Mod Browsing Overhaul Discussion

[NexBeth]

Nexus is about modding, which includes videos and pictures about mods, and mod collections for those who don't want to do their own load order; it's about mods and provides a medium of communication within the community.  The site can't possibly cater to each individual's wants who signs up here.  I've been here 10 yrs, and it has never just been a download site for mods--thankfully.

[Alundra]

  On 3/16/2025 at 2:28 AM, NexBeth said:

Nexus is about modding, which includes videos and pictures about mods, and mod collections for those who don't want to do their own load order; it's about mods and provides a medium of communication within the community.  The site can't possibly cater to each individual's wants who signs up here.  I've been here 10 yrs, and it has never just been a download site for mods--thankfully.

Expand  

Yeah but the focus was on the mods themselves. You can't make a collection of nothing. They need to make mods the main focus on the front page and add collections in a non destructive way. For example they can have a row for it under mods, and display an icon on mods in a collection and a little collections drop down (like requirements) on mods. They already have a really awesome collections section, the media section desperately needs an update but it's there also.

Having one row of mods on the front page of a website people primarily come to for mods is really awful usability and SEO. If they really wanted this they could make customisable front pages and ask you in your profile to drag and drop sections around like other apps do, and give you the option to set the section to full display (several rows) or just a slider (one row). Then no one would complain cause if you're here for screenies or collections there they are where you wanted them, as much of them as you wanted :D.

[showler]

  On 3/16/2025 at 3:07 AM, Alundra said:

Having one row of mods on the front page of a website people primarily come to for mods is really awful usability and SEO. 

Expand  

Okay, seriously, are you all looking at a different website or something?

First of all, what do you mean by "the front page of the website"?  Because "www.nexusmods.com" has two rows of games,  five rows of "news updates" and four rows of mods showing on it.  Is that not what you are seeing?

Or do you mean the "home page" for specific games.  Because that's a bit dynamic.  Open the Fallout 4 or Skyrim SE pages and you get the "hot mods" panel, a banner linking to the Collections section for each game, four rows of mods, five rows of images and five rows of "news updates".  The mods and images are all from the "new today" tab because that's what I've got set up in my Site Preferences page.

Now, if you go to the Fallout 3 homepage, on the other hand, there's one row of "mods", one row of "images" and the five rows of "news updates" and the tabs are "new this week" for the "mods", "new today" for the "images" and "all news" for the "news updates".  The reason why it's different is blatantly obvious because there are no Fallout 3 mods newly released today so it jumped to the "new this week" tab and only took up one row because there's only five mods released this week.  For "images" there was one image released today so it stayed on the default tab.

Nowhere can I find a place that has a single row of mods and has Collections and media getting in the way of seeing the mods in any way.

[Battlestar1965]

  On 3/16/2025 at 1:27 AM, showler said:

There was a blue banner across the top of every single page on the site asking if you wanted to try out the beta.  You didn't need to go to the forums or check your notifications.

Expand  

That was the first time i heard about the planned change of the webpage design. And i think i clicked on the banner pretty early (not on the first or second day...maybe not even during the first week) in the process. I didn't read about it in the formus, because, like may others, i simply don't use them very often. I tuned off notifications, because usually it's just about updated mods. So, like many others, i heared about these terrible plans pretty late, BUT since i was aware about this, i forwarded my complains, and , of course, it didn't do much. They are still just makeing everything worse. I'm Nexus user since 2009 and this poop happens not for the first time....

[RomanR]

As parts of new desing are slowly pouring into main web page, I must agree with @HadToRegister  and @Battlestar1965 and I feel rather disappointed too. For some reason UI parts are looking uglier than before and overaly all these changes are rather cosmetic (like a little change of font here and there, little different look of buttons etc.). And also quick search in its separate window doesn't feel like quick search somewhat anymore). There are also small mistakes on UI parts - like bright white backgroung on tags (stealing focus on more important things in my opinion), some buttons don't highlight like others (for example Report Abuse, Share buttons), using yellow numbers against dark grey background only (for some reason I find it harder to read).

