[Preview] Mod Portal: Weekly Highlights

[vinzenz]

We've added a new page to the mod portal: Weekly Highlights . Every week the mod portal picks 4 random highlight categories and from each it chooses 5 mods to feature. It's currently in a "preview" kind of state, where it's mostly done but we wan't to monitor it for a bit. Eventually we will promote this page to take the frontpage spot from "Recently updated".

The mod portal tries to highlight a diverse set of mods by avoiding mods and highlight categories which have been featured recently. It's also a heavy user of the random.sample function.

To ensure a high quality mod selection it will also not highlight mods for which one of these is true:

• Mods in the Internal category
• Mods without thumbnail
• Mods incompatible with Factorio 1.1
• Deprecated mods

The highlight process is 100% automated and hands-off at the moment. Maybe in the future we can do community or creator spotlights, but there are no specific plans for this currently.

[Xorimuth]

Awesome!

"Highlights from 2023-02-05 until 2023-01-30" I think your start and end dates are wrong

[FuryoftheStars]

This just gave me a reason to go through my mods and make sure the categories and tags are correct.

[curiosity]

I'm not sure I see the point of highlights that aren't hand-picked.

It's also a heavy user of the random.sample function.

From Python, if someone was wondering.

To ensure a high quality mod selection it will also not highlight mods for which one of these is true:

• Mods without thumbnail

Let's hope this doesn't reduce their quality.

[Stringweasel]

Eventually we will promote this page to take the frontpage spot from "Recently updated".

Will the "Weekly Highlights" also contain a "Recently Updated" section? I think it will fit nicely with the idea.

[FuryoftheStars]

Eventually we will promote this page to take the frontpage spot from "Recently updated".

Will the "Weekly Highlights" also contain a "Recently Updated" section? I think it will fit nicely with the idea.

If the "Recently Updated" page doesn't actually go away, just is no longer the front page, then that shouldn't be needed, right?

[Stringweasel]

Eventually we will promote this page to take the frontpage spot from "Recently updated".

Will the "Weekly Highlights" also contain a "Recently Updated" section? I think it will fit nicely with the idea.

If the "Recently Updated" page doesn't actually go away, just is no longer the front page, then that shouldn't be needed, right?

Technically, but with the same thought you can throw out other things from the page as well. It's already possible to get "Top mods from category: Content" somewhere else, so why add it to the front page?

Generally speaking, if you have a front page showcasing some a small amount of mods from different metrics, then there should also be a recently added metric. Just another row in the page, along with the other categories.

It seems to me the goal is to have a nice front page with a few categories that regular users will enjoy looking at and maybe find nice mods. If that was me using the front page I would enjoy seeing which mods was added recently being it means they're still being maintained. Might even be cool to see some recently added (brand new) mods.

[FuryoftheStars]

Might even be cool to see some recently added (brand new) mods.

That I think may be great for a row.

For just recently updated, though, it would make more sense with the new page if it were "Recently updated in category X". Otherwise it's an exact replica of the recently updated page, just showing the first 5 items. The new top mods row at least filters to a category, so it's not an exact clone.

[Stringweasel]

if it were "Recently updated in category X"

I would compromise for that It will also be nice.

[vinzenz]

The recently updated page will stay, but it won't live on / any more. The highlights page will also feature recently released mods but the chance for this category is quite low currently.

[lyvgbfh]

This would be a great place for infinite-scroll. I'm against shoving javascript where it doesn't belong, but I think it would aid discoverability here.

[FuryoftheStars]

The recently updated page will stay, but it won't live on / any more.

As I'm not proficient in web hosting and what have you, so I don't exactly know what this means? I would hope that whatever the plan is that the Recently Updated tab would stay or at least be readily visible and available to those who want it? Or, having some kind of easy to access "sort by" option that has this? Recently updated has its uses, too.

[vinzenz]

As I'm not proficient in web hosting and what have you, so I don't exactly know what this means?

It means navigating to the mod portal frontpage at https://mods.factorio.com/ will show you the highlights tab instead of the recently updated tab

Screenshot from 2023-02-07 09-09-22.png (233.12 KiB) Viewed 1986 times

[FuryoftheStars]

As I'm not proficient in web hosting and what have you, so I don't exactly know what this means?

It means navigating to the mod portal frontpage at https://mods.factorio.com/ will show you the highlights tab instead of the recently updated tabScreenshot from 2023-02-07 09-09-22.png

Ahhh, thanks for that.