Welcome page

[dreadnaut]

I've had the home or "welcome page" in mind for some time now, then I read this:

I was thinking it would be nice to post a short teaser on the upcoming season on the main page of Zakstunts. The teaser could contain details like when the new season is going to start, the car bonuses for the first track etc. I am hoping this would attract the interest of new pipsqueaks, who may be browsing the page between Christmas and new year's eve.

Currently, the home page shows:

• Name and deadline of the current track
• Sometimes: birthdays
• Sometimes: pending track ratings
• Two most recent news posts
• Snippet of shoutbox from X years ago, on this day

What would you think should be on this page? For both new visitors and logged in pipsqueaks.

[Cas]

I think the current home page is very good. It already shows a lot of information. What Argammon suggested is good too. I understand it as something to be posted exclusively during the days after the last race of one season and before the first race of the next.

[Argammon]

I think the current home page is very good. It already shows a lot of information. What Argammon suggested is good too. I understand it as something to be posted exclusively during the days after the last race of one season and before the first race of the next.

You understood it correctly. 

[Daniel3D]

It has good content, but it's very static.
Maybe add some forum activity stats and some links to recent posts (in representative category's, we have some fun stuff that is better to be found than advertised)
That is something that will regularly change and might spike interest.

[KyLiE]

I think the home page is fine as it is, but following Argammon's suggestion, a simple yet effective change might be to change the current race details to those of the next race during the downtime between seasons.  Attached are the details I'm referring to.

[Duplode]

Good idea, @KyLiE ! Even though we don't have the full information about the new track yet, something like "The new season will start on 2023-01-16", or perhaps a countdown timer, should already be helpful.

[dreadnaut]

Page updated with the new season message.

That said, I'm surprised you all find the welcome page good as it is. In my eyes it does a terrible job at welcoming people   No information on what the website is about, nothing for someone who might be interested in racing. Also, does anyone read the "old shoutbox" at the bottom? Does it make sense to have two full news posts? Or should there be a single one, and smaller snippets of previous ones?

[KyLiE]

No information on what the website is about, nothing for someone who might be interested in racing.

I see what you mean.  What about a predominantly positioned "What is ZakStunts?" link that takes you to the Newbie Guide or a page similar to the Help section on Race For Kicks?  In saying this, I also think that the entire Guides section needs to be updated.

Regarding the historical news posts, while I find them interesting, I never look at them intentionally.  Others may have a different opinion, but I think you could safely remove them.

[alanrotoi]

The forum, the wiki should have a more relevant place.
Also maybe a link to the telegram group? I mean the chatroom it's kinda obsolete. Is it possibe to use a newer chatroom? 

[KyLiE]

I mean the chatroom it's kinda obsolete.

I like it!  I don't think it's obsolete.  After all, we're talking about Stunts here.

[Daniel3D]

I mean the chatroom it's kinda obsolete.

I like it!  I don't think it's obsolete.  After all, we're talking about Stunts here.

The chat is rarely used. The shout box of Zakstunts is better for this purpose i think.

[dreadnaut]

Chat, shoutbox, forum and wiki cover different roles: respectively real-time messaging in ad-hoc groups, brief asynchronous exhanges or broadcasts, long form discussions, institutional memory. Not one can replace or cover for the others, and together they create a bundle — join the community and all are available.

I am wary of replacing any with an external service, because it unbundles the community, splitting it into those who are in and those who are out of specific services. Pre-empting the argument "oh, but they can just join service X+1": barriers break groups apart, they don't bring people together.

We can definitely consider replacing one piece with something else that covers the same role, but it should be part of the bundle: self-hostable, and thus based on HTML / PHP / MySQL.

[Overdrijf]

We may need upvotes and emoji reactions on the forum, because I want to give dreadnaut's post a big thumbs up.

(Chat specifically is great for live races, as rare as they are.)

[alanrotoi]

(Chat specifically is great for live races, as rare as they are.)

Agree. That's why it needs an update. For example, a working sounds effects and warnings, or it's rare behaviour in Android phones (I don't know if it's about Android but for sure in phones ).

[Cas]

While the chat is very simple and we don't use it all the time, I do think it's been useful on many occasions. Some bells and whistles would be great, but like Dreadnaut, I think it's better to not rely on 3rd-party services. One thing I love about the Stunts community sites is that they are all pretty independent and I feel that we have some sovereignty there.

By the way, is the chat software source available and easy to tweak?  Maybe we could add some mods to it. For example, commands that would automatically calculate lap time differences, things that could be useful for live races. I have developed a platform that could be used for Le Stunts and helps with this, but it's pretty beta. yet, it works. All at your service, guys