Test layout of a SayIt instance homepage

[abibroom]

SayIt instances irritate me every time I look at one, and here's why. On their first visit, a user knows nothing about this site. The biggest thing they see is an invitation to search it. How will they know what to search for?

As a user, I want to see more prominence given to the description of what this site is about, so that I know what I'm looking at.

As a user, I want to see less prominence given to search, and more to browsing the list of sections, so that I can read transcripts in chronological order.

[duncanparkes]

I think part of your problem here is #182, and also #252.

I'm not sure what you mean about more description of what the site is about - if you mean about SayIt, then I don't agree at all. If you mean allow instance owners to add some stuff about the instance on that search page, then I'm in.

[abibroom]

OK, you drove me to this. It's Incompetent GIMP Makeover time! Here's what I'd like to see.

Before

After

• already a search box in the header, no need for one in the body
• ditto speakers/speeches, nobody cares how many
• description way more obvious - ooh, transcripts of Ferguson grand jury
• great, let's read those then!

[dracos]

This should be under the sayit.mysociety.org repo, I guess - though the default example project front page might also of relevance, I think it's of less import and e.g. has no site-wide search in its default at present.

Changing the header in some way is already covered by #175. I agree the description text should not be there, as that ticket already says; it could be included on the front page main body instead. I do think it is important to have a search box, that is one of the main improvements over e.g. multiple PDFs and should be highlighted. Really, you'd want a customisable front page (links with #252 as mentioned), but we don't provide that level of customisation for the hosted site, you have to set up your own. Nobody cares about the numbers, sure, but it is interesting to give an impression of size (10,000 speeches by 2 people is quite different from 1,000 by 300 people).

In summary, I think moving the description (and therefore also allowing it to be longer) so it's a sidebar to the search box would cover #175 and be much of this. Date order could await #103 (and front page could have most recent stuff then, for example). Something like: