I don't know the Path taken by others, but when i come to the Monastery the first place I go is to the 'newest nodes' page. I would love it if that could become my default 'Monastery Gate'.

(is it false laziness to want to click once less?)

-- I'm a solipsist, and so is everyone else. (think about it)

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RE: Picking our own frontpage
by turnstep (Parson) on Sep 24, 2000 at 01:29 UTC
[reply]

      I'm just trying to be altruistic. As i understand these website thingys, the only way to support and effort like this one is to sell ads. The only way to sell ads is to promise eyeballs. the only way to effectively deliver eyeballs is to be sure that you can say N number of people saw _this_ page this month and probably will again next month. From my experience with net ad agencies ( I have had personal dealings with Doubleclick ) they like you to be able to say, "everyone who visits my site for any reason will see _this_ ad-space, garunteed."

      With that all said, if we all have our own bookmarks into the site, we defract the traffic that comes through, therefore by having the system assign us a 'home page' vroom can always be sure to plop an ad in a space where _every_ monk will see it, and therefore increase the sales appeal. Therefore ensure a long life to this wonderful stuff :)

      Maybe it's just because I work closely with a sales organization, but I think about this type of stuff...

      -- I'm a solipsist, and so is everyone else. (think about it)

[reply]

        I would hazard to guess that 98% of the people who do not use The Monastery Gates as their "home page" use the Newest Nodes page. Why would anyone use anything else? Maybe some use SOPW as another 1.5% (got any stats, webmaster?) As far as the advertising goes, my philosophy has always been to please the viewers, and not the advertisers. I rarely see the ads anyway, as the browser I tend to use does not handle the IFRAME tag. :)

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        BUT..
        perlmonks is here - as far as I can see - in a much better situation, thus they can say - relying on access logs- how many different people for sure have seen the ads on top.
        Therefore there's no reason at this andvanced state of technique to force anyone to visit an "entry page" anymore.
        mmh, just two cents, :-)
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RE: Picking our own frontpage
by chromatic (Archbishop) on Sep 25, 2000 at 07:13 UTC
    I'm not sure how this'd work with the engine as is. There's something called 'The Default Node' that is displayed by default, when there's no node title or node id specified.

    On this site, that happens to be The Monastery Gates. There's one default, as the engine currently stands, for everyone.

    It's possible to rewrite a couple of bits of code to use a user setting for the default page, but that's a source code level modification and is totally up to vroom. (It's not complicated, but it does involve touching the engine code.)

    (I think the banner impression thing is a non-issue -- the kind of people who would use this change already account for more page views than the rest of the population.)

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RE: Picking our own frontpage
by ZZamboni (Curate) on Sep 24, 2000 at 22:25 UTC
    I have a button for Newest Nodes in my Netscape toolbar at school. An my IE5 toolbar at home. And my bookmarks page in my Palm VII (OK, I don't use that one too often). I also have the Perl/Tk Newest Nodes client as a button in my window manager toolbar. So Newest Nodes is never more than a click away... :-)

    --ZZamboni

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