Help with a Usability Question

[phrique]

Hi all,

I designed a website for my church (http://www.holytrinityweb.com) using CMS Made Simple.  During the design phase myself and a graphics guy went through the process of really trying to figure out what the use case would be and tried to anticipate what would be important for people right off the bat.  I think we generally did a good job.  However, with the rise in use of the page I've found people want to include current events on the page.  I could easily handle this with the news module, but my problem is this--where should I put it without destroying the layout of the main page?

I was thinking one way I could handle it is to have the welcome message where it is by default, and adding an overlay of sorts that a visitor could click on to display news in that area instead (Click here for current news and events or something).  My question is twofold:

1.  Does that seem like a reasonable idea from a usability perspective or should I look to do it another way?
2.  If an overlay to replace the welcome message is a good idea, how do I go about doing that?  I'm sure others have done something similar.

Thanks,
Jeremy

[Fraserm]

You could still use the news module but specify the detailpage parameter as the homepage.

If I remember correctly (I don't have access to an installation right now) that will overwrite the default content block with the news article content.

If the user clicked your 'Home' link the homepage would again be displayed with the welcome content.

As an aside, if useability it your aim, consider adding '>' or similar icons to your menus so people know a particlar menu item can be expanded further.

[replytomk3]

FF 3.6 default zoom 1680x1050 doesn't look so good:

[phrique]

Detailpage?  Interesting.  I'll have to look into it.

Thanks for the screenshot.  I'll have to look into why that might be happening.  It's a shame that CSS isn't uniformly implemented so you could really be reasonably sure things will look good on all platforms.  Of course, it may just be that I'm missing some strange condition in my CSS.

[wy0453]

Excellent list! I've learned more from this forum in about 2 days than I have at any other forum community.

[kermit]

your best bet for adding items from the news module to the front page without disrupting the overall layout is to dump the slideshow in the upper-left corner...



as long as you keep summaries short (or use the truncate modifier, just in case), you can fit 2-3 entries in that space.

[Dr.CSS]

Like most sites I'm sure you don't want people going to your gallery and seeing a ton of spam...

http://www.holytrinityweb.com/gallery/i ... inner-2010