This is a minor question: why is there no link in the forum header that takes one back to the main site. I’ve always thought the banner that says “pixls.us” should point to the main site, but it just takes you back to the front page of the forum (also useful, but counterintuitive to what it says). Maybe there is such a link, but I’ve still not been able to find it (I’m dense sometimes, however). I often want to just quickly pop over to the main site to look up a software link or a blog post, and a link would make that easy. Especially on mobile. Just a thought…
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There is no such link. I like it the way it is, as I am 90% of the time mobile and mostly just want to get back to the forum index. Personal preference, of course.
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This is the same thing that @Morgan_Hardwood has asked me to do for a while now, I just haven’t found a way that works well within the style of the site (and is still usable on mobile as well).
I will revisit it when I get a chance soon and try to get something in place that will be useful (without breaking the current use model).
Thanks @patdavid ! Glad to know you are working on it (as you usually are!)… I agree that it needs to be in a way that doesn’t break the site or remove the ability to get back to the forum front-page (as @paperdigits prefers and as I also do find useful as well). 
This occurred to me as well. A positive is that many of the main site’s links are already posted in the forum and the main site’s link is in the pinned welcome statement, all of which are searchable.
What confused me until today is that when you scroll down a thread on the desktop version of the forum, the header turns into the title of the thread. This behavior doesn’t happen on mobile. The confusing part is that at first it seems like link back to the index is gone. But it is just truncated to where the px logo is.
What if the link was above the main forum bar and then slide up as the user scrolled down?
@patdavid Why not just put it in the menu
at the bottom?
So we have but it doesn’t change the way the site works.
I was also searching for it it the past…
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I’ve also searched for a way to get from the forum back to the main site, and agree that a direct link somewhere on the page would be great.
As the pixls.us site is divided into Articles, Blog, and Discuss, an easy way to get to all three places from all three places would be nice, preferably at the top, but at the bottom would be much better than nowhere at all.
I’ve been on other sites where the forum was “isolated” from the main site, and it’s always frustrating to not have a link to get to the main site.
One option would be to make the “px” logo in the header link to the main site, and add “Discuss” as the first entry to the breadcrumb, before “Software” in this example https://i.imgur.com/yKKNsVH.png
This is very sensible. I agree. There are four areas…don’t forget software! 
…and this would take care of it, for the forum anyway.
I’ve circumvented the issue by adding separate bookmarks for the different sections in my Firefox bookmarks toolbar, but it would definitely be better to have something implemented within the web site.
Once you’re on the main site, all sections are accessible from all sections using the slide out menu:
I love this idea as well, and will definitely add it to the menu anyway.
OH! So that’s what that funny looking square with the three horizontal lines is about! I did my best to ignore that square as being a visually irrelevant moving object on the page, had no clue it actually was a thing to click to make something else visible. Sigh.
Why would you think it’s “visually irrelevant”?
The links to all the other pages are also available at the bottom of the pages as well (though they may need to be updated).
Well, I guess my question is why would I assume it had any meaning? I assumed it might be a coding mistake or an artifact created by my use of No Script or related functionality, or else an issue created by my browser, or etc, and so dismissed it from further consideration.
Recently there is a trend to use “icons” for stuff, and the icon itself is supposed to convey meaning.
I don’t speak fluent “icon”. Now that you clarified the situation, or rather you gave me a reason to poke at the little square to see if that made sense of your claim that “X is on the page” - when clearly the thing you showed as being on the home page wasn’t anywhere to be found on the home page - I now know that the little square is an icon that means “click here to see something else that you might find useful”.
I think this emphasis on icons as communicating “something” has its roots in Apple computers. I think the Apple icon paradigm might be behind Unity and Gnome3 and the more recent Windows desktops, all of which personally I find to be appallingly bad desktops. I suspect icons are widely used in tablets and cell phones. But I don’t use tablets or cell phones, and I’ve never used an Apple computer (well, once, many years ago, for a few minutes), and the last Windows I used before switching to Linux was Windows 2000, which was practically still DOS by today’s standards.
So what might be obvious to people who use cell phones, tablets, Apple computers, and Unity/Gnome3-type desktops might not be obvious to everyone else, might indeed present a “discoverability” issue. But I’m guessing most of your website visitors are more used to interpreting icons than I am.
Maybe reserve the [px] logo for the main site, and create and place a new logo adjacent to represent the forum. E.g., like so: [px][ds].
I have added links back to the main site in the site menu at the bottom (as @McCap suggested earlier):
I’m looking at ways to add a link back to the front page of the main site in the header as well (I have some ideas, will report back soon).
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Thanks @patdavid ! Haven’t been able to check back in on this thread until now (Tuesday is the day I teach my classes), and lo and behold you’ve already made the fix! I agree that the the bar menu is a good place for it. It’s ubiquitous across the web, and is exactly where I would look for such links (after clicking on the PX icon to no avail). Good solution! 
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I think I have another idea as well, but need to test it a bit first (it’s doing some odd things on mobile/tablet resolutions).
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Ok, I’ve fiddled with the idea a bit, and it should be working now. You may need to do a hard refresh of the page to trigger things (or just wait until you sign in again). These links should show up in the header now:
If you scroll down, they will scroll away. If you scroll back to the top, they will be there again.
Also, it should work for everything from an iPad (768px wide) and up. Anything smaller will not see it (just use the links in the hamburger menu at that point).
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Works great…thanks Pat!
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