The VGG Front Page is designed to be your own personal starting place into VGG. Initially it may seem overwhelming, but a logged in user can customize the front page to allow them to see as much or as little as they want.
Recently Viewed
On the left column, you have two sections. The first is the Recently Viewed section, which shows you the geekdo item pages you have recently visited. Clicking on the items will take you back to those pages. Clicking on the All link will show you even more of your browsing history. Recently Viewed spans all the geekdo sites, so you may see boardgames or RPGs there as well if you also visit the other domains.
The Hotness
The Hotness is a tracker of the most popular pages on the site. Updated nightly, this section lists the pages that saw the most traffic on the previous day, divided between Games, People, and Companies.
VGG News
The VGG News module occupies the upper left of the customizable home page space. This provides forum links to important news, announcements, and stickied topics which are deemed of interest to all VGG users.
Customizing the Front Page
The rest of the front page is yours to customize. Currently, individual modules exist for the VGG community forums, the video game forums, reviews, images, and geeklists, with more to come. Each module shares similar navigation traits.
Hot, Recent, and Active allow you to switch between the highest rated, the newest, and the most recently contributed items within the module. The page navigator underneath these allows you to view more items. The little "-" box allows you to collapse a module; it will then change to a "+" box to allow you to expand it again.
With the exception of the images module, all modules display information in the same way.
The number to the left of each row is the number of thumbs that topic has received. Thumbs are a method of recommending a thread, post, or other contribution, and are discussed further here.
Next is the topic name, as selected by the user who created it; Clicking on this link will take you to the chosen thread. Next to that is the name of the user who created the thread; Clicking on it will take you to that user's profile page. Lastly, the number on the right shows the number of posts in the thread.
Edit Front Page
You can choose the layout and number of modules on your front page by clicking on the Edit Front Page link within the VGG News module.
This page shows the modules you currently have on the front page, and allows to add, modify, or remove them.
The Add A Module link opens a drop down allowing you to choose from the available modules. A new module is added to the bottom of the page.
The Reset to Defaults button reverts your front page to the standard page presented to new users and visitors who have not logged in. The Save button will save any changes you have made (remember to hit this after customizing your front page!).
The Front Page is divided into two columns. You can drag and drop modules to any position within either column as desired. Each module block uses the same formatting: The name of the module, a text block to determine the number of items to be shown within the module, and a menu to select which topics you want to see (Recent, Active, or Hot). The red "X" button will remove the module from your Front Page. Experiment with the layout and create the Front Page that works for you.
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