By Joel_BC on

I thought the video that was shown in the upper left-hand of the Home page was a very good brief AV introduction to what Farm Hack is about.

I used to tell people not only to visit the site, but to watch the vid (not to mention scrolling through the Tools page). Now the vid isn't there, which I lament.

Just my 2c worth.

Forums
Farm Hack Talk
Forum comment

Hi Joel - Good catch! I'm currently running a test on the front page to see how replacing the video with text impacts engagement with the site. You can still find the video featured prominently at the top of our "Getting Started" wiki page. http://farmhack.org/wiki/getting-started Some background on the change: I did a bunch of interviews at NOFA VT Winter Conference a couple months ago and I got a lot of feedback that people did not want to watch a video and then saw that they had a hard time articulating what Farm Hack is. The statement "We are a worldwide community of farmers that build and modify our own tools. We share our hacks online and at meet ups because we become better farmers when we work together." is my best shot at describing us in few words. The traffic and the interviews indicate that visitors mostly just want to see tools, thus the new front page is almost like a new tools landing page. I do like the video as well, it is beautiful and if someone takes the time to watch it, I think it serves to build their understanding. Perhaps we can come up with a way to have the video and the text on the front page but we have to consider in the context of all other competing elements of the valuable front page real estate. Competing elements: - Blog - What Farm Hack is - Navigation to other parts of the site - Tools - Upcoming events - Recent conversations - more.... @Joel Would you like to join us for the FarmHack.org call at 7pm EDT on Thursday? Thanks for the feedback. \\ RJ
Forum comment

I'm sure the changes reflect and implement the best direction. If the video can be fit in again, *some*place, then I think it can be valuable for some people (hence also for FarmHack). Another thing that I miss are the icons indicating recent comments (their topic, and who made the comment). These used to be on the FarmHack home-page. On the "Conversations" page all I see on my browser is a list, and I find it somewhat harder to understand and find my way with it. Just *my* feeling... FWIW.
Forum comment

Hi Joel, I have a link ready to go on the front page for the movie. Currently having some DNS issues so I'll have to push it later. Where to put the activity stream is a big question for us right now. We currently have the old home page here -> http://farmhack.org/home/ And an early version of the activity stream here -> http://farmhack.org/activity/ It might make sense to have it as it's own page but maybe somewhere else as well. The trick is if it has its own page, where to put the link. \\ RJ