The April 2012 updates to DetroitHockey.Net were the culmination of several months of tweaks to the home page and site template intended to make content easier to find for a user who had never been to the site before.
The home page was updated to include three featured stories, rather than one. A primary story would be represented by a photo, headline, and introductory text while two additional stories would be represented by a photo and a headline.
Three lists of other types of headlines were consolidated into one, with stories from DetroitHockey.Net itself bolded in that list to make them more visible.
To better embrace social media, a spot for important tweets from the site’s official account was created. A floating box with links to the site’s Facebook and Twitter pages, as well as available RSS feeds was also added to the site’s template.
The header was updated to reduce clutter. Rather than including the site’s wordmark on the left and logo on the right, the new header had the “promotional logo” featuring the site’s name on the left. This left more room for a list of recent discussions from the site’s forums to be featured, and room for a much more visible search box.
The site’s navigation was updated to be slightly larger and the related drop-down menus were updated to no longer need to be just lists of links.
The above text and images were copied directly from my original portfolio as I imported it over to the blog. It was not updated for re-publishing.