First let me address the general topic: I started working on a new homepage 2 weeks ago to be released with the next major release of Pligg. I began work on this because I felt that the entire site needs to maintain a visual flow. As it is right now there are different templates/color schemes for each section. It would be nice if I could at least match the demo site with the homepage.
1. Pligg as a CMS
I don't see how you could say that Pligg isn't a CMS. Letting users post the articles isn't any different than letting admins post articles. You have to also consider that Pligg isn't used strictly for "link management", users can also use it for editorial purposes.
Quote:
| A content management system (CMS) is a system used to manage the content of a Web site. Typically, a CMS consists of two elements: the content management application (CMA) and the content delivery application (CDA). The CMA element allows the content manager or author, who may not know Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), to manage the creation, modification, and removal of content from a Web site without needing the expertise of a Webmaster. The CDA element uses and compiles that information to update the Web site. The features of a CMS system vary, but most include Web-based publishing, format management, revision control, and indexing, search, and retrieval. The Web-based publishing feature allows individuals to use a template or a set of templates approved by the organization, as well as wizards and other tools to create or modify Web content. The format management feature allows documents including legacy electronic documents and scanned paper documents to be formatted into HTML or Portable Document Format (PDF) for the Web site. The revision control feature allows content to be updated to a newer version or restored to a previous version. Revision control also tracks any changes made to files by individuals. An additional feature is indexing, search, and retrieval. A CMS system indexes all data within an organization. Individuals can then search for data using keywords, which the CMS system retrieves. |
2. Download link
One of the very first bits of text on the homepage link to the latest download (I think now outdated), but it's not obvious enough. I'll definitely move/highlight the text or replace with an obvious image/button in the future.
3. Probably best to remove most, if not all of the forum articles from the front page. I'll work with this and find a happy medium.
4. Fudge IE. I really hate IE and I've noticed that the Pligg homepage doesn't display correctly in IE. Every other browser centers all of the content. The forum posts that have long lines of text stretch out the center column. I haven't really been to pestered about this because I've been saying to myself that I'll eventually update the whole template so why mess with it now.
I'll keep all of these issues in mind when working on the new homepage layout. Lucky for us I have friends who work on in graphic design to help create some new illustrations for the homepage. We've also needed to create an instruction document for the downloads, I will try to start working on this for the next big release.