Forum's landing page picture question

Am i the only one that has the forum landing page seems strange?

i.e. the blue SW picture is taking ALL the screen and i have to scroll down, otherwise i see no buttons or any forum info but a cut blue SW picture?

Would suggest formatting the opening graphics to work better with laptop screens (i run standard HD resolution, 1080*1980)

or is it something in my settings only?

Yes, you’ll need to scroll down below the forum photo to view the forum greeting and toolbar(s).

If you only knew how bloody incompetent we are here you’d be astonished that we’re still going after all these years. So I don’t think we could figure out how to reformat anything.

I am not sure if you're sarcastic or not but i would love to help Tim.

Hit me with a PM, i'd love to help fix it

Um, no, I wasn’t being sarcastic. We really are ejits. But I don’t see a problem with the size of the photo. That’s the format of the forum as given to us. Why don’t you post a link, or something, to a “before” and “after” home page photo showing what you have in mind.

Sure,
idea is to move from this:

to this as a landing page:

The main (and easiest thing) is that current image is 1024*1033 pixels
most forums works with ~1000*250 pixels.

just replacing this single image file "9956b110.jpg" with another in different dimensions would help a lot.

We’ve been using changing Silverwing in situ photos as the landing page since before I arrived. I think that members are chuffed seeing their pride & joy presented for others to appreciate as well. I don’t want to change that. Can you show us what your format would look like still retaining the blue Silverwing?

Sure,
here it is:
One is the template and the other is with a crop of the Blue SW.
We can change the featured bike every once in a while...

would roughly look like this:

I like the suggestion. If there is going to be some changes as demonstrated above, do you think you should include '600' in the Title?.....i.e. 'Silver Wing 600', or 'Silverwing 600'. The URL is 'silverwing600' so why not have the landing page reflecting the web address?

Being a senile old git, this would confirm to me that I have landed on the right site.

Just my tuppence worth.....

Aren't we welcoming our 400cc brothers and sisters as well?

As far as I'm concerned, 'Silverwing600' is the name of the site.
It doesn't demonstrate exclusivity; one has only to look at the list of forums to see that.

My other main scooter site is the X9 Owners & Riders Club. Since the X9 has been out of production for many years now, members have, as here, moved on to other maxis but the club retains its name.

Keeping the name distinguishes our site from other Silverwing sites found on the Internet, especially onFacebook.

The proposed logo is ok, but should be minimized over the original shots of owner bikes. I lean toward the original, giving owners' photos of their bikes prominence.

Looking at other forums, I miss the personal touch of the original photo, that this forum presents, which keeps me coming back. That's what makes this forum so interesting: the big colorful bike pic that matches the colorful conversations.

These site administrators work to keep the intro lively by changing pics now and then. I think that attention is appreciated.

I vote for things just as they are.

I only come on this site on my computer so I don't know what it looks like on a cell phone. My two cents: It's not all that hard to scroll down a bit to see the forum. It's not hard to roll the scroll wheel on my mouse so I'm for leaving it the way it is. But again, I only come here on the computer and not a cell phone.

While several folks have expressed a “leave well-enough alone” opinion. A well-regarded member here points out that, in the above example, that the monthly picture is sacrificed to the Silverwing graphics. Possibly a 50/50 split would work.

There has in the past been at least a couple of blokes that have registered on here and been disappointed that the site wasn't about the Honda Silver Wing motorcycle.

Perhaps the graphic portion could take up 1/2 of the left side of the top of the page, and the rotating picture abutting it to the right taking up the right 1/2 side of the page. 

For the graphic (left side), you could have the word Silver in the top left position: the word Wing in the top right position: the Honda Logo in the bottom left position below the word "Silver" and: 600 in the bottom right below the word "Wing"

Just a thought ...

Thank you all for your input.

I emailed our benevolent overlord, JeffR, to present ron1999’s idea. It’s wait n’ see now.

Personal opinion... leave it alone... "'Course", we all know what folks think about opinions...

Personally I like the proposed change as suggested by Ron1999. Looks very professional and retains pictures of "our" scoots. That said I will certainly go with the majority on this one. In other words, not in favor of a big hassle over this topic.

Perhaps if possible we could make the change temporary and leave it for a week or two and then revisit and see what people think? We could always revert back.

Guys,
didnt want to start any trouble here with my suggestion, nor did i intend to offend anyone by removing their bike's picture from the opening page.

Only aim i had was to improve usability of the forum -
Main reason people sign in and use this forum is to read, write and exchange data regarding their bikes.

With that in mind (and with some limited experience in forum mgmt that i have) i thought it would be nice to make the more useful part of the forum more accessible to its users.
again, without taking any shine from any user or rider here.

we can accept the idea or reject it, i dont mind it a lot.

i can say, from personal experience, that i find it inconvenient to have to scroll every time i change a page in the forum because of a graphics that takes 2/3rds of the screen, both on mobile and on my computer, but again, i might be in a minority here.

regardless, whatever you decide, i do appreciate the content and knowledge shared over this site.
(plus i really like that shade of blue of the pictured SW, in fact i plan to wrap my black SW in this shade of blue)

Personally, I didn't see your suggestion as 'starting trouble', Ron; it's good to have new points of view expressed as far as I'm concerned even if I don't agree with them.

If it came to a vote and I lost, so be it; I have too many friends here to stop me going off in a huff.

I can relate to Ron's comments but running a website isn't an easy task. I guess the guys who give up their time to provide this free site to virtual strangers are open to any suggestions but, the decisions ultimately are with them.

Dare I say?; 'Watch This Space'.

Just a quick FYI for anyone who'd like this option - i did manage to find a work-around for the forum home page picture.

If you're running any of the new web browsers (FireFox, Opera, Chrom) just right click on the picture and add it to the "blocked elements" of the page, your browser would just stop loading it / showing it and you could access the forum without a distraction.

This also works on mobile browsers as well.

Did both on my mobile phone's Opera and Laptop Firefox.

Have Fun and Ride Safe!

I find the site layout plenty good enough. I'm old school in my approach to webology (is the a word?) and prefer to keep things simple both for speed of loading (not all places have fast Internet access) and compatibility across platforms.