What other important information?
It's just the forum boards table of contents!!
Just the contents?
I would consider that the most essential and important information to be on the forums front page, and believe should be the most prominent, clean-structured, with as less distractions as possible.
And I didn't say that, you made the assumption there.
I'm sorry, perhaps my wordings were not subtle, that was not directed at a person, but at 'the idea' I believe is behind those extra links and/or buttons.
Then the forum (the latest look without the big buttons)... bluntly - boring, uninspiring and generally not nice to look at.
Especially when compared to the great work on the main MusicBee page.
I think there is nothing wrong with having a forum layout without much fun or eye candy. It should be all about content. That should be fun and not boring ;-)
I agree it wouldn't hurt it to be tasteful in layout, but the priority should be a clean layout without distractions and confusion, and, very importantly, a good speed of navigation.
I'm not saying the buttons have to be exactly as they were before, but I can't see the logic in removing those quick links to the most active boards.
The Bug Reports is the third most active board. Surely it's sensible to have a obvious link to that board, especially for new users that have just registered on the board to report a bug/problem?
Ok, eventhough I pledged to shutup about it, I have something to say about having extra links and attention to 'Report A Bug!' that I haven't said before.
I believe the logic behind this is flawed.
As you say, the Bug topic is already in the top 3 of most popular boards.
So it doesn't seem to be in any need of any extra attention at all. It would also be weird, having two different links to the same subject on the exact same page. That is confusing, and I think plain bad practise.
Also, I can not recall any complaint of any user ever having complained that he could not find where to post a bug.
So this would realy be a solution to a non-existing problem.
And what is much more important, I think it would result in the oppostite; it would create problems.
Already there is a regular amount of bug reports, that are not factual bugs.
This is of course undesirable, both for Steven, as for members and moderators trying to help.
With any extra invitation to report 'bugs', I am convinced that the amount of false bug reports will increase.
For that reason I also believe the 'report bugs' link on the front page of the website should be removed.
The MusicBee web page is likely to be the first page a newbee looking for support will land, before being aware there even is a forum.
Many of those that might have any issue with MusicBee, would probably be tempted to use that link, and go straight into the bugs topic.
Do we really want that?
I would suggest to have a single link called "need help or report issues?", which goes to the landing page of the forum.
The forum page will provide at least some filtering to prevent such unwanted bug reports.