New home page design

Sutton Active has a new home page. The redesign focuses on the two most frequently-changing things on the site: events and news items.

The events column on the left has been restyled to be a great deal clearer and easier to read. The event date is featured in a beigey-yellow calendar-style box which is also replicated larger on the individual event pages. I’ll be using this style for event listings across the whole site so they’re instantly recognisable.

New to the home page is the news column on the right. News items (culled from our member groups’ RSS and Atom feeds) have only been on Sutton Active for a week but it’s already time to give them due prominence. This is a great opportunity for groups to get their news in front of a wider audience. Publish to your own site/blog and your item will automatically be shown on Sutton Active’s home page for the next few days.

Out goes the section listing the latest groups to be added to the site. This didn’t change very often and I felt that having this on the home page gave it undue prominence. The feature has now disappeared completely, but it might make a resurgence in the groups section when I redesign that.

I hope the new home page will give a useful instant snapshot of what’s going on in Sutton and make it very clear to new visitors what Sutton Active is all about.

Until the next redesign…

Tags: homepage