Over the last few weeks, I've been working on creating a working prototype of a new homepage for forums. The new homepage is based on a mockup I created in June of last year. 

It's quite a departure from the classic forum homepage which lists all the forums available on the site, who posted in them last, how many discussions there are, etc. The priority of this revised homepage is not to display shed loads of information but to display relevant and useful information.

Instead of showing every forum, it'll show you forums that you access frequently – forums where you are more active. Forums which you never access will drop off the homepage onto a secondary page which lists all the forums. Over time, it'll continue to refine the items shown on the homepage. Members will be able to customize the homepage themselves – mark forums as favourites and reorder the forums as they please on their forum homepage.

On the right hand side, there will be a number of "featured discussions" and easy access to discussions you've read recently. You'll also get quick access to frequent tasks such as finding discussions you've contributed to.

One other big difference between this homepage and standard forum homepages is the use of a visual icon for each forum. I've found providing a visual identity for each forum makes the homepage look a lot better and generally makes it much easier to navigate.

You'll notice that forums and discussions with new discussions or comments have a colour icon, a highlighted background and bold text. This makes it really easy to see at a glance where the new content is without necessarily having to run your eye down the icons.

Thoughts and comments are welcome!