Based on some feedback and our own internal discussions, we have released some changes to our website that include:
UPDATE
Due to performance issues we had to disable "My Friends' Latest Projects" until we find a way to make it less intensive on our database server.
- New sections on the front page. "My Friends' Latest Projects", Surprise Projects from the Design Studio, "Projects curated by". We have not picked a curator yet, but once we do, her or his 3 latest favorite projects will be displayed on the front page.
- Friend's projects on My Stuff page. This can be a nice way to give more meaning to "friendships". In part, inspired by Twitter followers. This picks each one of your friends latest 3 projects and displays them in different pages. This may put some stress on our servers, so we it is possible that we scale it down to only 1 or 2 pages.
- Linking directly to comments. When receiving comments, you will be able to click on a link to go directly to a page where you can read it. No need to spend time trying to find the comment that could be buried under a hidden reply. This should also help display the page a bit faster as it doesn't have show anything other than the comment. Hopefully this helps our servers too.
- One project per person on the front page. Now, even if a project is really popular it will only get one spot now on the front page. We think this gives everyone a better chance to get more visibility and feedback on their hard work.
- Newest projects only for Scratch members. We are now showing the Newest projects section of the front page only after people are logged in. Since we allow only members of our community to flag projects, we think that non-members should not be presented with this category to reduce the chances of showing projects that do not represent the values of our community.
- Easier translations. We now have a web-based translation mechanism that will make it easier for people to help translate our website. We welcome help translating!
UPDATE
Due to performance issues we had to disable "My Friends' Latest Projects" until we find a way to make it less intensive on our database server.