Update to AO homepage

[jonathancarey]

Hi Atlas Obscura community,

We’re excited to share that the Atlas Obscura homepage is getting a glow up! We’ve grown and evolved a lot over the last few years. In addition to sharing offbeat places and awe-inspiring stories, Atlas Obscura now offers trips to every corner of the world, online courses in everything from lockpicking to experimental perfumery, and a membership program with exclusive benefits.

Starting today, you’ll notice a few changes to the homepage on desktop and mobile. Here’s what’s new:

• The Place of the Day is bigger and more beautiful than ever. We hope that this brings more attention to not only the amazing places from our community, but also the stellar photography you provide.
• A Places section that puts the spotlight on the most recent additions to the Atlas.
• Featured Destination Guides for cities across six continents.
• A Courses section that highlights courses happening right now and the latest additions to the course catalog.
• A Trips section that features the latest and greatest travel experiences we offer.

We hope this makes it easier to navigate the site and see everything that AO has to offer. If you have any questions or feedback for us, please let us know!

[CoolCrab]

Very glad to see these things be improved! Thanks for letting us know and looking forward to seeing it.

At risk of sounding a bit impatient, Do you by any chance know if the HTML errors in the posts will be fixed soon also? And are the leaderboards on the to-do list?

[jonathancarey]

Yep, both are on the docket, just spoke with the dev team

[CoolCrab]

Awesome to hear! Thanks.

[linkogecko]

Very exciting change, and I’m really liking what I’m seeing so far.

Couple of questions from the first impressions. I can see that the destination guides section include a mix of “top cities” and some lesser-known destinations. My guess is these will rotate, is it at random or is there a method to choosing what’ll go there? Will the rotation be daily, weekly, monthly?:

The destination guides also include the number of stories/articles linked to a city but, in mobile, when going to the actual guides, the article list at the bottom only shows the last two. There is no “keep reading” or “see more” button, just the latest two articles:

The desktop version shows a lot more, but it’s still not the 15 articles that the destination guide says:

[jonathancarey]

Gotcha, Michelle passed these along to the dev team this am and they are looking into it. Thanks a bunch!!!

[linkogecko]

Thanks Jonathan,

I think you missed my question about the destination guide section, though.

Would appreciate an update if possible.

[jonathancarey]

Hey

This was passed along at the time, but the dev team is bogged down. I’ll ping you when we get an update.

[linkogecko]

Oh, no rush. I didn’t think that that section was under the purview of the devs, but rather of the Places team.

If it’s the devs that are dealing with both the missing Stories and that section, then I understand that they have other priorities and will have no problem waiting.

[Tamar27]

I hope to be able to participate in an upcoming course very soon.

[ThereAndBack]

Realize I’m a bit late on this, but thank you for reducing the number of ads on the home page! Of course y’all need to make money, but it was getting to the point where the articles were getting lost in the ads. The new layout is much easier to navigate, much cleaner to look at, and makes it much easier to tell the different kinds of content (atlas places, trips, etc.) apart.

[linkogecko]

Something I’ve noticed happening with the homepage on mobile from time to time is that the latest Places’ thumbnail pictures change size.

On the following screenshot you can see that those on the right are smaller:

Also wondering if there’s an update on my question about the featured destination guides. Mexico City, London, Tokyo, et al, are still there.

Thanks!

EDIT: Looks like it might have changed size to fit long words like “Kinderwagenmuseum” in this case.