Hello Kitty, Destroyer of Worlds (rahaeli) wrote in news,
Hello Kitty, Destroyer of Worlds
rahaeli

Wait, where'd that come from?

Over the next few days, you'll probably notice some changes to the site! We've been working on these enhancements for a while, and we wanted to give everybody the chance to get a sneak peek.

These changes will not be active on the site for the next day or so, but you get to see them here first:

Am I in the wrong movie?

The next time you visit the LJ front page while you're not logged in, it's going to look a little different. The chief purpose of any site's homepage is to show visitors and potential new users about the coolest aspects of the site right up front, at a single glance. As you might imagine, it's hard to describe LJ in a few sentences, but we think the new version does a pretty good job of showing off the best things about the site and the community. We've added a new quick tour, tweaked the descriptions of what LJ is, and spiced up the look to draw a new visitor's eye.

And yes, a redesign of the logged-out homepage does mean that a new version of the logged-in homepage is coming. We're still finalizing the details and the design, but brace yourselves: we'll be making the logged-in homepage actually useful sometime in the next few months! We'll be keeping all the links you're used to, while adding in more options and content along the lines of MyLJ's content modules. We've been watching our stats to see what links people use the most, and we've conducted user testing and some polls like this one in our lj_feedback community. All this information is telling us what you guys find useful and what you don't.

And, uh, speaking of useful: the data tell us that the majority of you guys don't find MyLJ to be helpful, so we're removing the link from the top part of the navigation bar (in the Horizon site scheme) and replacing it with a link to the homepage. For those of you who do use MyLJ, don't worry -- you can still find the link through the site map if you prefer clicking to typing in a URL.


The world, man, it's vertical

For everyone who prefers the old Dystopia site scheme because of the vertical navigation system: might we interest you in a little Vertigo? The "vertical" version of our Horizon site scheme, with all the links and navigation running down the left margin of the page, is launching in beta form. To test Vertigo and see if you like it, later today or tomorrow you can click on Viewing Options. Select Vertigo as your site scheme, then save, and your LJ world will be blue and vertical. There's a "BETA FEEDBACK" link in the top of the navigation menu, which will let you tell us what works for you and what doesn't. Remember, you can switch your site scheme at any time. More info will be forthcoming in lj_design.

In order to prepare for the arrival of Vertigo, we've tweaked a few other things in the Horizon site scheme as well, based on the feedback you guys have given us. The main change is that the links to your ScrapBook/Pictures are now on the far right. Other than that, the links are all the same, but we've changed a few of the names slightly to make them more clear.

Does that seem like a lot of changes? Well, depending on how you use the site, you may not even notice some of them. But we wanted to let you know beforehand, so it doesn’t feel like coming home to stub your toe on the couch because someone moved all the furniture around. We are moving things around and making changes, but we're doing it based on statistical analysis and your feedback. If you want to participate in upcoming design changes, be sure to check in with our lj_design and lj_feedback communities, and participate in the beta tests we announce here in news.


Is that it?

Some other current and upcoming things you might want to know about:

  • If you wanted to participate in our March non-fiction writing contest, but were prevented by one of the restrictions the law makes us include, we're happy to announce the creation of a non-competing showcase! There's no prize, but bragging rights are always important too.

  • Have your eye on that username you've wanted forever, but the account has been deleted for two years? Yeah, you might have noticed we haven't run our "purge deleted accounts" script in a while, since it hits our servers pretty hard. We've figured out a way to do it gradually over time, though, and sometime in the next month or two, we'll start running it on accounts that have been marked "deleted" for over 30 days. We'll let you know when it happens, and we're planning on building you a page so you can see the awesome usernames it frees up.

  • Psst, start saving up now -- permanent accounts will be available for sale sometime in the next few months. A permanent LJ account is a paid account that never expires; you guys have been asking for them a lot lately, and we're going to have a limited-time sale in the near future. We'll give you more details, including the price, as we come closer to setting a date.

  • And for our non-US friends: we've been trying our best to get you some love. We're very close to closing a deal that will give us voice post numbers in a few other countries. We'll let you know as soon as we get them up and running!
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