I’ve been pondering the layout of caption.me. Here are some thoughts:
- The homepage shows lots of old photos that no one is likely to caption, and which don’t necessarily showcase the site’s funniest material
- The Captions page is slow to load, and rather than spend time fixing it, I could get rid of it, and take some of its content into a new homepage
- The prize shortlist (currently an option on the “Captions” page) could move to the Cash Prizes page Caption.Me - Cash Prize Caption Contest
- The pages aren’t mobile friendly as they load a lot of data, they’re not formatted for small screens, and the navigation is a bit clunky. Reducing the options (i.e. removing the “Captions” page button) would help. Note that the work to make the overall site mobile friendly will be more ambitious, and beyond the scope of this topic
What are your thoughts?
Homepage (“Photos” Page)
Homepage should show:
- Lots of recent photos (as per current design)
- Only the latest photo (with a link to show more photos)
- Most recent three photos (with a link to show more photos)
- Other (please comment)
- Don’t mind
“Captions” Page
“Latest and best” captions?
- “Latest and best” captions should stay on the Captions page
- “Latest and best” captions should move to the homepage
- I don’t use the “Latest and best” captions page
- Other (please comment)
“Latest” captions?
- “Latest” captions should stay on the Captions page
- “Latest” captions should move to the homepage
- I don’t use the “Latest” captions page
- Other (please comment)
“Best” captions?
- “Best” captions should stay on the Captions page
- “Best” captions should move to the homepage
- I don’t use the “Best” captions page
- Other (please comment)
This month’s prize shortlist?
- Shortlist should stay on the Captions page
- Shortlist should move to the Cash Prizes page
- Shortlist should move to the homepage
- I don’t use the Shortlist
- Other (please comment)
Do also vote the caption.me todo list, as this helps me prioritise. Thanks for your time.
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Hi Chris
How about just showing the latest 9 photos on the home page i.e. the ones that are still effectively ‘live’ for captioning? (Appreciate it is the captions rather than the photos which are live for captioning).
Might be worth putting a date/time stamp showing when a photo became live, either above the photo on the home page or on the page for it where we add captions. This is mostly to help new captioneers. I think when I 1st started I spent most of my quota straight away on photos that were a few days old (back in the days when captions were live for a week) so my captions were less likely to pick up votes. I might not have done so if I’d realised, or if I’d taken more time to suss things out.
I rarely use the Captions button so no issue for me if it is moved or removed.
What about the Mind Map? Would removing it speed things up? I never look at that, don’t know if anyone else does.
Don’t mind about the location of the prize shortlist. Happy with whatever you think is best.
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Good idea - that makes a lot of sense, and yes, I can put a timestamp so new captioneers get a feel for the “rhythm” of the site.
The way it’s integrated, it doesn’t have any impact on the speed of the site, no.
Thanks
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Agree with Troompa, 9 photos on Home Page, with a link to the others (because I do occasionally trawl back). This would steer the newbies to the current action.
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9 photos, or ten with a link to the others. Or perhaps all photos with captions that have yet to have the author revealed. On the captions page or homepage.
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I initially thought just the latest 3 photos on the home page because if a newbie only has a quota of 10 they shouldn’t be adding any captions to photos older than a day to have the greatest chance of receiving votes. However, I think the latest 9 photos should be on the home page as these are still receiving votes so it would be a hassle to switch to another page just to vote. Perhaps when a newbie joins they could be shown a screen message warning them that adding captions onto the older photos would tend not to yield many votes. I think there should be a finish date for adding captions to a photo, perhaps 48 hours after the photo appears. It seems strange that not one photo competition on caption.me has completed. If caption.me became more popular nearly every winner could be beaten by future captioneers. The only problem with just 9 photos is you wouldn’t see the captioneers who have just won so perhaps 12 photos would be better.
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I would not like to see any photos where captions are still anonymous removed from the Home Page. In fact, I do like to see a few more than that, because it is an easy way to see who wrote the most popular captions, but I would be happy to get there via a link. I would be happy for voting to be blocked once most of the captions are no longer anonymous - it ought not to be possible to vote for any caption where the author’s name is visible.
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Perhaps we could lay out the homepage like this:
For logged-in captioneers:
- Links to upcoming photos and cash prizes
- 12 most recent photos (to include both “active” and “recently won” photos)
- Link to show more photos
- Link to show latest captions
- Nine top captions from the last three months (covering enough of a timeframe to showcase great captions)
- Link to show more top captions
For new visitors (not yet signed up)
- Links to upcoming photos and cash prizes
- Welcome message explaining how the site works
- Nine best captions of all time
*nine works well as on desktop browsers, they can be displayed 3x3. On mobile they can be displayed 1x9
- Sounds good
- Not sure (please comment)
- Don’t mind
I’d rather see 12 recent photos on a desktop; for a mobile, of course, it is possible to use @media in your CSS to set the last three to “display:none” so as not to generate too much scrolling. And a link to the nine best captions from the last three months would be sufficient, rather than displaying them; they are not going to change often, so one doesn’t need to see them three times a day.
Again, for a mobile, the links should all be at the top, to avoid excessive scrolling; for desktops, they can be at the top or the bottom, whichever is more logical. Or even both! Once again, CSS can achieve this. But I’ve been retired for ten years now, so I can’t off the top of my head go into more detail without looking it up.
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Sure thing - I have changed the proposal to 12 recent photos.
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I would like to see a slightly extended viewing times rather than a hard cut-off.
What if we highlighted the picture whose winning author is just being revealed. I think this would add a little suspense, and more of a reward for caption winners of a picture.
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Seems moving the prize shortlist to the “Cash Prizes” page was uncontroversial, so I’ve just done this
One small step toward getting rid of the “Captions” page…
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It sits well there, Chris
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