Is the homepage the most important page on a site?

[froggyboy604]

Yes, I think for certain situations if the homepage is your forum, or blog with the latest news, or links to sections and categories on your forum.

But, I feel a website's original content posts, and topics are the most important pages on a website since search engine's seem to send more traffic to content pages compared to a homepage which is mainly just a summary of what a forum, blog, or website is about, and the homepage might list the most important post on a website.

To be honest, I spend most of my time on people's forum, blog, and content rich sites rather then reading their homepage since I'm more interested in their articles, and their community then reading what their website is about, and other generic info.

 

[etc]

i will probably be reading their homepage's info first and if their niche isn't something interesting for me, i might not go into their pages.

 

[froggyboy604]

I find most webpages, forums, and blogs from searching Google for help posts, and if I like the forum, or website I sometimes check out the homepage to see if they have any recent news.

But, if the forum, or blog does not impress me because of a poor design, and lots of spam post, and uses annoying advertisement like too many pop-ups, in-text ads, banners, and flash ads, I just leave after reading the article without checking their homepage.

 

[Gizmo]

On Joomla sites I run I just have the homepage either link to interesting articles by placing a nice table with images on the front page. (Not scattered etc), or for example the movie site I did I put a poster and about the film at the bottom of it.

I much rather focus on the other areas.

 

[Cap'n Tech]

Generally, for me, the Homepage is the most important. If your homepage is either totally un-related to your site, or your site links aren't clearly visible, or the page looks totally unprofessional, then odds are I would leave the site. That's just me.

 

[Deleted member 9315]

If you have a portal, and you can make it sync with the actual website, then that would be a good homepage. But it depends on how you set your homepage.

 

[froggyboy604]

I think Portal Homepages are not very important for people who "just want to run a forum", and have nothing else on the site like a blog or an online store.

Like http://www.warriorforum.com/ and http://www.websitebabble.com/ install its forum on the root of its domain instead of example.com/forum .

Would having people click an extra link to example.com/forum before they reach your forum from example.com cause fewer people to join or login for forums vs just having the forum on example.com?

I dislike it when people put their forums on a sub domain since it can be more time consuming to type forum.example.com instead of just example.com or an easy to remember path like example.com/forum or example.com/forums.

I also read a article by a blogger which said it was best to have your forum, and blog on the root of the domain at example.com for SEO purposes, and higher rankings in serps.

 

[Joshua Farrell]

Having a homepage is subjective to what type of site it is. Generally if it is a forum, then most likely it shouldn't have a homepage before getting to the forum index, unless you are a forum, where you NEED a homepage to help describe what your forum is about, and if you can manage to show relevant data on the homepage to make it a worth while project to have.

With a blog, it also depends on the type of blog it is. with me, I am running a News Site off of the Wordpress.org software, and the homepage is set up to display similar to a magazine. That is, sections of the site in different spots on the homepage.

 

[froggyboy604]

The header area on most forum where logos, and short descriptions about a forum usually is good enough to know what a forum is about, and section links on a forum usually let you write a short description for most section in a forum for most forum software I used, or am a member on like phpBB, and invision.

I agree blogs like news blogs like gawker.com, huffington post, and TechCrunch can do fine with the default homepage which is auto-updating everytime a new blog post is updated it gets added to the top of the homepage, and the older posts move down, or to the second page.

Using the sidebar, and header area on a forum or blog to link people to your most important, or most viewed posts can also be useful rather then just having a static homepage.

Some people also like to put their RSS, Twitter, and other feeds for their forum or blog on their static homepage by using a javascript, html5, or iFrame widget to make their static homepage less static.

 

[THA]

My site's just a forum, it doesn't need a homepage.

 

[theyungstar]

My site's just a forum, it doesn't need a homepage.

Your forum home is your home page.

Home pages are the most important page on a site because "first impressions" are huge. When a user first loads your site, they go to your home page, and if they like your home page they continue to browse your site and click on the links.

 

[THA]

My forum's not my homepage.

 

[jdab]

Definitely. It's the homepage people see first (most of the time) and is what leaves a big impression on potential new members.

 

[MrJohn]

Although the home page is the most important page, you can not forget to do SEO work on your other pages as well. Often times people forget about those pages when they could be ranking them as well for specific keywords.

 

[froggyboy604]

I agree with you, MrJohn that it is important to do SEO work on regular topics since a larger percentage of visitors tend to find a website through an article they find on Google search, or a social bookmarking submission site like Digg.com .

I think the homepage is important, but posting informative topics and replies on a regular bases is also important then spending all your time tweaking and redesigning your homepage when you can use the time to post more topics, and reply to members topics and repies to make the forum seem active.