Design of the Site

[Bolty]

Lurker Lounge 2004™, still in the Coming Soon (phrase copyright 1996-2004 Blizzard Entertainment™) phase, could feature a redesign of the site's structure. Since I'm undecided myself, I'd like to know what you Lurkers do when you surf the front pages. I know some of you are thinking "what front pages?" - you know, those web pages you used to check a lot off of www.lurkerlounge.com - but hear me out. :)

Currently the site's laid out like so: a main page greets you when you go to lurkerlounge.com, and you then break off into the sub-sites for Diablo II and Diablo. When this site covers only 2 games, it's not too big a deal to check both front pages if you want to see if there's any news. But what if we added 1, 2, 3, or 4 new games in coverage (as time goes on)?

There's two ways I can construct the site.

1) Have one mega news page for all covered games. Advantages:

• One place to go, and you get a glimpse of anything and everything going on across the whole site. Ease of navigation the ultimate end due to fewer clicks, and less chance of missing news from the older games that you inevitably wind up checking less often due to fewer updates.
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• Easier for Bolty, since he can concentrate on one site design (layout, colors, graphics) instead of many different ones, one for each game.
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• A greater chance that when you come to the front page, something new to read will be waiting for you due to all games combining their coverage. Avoids the problem that inevitably arises that when a game gets old, its section becomes pretty stagnant. Let's face it, is there really anything new in the Diablo 1 universe? Do we get to a point where we close down a game section? Lemming's done an awesome job on the Diablo content, but there's not much else to go on - so you get a relatively "dead" part of the site as a result.<>
  [st]2) The current system - have a news page for each game. Advantages:
  • If you only come here for one game, you're not bothered by news and content from any of the other games. Just go to your section and bookmark that.
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  • More fun for section admins, since that area becomes their "turf" and they don't have to share it with anyone else. Each section's quality and interest level will live and die by the section admin's level of devotion to providing content, along with the "freshness" of the game covered.
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  • A section can develop a thriving community, as the Diablo and Diablo II sections did, all on its own without feeling diluted by other communities. As time goes on, older communities will have their forums condensed down to just one as the Diablo section has (and Diablo II section will, eventually).<>
    [st]So what it comes down to is - do you tend to click around and see if there's anything new for each section (imagine if the LL covered 5 or 6 games, would you do that?), or do you just stick to one section and ignore the others, preferring it to be isolated?
    
    Your input is valued! Let me know what you think.
    
    -Bolty