.

like @klaas idea!

I'm was camilapilla...

and I agree with forerunner.

seriously - you all made some really great propositions!
I love so many of them, wtm birthday, high scoring shots, more dominant chat, more dominant forum and especially a new slogan ..

When we launched wtm2, we spent quite some time thinking of a unique slogan, but it's so hard.
Flixster (a crappy movie community ;) has the best slogan ever: If you like movies, you'll love flixster.

Damn, why haven't we come up with somehting like that?
Do you guys have any ideas?

PS: although I have to say that "the worlds most awesome movie community (besides IMDb)" sounds great!

I usually never goes to the home page of a site, because they are most of the time useless, and wont help me to get to the content I need faster.
So here's my proposition : make a link to the last NS picture seen, and the last FF picture seen

I like MisterZob´s idea. When logged out feature some easier shots, it raises the chance people recognize some and look around some more.

A personal start page would be really nice. With all the information about things that interest me, like friends achievements, newest uploads from friends (also in NS), who faved my shots, messages, and so on. Maybe also some customized stuff, e.g. newest shots with the tag "the end" or "feet" in it :D

I would also like to have an RSS-feed for my own uploads. So I could annoy my Facebook friends with atomatic updates ;)

And more stats of course!

nevermind

facebook app?

what's facebook? can I eat it?

OMG Zythux, thats great :P

perhaps forum participation could also give you a memorabilia. For something like nr of forum posts.

@forerunner: maybe a good idea. WTM could make some savings on forum memorabilia these days. Very very few discussions...

we are ahead of that, wait for wtm2.5, to be released tomorrow! or the day after! (it's still 2009)

@tovaniflavio

http://www.firefox.com + https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

BTW: I recently navigated on WTM from a computer not configured like this and found it awful with all its ads.
I know you have to find money, but the result is crap.

the new WTM is nice... but there are some tings that i'm not able to do, like add movies to my shelf...

oke let's have it... antother version of wtm... to be honest i really had to get used to wtm 2 when we lost wtm 1, in fact, didn't really like it at first, however it turned out perfect so far, as of now i have no idea's but i'd like to comment on some of the posted above..

I've read stuff before about the slogan, i think you guys need one, but please... NEVER refer to any other brand in your slogan!! unless orfourse you are saying you are better then them :) otherwise why pay attention to another, perhaps even better moviecommunity? imdb isn't the place for me, but i'm just saying.. perhaps i will come up with one.. i'll put my mind to it ;)

Secondly about the startpage, i love some of the ideas above! birthday thing is a cool idea, stats are alway great, but the best thing you can do in my opinion, if you want to make it more of a community, is to implement a thing like a user of the week or something, with a direct option to shout at him or her or something like that... or perhaps even feature 3 or 4 users... make it random, give the users a chance to make a little shout to go with their pictures... it's gotta be fun to read though, but for it to be a community people will have to know eachother, so users on the frontpage is THE idea... now i'm gonna drink another beer.. damn i'm thirsty, but before i go, no facebook or any shit like that please!!!

Oh, just thought of the best slogan, WTM, can you guess the snapshot?
LOL, it's just perfect :D it sums at all up

@krukev http://forum.whatthemovie.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=626&page=1 for the group thing

same here on IE8

It's a known bug ;)