As promised, I spent some time over the past week putting together a Greasemonkey script to reorder the modules on the new Vox homepage.

After the feedback people left, the new order I ended up using is:

Left Column                      Right Sidebar 1) Posts                         1) QotD 2) Comments                      2) Vox Hunt 3) Neighbor Activity             3) Team Vox News 4) [This is Good] Explore Box    4) Tips Box 5) Vox MSN Advertisement         5) Themes Box                                  6) Advertisement                                  7) Find your friends box

which can be seen in the screen shots to the right, here:

Want to install this script for your own use?  First install Greasemonkey, and then get the script here.  (Instructions to install Greasemonkey can be found here.)

As always, if you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions, or notice any bugs, please leave me a comment or send me a note.  I'll do my best to stay on top of any issues that arise.

Also, to those people who left me feedback but didn't get the exact order they wanted – I'm willing to make a custom version of this script just for you with the modules in the alternative order that you wanted.  Please leave me a comment as to whether you still want the order you suggested, and I'll send you a PM with the location where you can download/install your custom version of the script.

Enjoy!

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Okay, that Greasemonkey script I mentioned the other day took a lot less time to make than I thought.  Still waiting to hear what the majority wants for the order of the modules, but my first cut at it seems to work well and doesn't interfere with the readability of the page at all:

Vox homepage, above the fold

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If you haven't noticed yet, Vox pushed out another release (release 42) that fixes some of the issues people were having with the Vox homepage.  Now, you have all your recent comments, posts, and activity visible by just scrolling down the page.  The QotD and the Vox Hunt are together (although not above the fold).  As improvements go, this is MUCH better than release 41, but not quite yet what I could see myself wanting to have on my homepage.

I'm planning to put together another quick-and-dirty Greasemonkey script for the Vox homepage – the first revision of this (and only planned revision, at this time) will only re-order the content boxes around on the page.  For example, I would much prefer to have the QotD and Vox Hunt up in the top right, where currently the "Find your friends" and ad boxes are.

I'd like to make this script something that people would want to use, so for now, I'd like to hear how you'd like your homepage reordered.  Please leave a comment if you think you'd like to have your homepage reordered in any way, and let me know what your dream order for the boxes would be.  Keep the following in mind:

• On the first revision, I'm only going to reorder the stuff on the left up/down, and the stuff on the right up/down.  I'm not going to be moving things left-to-right or vice versa, or merging content of boxes.
• I'm not going to delete anything.  If you don't want ads, use an ad blocker.  I will however be amenable to putting things that aren't used often (like the find your friends widget) at the very bottom of the screen, where you won't see them often.

If I get overwhelming direction in the comments to order things a certain way, I'll definitely create a version of the script to order them that way.  If there's a more even split for what people want, I will probably pick the solution I would prefer and just implement that.  If you have any special requests after the fact, send me a note and we'll see what we can do.

I will be waiting to hear what people think until early next week (March 17th), after which I'll decide on an order, put together the script, and post a follow-up with a link for people to install it.

Edit: While hacking Vox to our whims may be fun and useful, the only way it's ever going to be "fixed" for real is by sending Vox some feedback with what you would like changed.  In addition to leaving a comment for me for the short-term fix, I urge you to tell Vox what you'd like reorganized on the home page – if they get enough feedback asking for a specific change, they will probably at least consider making the change (as shown by their efforts in release 42 to fix some of the complaints they received from their release 41 modifications).

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