How do you use the site?

[Ben]

I'm looking to the future a little here, but i'm interested in how people use the site.

Do you use the homepage?  Or do you have bookmarks direct to the forums page.

How useful is the blogs and gallery layout on the homepage, are there areas of the site that should be further highlighted?

 

Open to ideas here.

 

Thanks  

[Wraith01]

I start at the homepage to see if anything catches my attention. But I always end up visiting the sections that interest me to see if anything new has been posted, then I go to my activity and look for posts I commented on to see if there are new replies,  because I only get notified if someone likes or quotes me. 

I've gotten a lot of help in the painting section and inspiration from the galleries. 

[Dez]

I go straight to Activity.

[polarbear]

Purely use Activity. Want everything in one spot, don't like clicking around pages to see if anything's new.

[bottle]

I usually just scan the homepage and see if anything takes my fancy. After that, I keep track of threads through the notifications system (I follow every thread I post in).

to be honest I find it a bit tedious to dig out threads if it's not on the homepage or in my recent notifications.

[Arkiham]

Bookmarked forums.

Open new tabs for general discussion, rules, chaos. Occasionally painting. 

Answer any notifications then check out the latest subjects in those tabs.

I only check the other tabs when I'm curious or when I'm asking about things I occasionally dip my toes into.

[scrubyandwells]

1. Multiple times a day I scan Popular Now and Recent Topics. 

2. If a compelling thread is found, I'll usually follow it via weekly digest, e.g., your "How do you tweek your lists?"

3. I've started following folks who often post interesting stuff as a key way of acquiring content here.

4. As a place to crowdsource/aggregate community views, e.g., Your AoS Wish List and Let's Chat Sylvaneth.

5. As a place for in-depth learning, e.g.:

• Battleplan Strategies
• Analysis of Chaos Shooting Units
• Competitive Ironjawz
• Chris T's Ironjawz Batreps

6. As a place to ask/answer rules Qs periodically (albeit rarely).

7. Would love to use it to share my podcast in Podcasts but looks like that might be invite only (...not sure).

8. As a place to meet a lot of awesome people.

It'd be cool if there were a way to give out and track whuffie / reputation currency and feature a top list, since those folks are probably contributing a lot of great content. 

On the whole TGA is an amazing place. It's really well setup, and it seems to be scaling pretty well. 

[scrubyandwells]

I'd love to see the TGA Events Calendar highlighted on the homepage. The better known it becomes, the closer it gets toward 100% representation.

It'd require some ongoing curation, probably from a group of contributors, but I think it'd be valuable to have an evolving, dedicated "Recommended @ TGA" with links to top-recommended TGA content organized by topic/category. This would be especially valuable to newcomers, helping ensure they don't miss out on some of the best content.

[hobgoblinclub]

I go to the same forums every time: the general discussion and/or chaos discussion. My starting point is always my notifications though. It's a shame they're hidden in a menu, rather than permanently displayed like the 'unread' button. I've the notifications page as a shortcut on the home screen of my phone so I can bypass the home page, which I rarely use. 

Interestingly, I can't seem to access the blogging section through Tapatalk. Can't decide if I prefer just to stick with the browser verison.

[cb_rex]

I land on the homepage and glance at gallery additions, then check the unread content and my notifications that appear.  If I want something in particular I first search, (I don't like the search being behind the logo), then if this fails I navigate to the relevant part of the forums (a drop down list on the homepage might speed this up).

The worst thing about this site is when I click a latest post it takes me to the start of the thread, then I have to scroll or jump pages through to the end.

Hope that helps.

[AdamJ]

I start at the home page to see what's popular and then drill down into the sub forums that interest me. I follow all threads I post in and so I use the notifications heavily.

One thing I'd like to see (although I realise this is possibility bandwidth and cost prohibitive) is higher resolution pics in the galleries. Even on my computer I find the resolution is often too low to appreciate the paint job fully.

[TerrorPenguin]

Land on forums and then look at the Age of Sigmar General Discussion and Death Forums, if I have more time I'll take a wander to the painting and hobby forums.

I should take more time to look at the blogs etc.

[Kramer]

I start on the homepage. Look at the trending topics, then go through to the forums. I play order, ogres and skaven so a lot of content. 

I rarely look at recent post as these are usually the same as popular. 

All in all I think it's a great place and well done to you.

 

ps. only annoyance is that I find a lot of copy-pasted stuff from reddit. but thats just me

[Bowlzee]

I start on the homepage, but go straight to Activity -> Unread I then go through everything I haven't read and pick out the topics I'm interested. I then skim read the others (with mod hat on). I'm a bit OCD though, and like to have the whole forum Marked as Read :) 

[RuneBrush]

Jump straight to the forums and largely don't deviate much beyond that, priority is General > Chaos > Painting > Rules and then a mixture of the others as the day allows.

As a general rule of thumb I only check the site during the daytime, occasionally over the weekends and very rarely of an evening, using a computer for 9+ hours at work means I simply want to crack into painting as a preference  

[Zitroni]

I am using the Homepage to see if something catches my attention.

Then sometimes i go to a Forum and go to the section i am interested in.

Just to let you know: The second Box in the Blog section of the homepage contains a list of Blogs which are not linked to the Blog. This looks like a bug as i as a user would like to follow a link to the Blog itself.

 

Thanks for your work Ben.

[SuperHappyTime]

I'll look at the home page, but I generally jump to the General Discussion.

I don't really look at the individual Order/Chaos/Destruction/Death forum unless the home page directed me there, or I have an army question.

[Durant]

I start at the home page then look at unread topics, then go to what interest me.

[Bosmer Nightblade]

I go straight to general discussion. Occasionally I may look at what's 'popular' from the home page but overall I find the forced feeds on the home page (popular, most recent, blogs,  etc) to be a bit cluttering, whereas since that feature exists I'd like to be able to personalise it so that instead of getting what's popular or blogs, I could get a general discussion, or rules questions feed.

[ADDriot]

I go to the home page and have a scan before usually making my way to the forums. 

In terms of content I love the discussions, modelling and list building side of things. The painting competition and Tale of Gamers are both great reading. I'm seriously thinking of doing a plog for my Bloodbound army thanks to inspiration on this site and enjoying other people's similar threads so much.

I would like to see a section within alliance forums for pure list threads that would be separate from discussion so you could better navigate to exactly the kind of interaction you're looking for.