You may have noticed by now, we have a shiny new front page layout. It combines the useful features that our front page has had previously such as featured and top items showing, but now makes better use of the space by combining those two items into a tabbed layout. The search boxes have also been removed as they were redundant with the Search dropdown in the navbar.

The navigation buttons have been removed since the dropdowns include all of that information (and the dropdowns have been changed a little bit - you may notice that "Social" is now split off of "Site Links") in a much smaller format.

But, of course, the main change is the "blog view" for the front page. News posts will show up here, as well as featured items. We plan on making good use of this new view in the coming weeks and months, especially as Sims 3 gets under way, to keep you posted on the latest creator and community related news as well as updates to the site with Sims 3 related stuffs.

You'll also notice that the blog view automagically shows newly featured items too. Neat, huh?

Overall, it's a much cleaner, sharper way to use the space and offers improved usage over the previous version. We hope you enjoy the nifty new front page. Send Delphy some cookies for making us a pretty new shiny.

I also changed the News dropdown so that the Latest News points directly to the Site News forum, and added About MTS2 to the Information section of the same dropdown.

Additionally, the About page has had the news removed, and will be revamped and changed at a later date.

You are allowed to post, yes. However, be aware that I have zero plans to revert this back to the old version, and I have zero plans to allow people to select the old version.

Very shiny. I really like the blog view; the inclusion of featured items is very nice. I might start visiting the home page on a regular basis now.

And that BastDawn, is exactly the reason we did it! Thank you!

I'm going to repost something I said in the other thread:

It "encourages the downloader" becuase they can see - right on the front page - the recently featured items. They also still have the Recent Top Items, and the list of Random features. Plus it's not just a wall of text - you have the thumbnail and the EP icons so you can see without even clicking if it's compatible with your game. So, to the actual downloader, you can see more information in a better way than the old front page. Remember, that, in normal circumstances you'd have to click at least 3 times to get the list of recently featured items. Now, they are all on one page.

As for "encouraging the creator" - the *old* front page didn't have any of that either (unless you count a single button called Create). There is much more information to be found in the navbars, which are on every page on the site, so it's actually a lot more useful for people to use those to navigate around, rather than single buttons on the now-old front page.

The old front page had a lot less information on it and it was commonly used only as a "jumping off point" - ie to go straight to the downloads page, or to create, or whatever. There really wasn't anything on the front page that was worth actually staying and reading.

By contrast, and in keeping with the ongoing plans for the site, the new front page is more a blog style (which I think is obvious by the layout and the ordering of the items), and so, while it currently has a mix of featured items and site news, once we gear up for the Sims 3 we'll start adding modding news, new tutorials, tool news, and so on, and the front page then becomes much more important and actually worth reading. It also becomes much more of a "center" for modding the game - which is the entire reason I created this site in the first place (it wasn't just for downloads, you know).

Those that want to jump to other sections can still do so using the existing dropdown menus (which as I have mentioned still exist on every other page on the site). That in itself hasn't changed at all and I'd rather people use the dropdowns to navigate rather than single buttons on the front page. Why? Becuase the buttons where found only on the front page - but the navbar dropdowns are on every page, regardless of where you are (Create, Downloads, Wiki, etc). And besides, once you got off the old front page you'd have to navigate using the dropdowns anyway, so having the buttons really doesn't seem that intuitive in the context of the site as a whole.

I realise that change is sometimes confusing, but as the news item says, this is something that we are doing so that we can move the site forward for the future. I don't just change things up without a reason, and, yes, it looks different, but in my opinion it looks better and more concise than the old page which, as I said, was pretty bare and didn't contain anything worthwhile.

Maybe now - and once we start posting up news about the Sims 3 - people will actually visit and read the front page instead of just clicking through.

new front page means new home page, is it correct? I know this is a stupid question but if I click on home I see the forums list: is it because of the view preferences decided on my member's page or I did not understand where to look for your changes?

sparkleshatter, yes, thats a known issue with all older vBulletin forums and nothing whatsoever to do with the front page.

Alisar, you have your default home page set to the Site Map, which is why you don't see the new one.

I liked the old one better.

I don't want to be negative voice here, and I don't want to critisize, because I know that you guys put so much work into this site. But I also don't believe I should just not say anything, because maybe others are feeling the same way. I'm not crazy about this new format. Yet, anyways.

That could be that blog-style home page formats are not my favorite outside of blog communities. I think it's mostly because I liked the format before. The big buttons were easy to navigate around (I like big buttons) instead of fiddling with the drop-down menus, and I liked to see the latest news at a quick glance. The top threads and featured downloads on the left side were fun too. I'm not crazy about the flashing back and forth between the 'random featured items' and the 'recent top threads'. I like to hover my mouse over it to get info and now it flashes too quickly to get info. It also competes with the ad section below it. The overall effect of the two flashy boxes is a little annoying.

Overall, I'm not a fan. I'm sure almost everyone else will like it and I'm only being a cratchety downer here. There was a lot of redundant stuff on the home page, and it's probably easier now to navigate for those who do more than download stuff. And maybe I'll grow to like it. For now, though, I think I'll change my bookmark to a page other than the home page.