It's propably time to hire some capable UI designer and good graphician, not centered around mobiles and this ugly flat era UI only. I really dislike such UIs and hope to be rid of them someday.

[NexBeth]

  On 3/16/2025 at 5:40 AM, showler said:

Okay, seriously, are you all looking at a different website or something?

Expand  

I'm starting to feel the same way.  It is like I'm seeing one thing, but others are seeing entirely different things.

The front game pages are covered with access to mods and rows and rows of more mods.   

There are things I don't like about the site either.  Like everything to the right of a forum discussion taking up a 3rd of the page and to left avatars taking up 20% space.  It is a waste of forum discussion space for what I think is unimportant clutter.  But it is a better format for phones.  And Nexus made the decision to keep it.  That was hugely discussed during the Beta and apparently reverting back to the classic style is a no-go for Nexus.

I prefer a light background.  Also discussed during Beta.  There was a change made to make the reading/writing areas less black, but I still don't get to have what I personally want-a light background.

I guess what I'm saying is the Beta is over and if you want to just vent here, ok.  But you're late to the discussion if you think these changes that have already been mulled over during the Beta is going to now effect change.  At this point, it is probably just down to reporting bugs and problem areas if you still want to take part in fixing broken things on the new website.  Just my 2cents.

[showler]

I wouldn't say it's useless to discuss changes at this point, but I'd expect we're looking at refinement of an established new look now (plus the mentioned bug fixes).

Anybody asking them to revert the entire look of the site is literally years too late since the overall look was established when they were getting feedback on the Collections pages.  And asking them to maintain two versions of the site is just plain crazy.  It's hard enough squashing bugs for one set of pages when you update things...doing it twice would be too much.

And least useful of all is implying (or saying outright) that the UI designers they hired are bad at their jobs based on your personal tastes on how the UI should work.  Just accept that you might be wrong about what good design is for a large, diverse audience.

And for the love of peace, please stop blatantly insulting the people who work on these designs.  That's just rude.

[HadToRegister]

Here we go....I'm so sick of this, where people start arguing against people leaving their criticism of this site. It happens EVERY SINGLE TIME and just wastes space in these thread, because people are stuck wading through the “Not it's Not, the site looks good now” “What website are you looking at?”
We always end up with people defending the site, rather than just letting people leave their comments/criticism. FFS CUT IT OUT.

It's ANNOYING, and it happens EVERY SINGLE TIME. 

And it grows and grows until the people leaving criticism get shouted down, because we aren't gushing and lauding over terrible changes, which is what always happens on this site.
We've seen it many, MANY times before.

Because FEEDBACK threads always degenerate into a handful of people defending any and all criticism or OPINIONS, rather than just allowing people to leave feedback or complaints. 
God I hate Fanbois.

My Complaint is about ONE THING. The quick search. NOTHING MORE.
ONE THING. QUICK SEARCH. 

ONE THING.





 

[Isguros]

Maybe we're all a bit too harsh: They only completely botched 3 aspects of the site-wide update: the layout, the color scheme, and the search function. 

We always tend to focus on the things that went disastrously wrong, but this update has brought us good things too: people that can't use their right arms can now use the search function a bit easier and be as disappointed by the results/functionality as the rest of us.

[mfPixel]

  On 3/17/2025 at 10:29 AM, Isguros said:

Maybe we're all a bit too harsh: They only completely botched 3 aspects of the site-wide update: the layout, the color scheme, and the search function. 

We always tend to focus on the things that went disastrously wrong, but this update has brought us good things too: people that can't use their right arms can now use the search function a bit easier and be as disappointed by the results/functionality as the rest of us.

Expand  

Hey @Isguros - the search results should be more accurate now (we let you include punctuation and also return partial query matches). Can you point me to any specific functionality or results that are worse with this update and we'll take a look. Thanks