SDL Community Design, Navigation and Layout refreshment

(POLL IN THE VIDEO AND ALSO BELOW)

Probably you've noticed it already, we've changed and refreshed a couple of things in the Community:

  • New homepage design
  • New design and navigation structure
  • New design and layout product community groups/aligning groups design and layouts

The reason for refreshing the community is to make it easier for our members to find what they need in the SDL Community.
Another reason why we chose to refresh the community is to professionalize and create a new look and feel.

To explain a little more, let's go over the different topics.

New homepage design

Before we redesigned the homepage, the main part of the page was an activity stream. Here you could find the last activities that took place in the whole community. Relevant but also irrelevant information was shown on the previous homepage. We got feedback that the activity stream is not really interesting or what our members are looking for, so we took out the stream on the new homepage and recreated it on a separate Personal Activity Stream with personalized relevant information per member. (Make sure you join groups of your interest to be able to view activities there)

The second most important feature was the banner/slider on top of the page where we showcased the newest blog posts, interesting events and other up-to-date information. We're continuing this and even put a second slider/banner at the bottom of the page to showcase even more posts!

The new homepage makes it possible for people to navigate easier to the most popular groups, find important collateral and get started in our community.

New design and navigation structure

Other feedback we got from our members was that they found it difficult to find groups and had difficulties how to navigate through the website. Like other websites, our community is using a top site navigation. Via this navigation you should be able to find your desired group(s). But looking at our feedback and questions being raised in wrong forums, navigating wasn't easy enough. What we did to make it easier is renaming groups, renaming umbrella groups, restructure groups and take away the second so called 'Solutions" level. Navigating through our community should be simpler now!

New design and layout product community groups/aligning groups

The last topic on the list was redesigning the layout of the product community groups. What we wanted to create is a more aligned look and feel between our different product communities. All product community groups now have:

  • a top banner
  • a slider on the right side
  • view all forums
  • give a list of ideas
  • a list of useful links

Check it out yourself!

We hope that these changes make your life in the community more easy.

If you have any feedback or found bugs please raise them here.

Please fill in the polls below to let us know what you think of our new implementations!