[Beta release] New Community overview page

Sounds interesting, @Marion Frecaut, even though I have a few questions 

Could you please elaborate a bit more on difference between homepage and community overview page? 

Usually homepage serves as community overview with quick links, key projects navigation and news.

Probably I am missing something, but would be great to hear your feedback!

Still need to look closely at this one. It seems like this may be a good move for some communities, but not all. 

If you're making full use of InSided's modules and have a clear and distinct strategy for each of them this is a good way to split visitors by community area, as opposed to product areas. It may serve well community managers working on big and complex communities as it simplifies navigation 'at a glance'. 

However if your community has a single use case (or two) and you arent using the Knowledge Base, Ideation, etc, this may be a little too much and something that your community home page can solve without the need of adding an extra layer to the entire community ecosystem. 

Just my 2cents.

I'll have a closer look these days to understand the new overview a little better and see if it's a good addition for our community (or not). 

@Gabolino I think you are absolutely 100% spot on with your analysis. Unless we are missing something I feel exactly the same way as you!

Hello @Gabolino @SmartlyGreg  thanks for your for raising this very interesting point. @Kseniya I feel the below can help answer your question as well. 

Indeed based on the number of InSided modules you use we recommend a different use for the community overview:

If you are using only the community module:

• Your homepage should be used for highlighting content (e.g. featured topic widgets) and showing engaging content like user activity (e.g. “recently active” content stream).
• Your community overview page should be used to showcase all the categories in the community module. Kind of like a "Table of content" at the beginning of a book. 

If you are using multiple InSided modules OR you want to use the InSided platform as Hub to redirect your users to various tools outside on InSided (KB, LMS):

• Your homepage should be used to present all the resources available across the modules and tools. The homepage should welcome users, explain the value they find. The homepage should also guide them to find the right content at the right time
• Your community overview page should gather all the community related content. It should be as engaging as possible. Users should have that “community feel”, that this is the area where they can speak up and connect with others. The goal should be to display activity feeds, promote interesting content (that stimulates engagement), and show many call-to-actions. 

I also recommend having a look at the best practices article by @Julian to see more in details how we recommend setting up the pages

Thanks again for raising this. I will update the above product update to make it more explicit. 

Do let me know your thoughts on this :)

I'd also add the the URLs / naming "Community Home" and "Community Overview" can lead to confusion. For most mortals out there Home and Overview may sound like the same thing, so if I'm using the Overview Page then I need to make sure Community Home (the current home page) has a different name (maybe forum) to avoid misunderstandings. 

Just adding another 2cents to the previous ones which makes a total of 4cents 🤣

Thanks, @Marion Frecaut! It makes sense now 

You gave me an idea of trying this page as community projects overview, programs we run VS sections in community e.g KB etc./tools outside inSided.

I can’t put all of the community programs on the homepage and sometimes I feel like it lacks visibility. I have them in General information now, but maybe it’s better to put them in this type of page.

I will test it and provide you with the feedback.

Appreciate additional comments, @Gabolino!   

@Marion Frecaut is there a reason this isn’t something that can be turned on/off?

We’re interested in exploring if a fit, but this has us concerned as there’s no way to remove it if we find it doesn’t work for our members:
 

@Marion Frecaut is there a reason this isn’t something that can be turned on/off?

We’re interested in exploring if a fit, but this has us concerned as there’s no way to remove it if we find it doesn’t work for our members:
 

 

I noticed that too and I do think it's odd you can't enable and disable depending on needs. 

I'd also like to add another question to yours if you don't mind me :) 

What if the community overview is not a fit for our community? Can we keep it permanently turned off? The message is worded in a way that seems to indicate we need to adopt this feature. 

This is definitely interesting, though I think it would be more flexible to simply have the ability to create new pages and use the URL/slug that you want. Then use the modules just as this page and the homepage do. Then it’s not so rigid.

Maybe somebody wants community.company.co then put the topics on /forum, then put articles on /articles then put product updates on /changelog (or whatever).

I understand that you’re basing this on the 5 parts of the platform (community, kb, updates, ideas, groups) but my hunch is that most people would prefer a page builder with the ability for custom slugs, and a mega menu with custom dropdowns. I feel like this would solve SO many issues that currently exist, in terms of how to set up a community with inSided :)

@nicksimard Thank you for your feedback and addition, this is something that’s on our radar and aligns with our vision of offering more flexibility in setting up your community as a customer hub. Can you give us some examples of what custom pages you would like to build? I.e. titles, use cases, etc.?