And now I feel like a complete jerk. I admit, I'm not a fan of change (will likely dig my heels in for Sims 3 too, although to be fair, my computer probably wouldn't pass the game requirements). I'm sure I'll get over it.

...and how do I get to the regular downloads?? =(...err found it. I like it a lot better where you could just click on "downloads" on the homepage. The toolbar thing is now a bit of a hassel... (and I still can't spell =})

anyways, nice job. It looks attractive.

*sends delphy ham cookies for awesome update!*

I don't want to complain about the new layout, but I'm viewing this in Safari on a Windows Vista computer and I can't access the dropdown menus. I wasn't able to after the last set of changes, either, but I could navigate via the buttons so it never bothers me. Now I can't access the downloads page. Do I need to go back the Internet Explorer to view this site?

ETA: I just viewed the site in Explorer and viewing it that way I see arrows in the top row and can get to the drop down menus. So it seems to be a Safari issue. I really don't want to go back to Explorer!

Try Firefox!

I'm having an issue as well with the new layout. I'm running Chrome, and the links to the downloads won't work. It comes up with the whole navbar_download thing, or something like that in the address window, but the page wouldn't load. Beforehand, the page would load, but i couldn't get back to the first page of downloads whenever I clicked the download link. I'm not sure if it's just an issue with Chrome or what, but in either case, I like the new page. It's perty >.<. But, alas, IE refuses to work on my laptop, even the newer versions. So, I'm off to find a solution.

No offence meant, but...did you happen to take into account that people with Epilepsy visit this site? Hitting them with flashing pictures is not a healthy idea—same complaint for some of the Ads. If you just have to have the flashing pictures, could you please import a warning? At least the user can try to be prepared.
My two-cents—do with them what you will.

As i said on the chat, i love this new look, it combines everything i want to see quickly, keeps me updated on site features and picks which i am interested in and the news! I think it is a superb change!

I like this new layout, it's much better because you see all the news and other stuff.

But I've been having a problem with the navbar. I normally use Firefox or Chrome on different computers. If I click on any button with dropdown menu in the navbar, the whole page just jumps down a little and the new page doesn't load, I'm still on the front page. When using a Firefox, this doesn't happen always but if it does happen it usually works normally after I've opened the link in a new tab/window. In Chrome it just doesn't work at all. I repeat, this are just the buttons with dropdown options (from News to Search and User tools as well). Home and Messages buttons work normally all the time.

It was my understanding that people with epilepsy only went into seizues on fast moving images. Changing the Featured/Top box once every 8 seconds is not really fast.



This is a Chrome issue - absolutely nothing to do with the new front page, and it happens on multiple older vBulletin forums.

Less than 1% of users on MTS2 use Chrome, and to fix it requires me to change the entire menu javascript, so this is not something I will be doing at any point in the near future.



Use the navbar... which is on every page on the site. You basically have to use it to navigate around other places anyway, so I fail to see the big issue here. I really wouldn't call 1 extra click on something thats standard on every page "a bit of a hassle".



If you click the Featured or Top Items "tabs" at the bottom of the panel it stops the rotation and fixes it on that page. Also, it changes once every 8 seconds.

Ar first I thought it was broken, but it's good to know it's not actually. I don't use it much anyway, so whatever floats your boat.

Okay I did a little bit of investigation into why the dropdowns weren't working in Chrome and it actually wasn't as bad as I thought - the reason it wasn't working was becuase vBulletin wasn't detecting it as a popup capable browser. This is now fixed, and the dropdowns work fine.

I knew it was a stupid question

I like it, better then the last one good job :D

All right, so now for my actual post. I see why you made the various changes, but I have to say, I think it's too...big, I guess. What I mean is, there's a whole lot of text across most of the width, making everything look white, rather than blue-and-white like it was, and it's throwing me off. Also, there used to be only four featured items shown, which I preferred in terms of aesthetics. So overall, the thoughts behind it were good, but they could have been executed in a "prettier" way.

I do admit that huge changes like this all of a sudden make me very uncomfortable. I'm glad you said straight-out that there is no way you're going to let us have the old front page back as an option, because now I know not to ask for it...I still wish for it greatly though. My eyes are kind of scared by all this difference. I think I'll change the link on my favorites to go to the downloads page. I always go straight there anyway.

That is exactly what I've tried to write for the last hour, but I couldn't find the right words for it.

Yes the old page had less information but it was compact - screen-size. The new one, for me, is difficult to survey.

A suggestion...
For the older news items, is it possible to show only the headline with an option to open/close the post at the front page? Like the advanced search options in the download area?
All news would be still there, just open it, read it, close it, go to the next... better to survey, but less to scroll.
Just my thoughts.

Having a "compact" and "pretty" front page that is nothing but a jumping off board to other pages is not the direction I want to take the site in - we've done that in the past, and now it's time to move on.

I appreciate the comments, though.



That would kind of defeat the point of the news though, and the fact thats it's meant to be a blog type view, with all the news visible. I see what you are saying, but it is a lot easier to read the current news on the site, and when you consider than when the Sims 3 gets released we'll be using the front page to keep everybody updated on the goings on and happenings of modding it, then it becomes doubly important to have this in an easy to view and read format.