Tonight's chat is on a page-by-page review of the Phoenyx 
website... being as how so few people are there (ahem) right now, 
and since some people can't make it (and we're going to have 
another Saturday chat Real Soon Now), I'm going to post the 
summaries here to get feedback.

First off, the main page:  (http://www.phoenyx.net/ but if you didn't 
know that, what are you doing here?)

The new templates needed fine-tuned; alt tags and so on were 
added during the chat.

The menu needs some feedback, especially from people new to 
the Phoenyx.  What needs to be on it that isn't, and are the things 
that are on it clear enough?

The Site Summary paragraph needs a rewrite.  Presently, it's "The 
Phoenyx is an Internet service dedicated to building a roleplaying 
community online. It offers free email discussion groups (with web 
and newsgroup interfaces), IRC channels and MU* servers for 
gamemasters wishing to run online roleplaying games." Informative, 
but slightly inaccurate, and deadly dull.

The Phoenyx News is a new feature, making the page more 
dynamic. Of course, if we only have internal news, it's not that 
compelling, but I really don't want to become a general news site 
(there's plenty of that).  I'd rather have periodic articles and 
columns to put in there.  A lot of you write occasional how-to's and 
whatnot; I'd love to host them on the Phoenyx and formalize it into 
a mini-zine (okay, micro-zine).  Nothing fancy or high-maintenance, 
just occasional articles, mostly on internet roleplaying (though I'm 
*still* going to do that food column Real Soon Now).

The "Where to Start" section is the main content of the page, and 
(as discussed in the chat) was a slapped-together placeholder 
that's been holding its place for *way* too long.  We need a "Start 
here" intro page (we have one, but it's presently trapped on a laptop 
with a shorted power cable, so a rewrite is probably in order).  But 
mostly we just need to figure out what needs to go in this section.

The main page doesn't have a sidebar presently (well, it does have 
the 9-11 link, but that's another placeholder).  I don't want to make 
the page too busy, but we could put something there if needed.

Thoughts?  Comments?  Does anybody ever read the main page?

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Game(s): The Whole Phoenyx
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