We have been busy the last several months working to improve the overall experience for the CodePlex community. We have been working through some of the top requested items, such as our big announcement last week enabling Git. Something that is not explicitly on the feature request list are requests to update the web site look and user experience.  As Brian Harry mentioned, the Future of CodePlex is Bright, so it is time to start brightening up the place.

Goals

As with any sizeable change you need to decide the scope of changes you want to tackle. We decided that we would optimize on incremental improvements verses taking months to get a completely new experience released. Our goals with this user experience work is to refresh the look and feel of the site, introduce new visual elements and set up the site for future structural changes. So this is not the end, just the beginning.

Early Views

I want to set a few expectations first, these screen shots are not final, and we are still working through the content and final element placement. Feedback is always welcome, just take that in mind as you review the images.

New CodePlex Home

The navigation changed a good bit on the home page and we have moved the search to a more consistent location across the site.

User Profile

Users Home Page

The goal was to make it easier to find and take action on common tasks such as creating projects.

Project Home

Issue Tracker

This should give you a taste of where we are going with the new user experience.    

As always we love the feedback, either comment below, find us on Twitter @codeplex or @mgroves84, or create or vote up suggestions.