Savvy GovLoopers may have noticed a few changes to the GovLoop homepage as of this morning. We wanted to let you know that we’ve been listening to your feedback and critiques and are continually working to make GovLoop as awesome as it can possibly be. On the eve of Next Gen 2011, we decided to go ahead and roll out a few improvements. If you have any ideas on how we can be better serving you, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Until then, enjoy the changes…
- Search functionality. We know, GovLoop’s search function has, until now, left much to be desired. That’s why we incorporated a brand new, Google-powered search into the site to make finding the content you care about even easier. This applies to the search field in the far upper-right of every GovLoop page. We also took a page out of Utah.gov’s playbook by featuring a larger search field front-and-center on the home page to help members and visitors alike quickly access the things they’re looking for. Go ahead. Try it out.
- Carousel. As part of an overall effort to streamline the site and put as much information as possible “above the fold,” we went with a slightly more svelte carousel for featured content on the homepage. We hope you like the new look.
- Topics buttons. Our topics pages are a work in progress. As a result of comments we’ve received, we decided the real estate they were taking up on the homepage could be put to better use showing off the awesome blog posts and forum discussions you all create every day.So we’ve removed the buttons and added links underneath “Topics” on the top navigation bar for them instead.
- Featured blog posts and discussions. We’ve made some cosmetic changes to the homepage that we hope will allow for more intuitive browsing. This includes removing some extraneous information that hardly anybody was using anyway, and moving the “Latest Activity” stream over to the left sidebar to balance out the “Today’s Top 10” stream on the right.
That’s about all we have for now. As always, feel free to let us know what you think!
Stay awesome,
slade
I like the changes. The new front-n-center google search box is very now. Only one question. Why do we have two search boxes? They appear to do the same thing.
Hi James – the reason for having two search boxes is this: We want you to be able to conduct a search from any GovLoop page (blogs, forum discussions, etc.) without needing to navigate to the homepage before you can conduct a search. Make sense?
Jack – to find members of your agency, I recommend using the advanced search function. Click on “Members” in the top nav bar, then “Advanced Search” next to the search box. Then type your agency into the sixth field, “Current Agency or Organization.” You don’t have to fill the rest of the form out — anyone who lists that agency on their profile will return.
All that said, we hear you. The member search could be better. We’ll look into how we can save you a step there. Thanks for the idea.
Makes sense. Thanks for the info.
Nice work. And good job sharing the changes with the community!