Solution for homepage exposure

Guys, most of us know the annoyance of constant threads started about exposure time on the homepage, mainly complaints about how little time some people get. I myself have experienced only a couple of hours on the homepage, and can understand peoples annoyance. What’s really disheartening is when people are saying they are considering other marketplaces just because of this. I know we have the best review time and exposure compared to quite a few sites, but I also think that this site could do with a few improvements.

Now I have already posted this solution on another thread, but I think it isn’t a bad idea to create a dedicated thread to this possible solution, any feedback on the idea is welcome. So here’s the solution:

The rest of the site stays as normal including how often reviewers review files and how the files are displayed in the categories, this only affects the recent items ok?

So, the site should have a cached recent items list, which is recached every hour or so (an interval which envato set). There will also be a variable that envato set that specifies the minimum time that an item has on the homepage (for arguments sake let’s say they set it to 24 hours, and also we need to bear in mind that the minimum amount of time that an item stays on the homepage for will decrease as envato grows and more items get reviewed and accepted, otherwise the recent items won’t really be that… Recent. )

Anyway, everytime this list is recached, it checks all the items in the list (for admin curiosity, the list is probably best ordered time-wise, the items which have been on the homepage longer will be nearer the top) and if the system comes accross an item that has been listed for the minimum time or longer, it checks to see whether there are any more items avaliable which haven’t yet been on the homepage, and if there is one, it removes the file (which has been there for a while) from the list and adds the new item to the bottom.

I hope I have made this clear enough

This system, should envato choose to accept it, is actually not a hard system to implement at all. And I have to admit, I’m thinking about how to write it in psuedo code as I’m writing this post. The system ensures that all items will get a fair amount of exposure so we can all relax with no more exposure complaint threads.

Another potential drawback of this (assuming I’m understanding your concept) is that it means items may not display as soon as they are approved. So there would be a queue to be reviewed and a queue to be displayed. If the reviewers get ahead of the display time, a large backlog of approved files could grow beyond whats being displayed, which would lead to just as many posts about “how long before my item is displayed” as there is “how long before my item is reviewed” threads now.

I understand the concept of changing the display time based on site size, but between adjustments this situation could happen daily.

Hmm ok… But at least each item will get an equal amount of exposure… but what you guys are saying is true aswell, hmm… I guess the site will never be perfect.

Maybe what Reaper Media suggests could be implemented if the recent items section could scroll back like the featured items does.

This way items that are still on frontpage and have exposure time left would stay there but if the user clicked the right arrow it would show “upcoming” files that were approved but just waiting to display on frontpage.

This way they would still be accessible and in some ways getting more exposure time, as they would have time in the upcoming section and then there alotted time on frontpage too.

I like that! +1