The Fit And Form Of Glrf Central

[glrfcentral]

The 'home' page of GLRF is GLRF Central. As a membership community, how do we juggle what should be public and member-only? We want to encourage everyone to join GLRF but having everything behind closed doors makes the website a little too inaccessible for those who are fans but perhaps do not consider themselves a 'community member.'

 

Certainly, resources such as Facing Homophobia, Learn To Row, and Club Assist are easily defined as public access areas. The newsletter page lets visitors see what are some of the benefits of joining GLRF, and all the links lead to member-accessible areas, further encouraging membership sign up.

 

But what about the GLRF Blog and the GLRF World Herald? The blog is more of an opinion piece and news for the entire rowing community whereas the World Herald focuses on factual news and developments about GLRF, the community organization. To be a part of the broader rowing community, it would seem that making the GLRF Blog and the World Herald open to the public makes the GLRF website "stickier," in other words, visited more often.

 

As we work on a complete redesign of the GLRF layout, the only two areas that seem elusive are MY GLRF and GLRF Central.

 

My GLRF will eventually be a mix of a membership services page and a personal start page, where members can customize their content, and select various widgets to display, be it facebook updates, RSS feeds from the New York Times, or RSS feeds from a GLRF Country Forum. What falls through the cracks is the place for GLRF regional news, and articles of interest for our members. Does that fit better on MY GLRF or GLRF Central.

 

GLRF Central, as a home page, works better when everything is publicly accessible. Mixing private access and public access leads to a frustrating user experience for a website visitor, even a GLRF member. Even then, every home page features "the latest articles" and "the latest news" which very often are links to member-only areas.

 

At the end of the day, how do we design GLRF Central to be self-evident, obvious, and self-explanatory? It's not as easy as you might think.

[chadster]

14 years later and now we just wipe away GLRF Central. In fact, it looks like everything was wiped off the table and given a minimalistic design.