... No, you're not seeing double. This really *is* a new homepage.

So, having had many problems with the alignment and technical difficulties based around the existing homepage, I've decided to start afresh. This time, doing stuff a little bit more clever, and integrating somewhat into the forum.

Check it out here: http://cuccoscratch.com/hp/

Bear in mind this is still a work in progress, and has only had about 2 hours worth of development behind it so far. It lacks anything images, banners, and tarting up, but this is a new basic concept.

The content links to boards on the actual forum. The homepage links to the News & Announcements board, and the Comics page will link to it's own board here too. Currently, it goes to Gamers Basement, as there's nothing specifically setup as yet for this page. This will obviously change before it goes live

If you have any ideas, comments or critisisms, please go ahead and reply. I'm looking for all sorts of ideas to go on here, to make it really good, fancy (but not too much), and somewhat tightly integrated into the forum, so access to forum features from the homepage are possible (however limited), so it'd be nice to hear your ideas of what might work well, and I'll go ahead and see if it's possible to add it in =)

I the new banner. It's so cute and very fitting for cuccoscratch.

I know this is just a concept, so a lot of images and other finishing touches are not yet present, but I think it would be cool if the backgrounds (the turquoise and/or the light purple parts) had more to them. Like maybe another art background (such as the background on the current cuccoscratch.com), but kind of faded so the text would still be readable over it. But maybe I'm thinking too far ahead on that, so my apologies if I am!

I agree with Cass that maybe the main part of the page shouldn't necessarily be all links to News/Announcements. If those links could incorporate other boards, like Gamer's Basement, Reviews, Art, etc., that would be cool. I know this place focuses more on Art, but I think it's important to also show it's not an Art-only forum. This place also has an attraction for those interested in gaming, or other people from NSider. It would be nice to have the main page to try and draw all those kind of users.

I like the intro on the current page of cuccoscratch.com, where it says why cuccoscratch was created and such. If that somehow could be saved and placed somewhere in the new format, I think that would be cool. It will also tell users that more than just artists are welcome to join here.

I would also switch the order of the "Users Online", "Welcome, <username>", "Navigate" sections on the left side of the page. The "Users Online" area might get long, especially since we are constantly getting new members, so I think it would be better if you had the "Welcome, <username>" options always easily accessible without having to scroll down in the case of there being a lot of users signed on. I think ordering these sections as "Welcome, <username>", "Navigate", and then "Users Online" might be better. This way the only reason why someone would have to scroll down is just to see  the users that are online, and not something they want to access, like their inbox or the logout option. I also think it's more conventional to have the "Welcome" part at the top too.

Well I guess those are my opinions. Hopefully they are okay and kind of helpful.

I was pondering that last night, then I forgot what I was pondering!  Thank you for bringing it up, cuz I completely agree

On second thought, I also think we should swap the top two bits, and put Navigate in the Middle.  This way, the welcome message for guests is right there at the top of the side bar, and you can have like "please login or register to view full content" or something.

Just a thought