Recently Updated Pattern

Audience / Scenario

The people who visit/use the site:

• want to know what's changed since their last visit
• want to know when it changed and who by

The people who own the site:

• need to make it easy for visitors to find and access content that has been added or updated recently
• want to highlight the fact that content is being changed regularly - a sure sign of an active site or community.

When and where?

You should use this pattern when:

• you have a large site which would make finding updated content diffcult
• you want to alert visitors to changes made on the site
• you don't want to display personalised "what's changed" lists which would put undue strain on the server

You should avoid using this pattern if:

• things don't often change - showing the same list of recent updates for a long period of time would make the site feel "stale"
• you don't want to distract visitors with arbitrary information which may not be relevant to them, e.g. a brochure-ware site that acts purely as a [goal funnel]

Note: If you don't change content regularly but still need a mechanism for infrequent visitors to find updates, you can place the list of changes in a less prominent location such as a separate page or on a different tab in a tabbed view.

You should incoporate this pattern in any of the following locations:

• the site home page
• a specific area listing recent changes
• a [content tab] (hides the fact that there are few updates)
• any area of a site which experiences regular updates
• community and portal sections of a site

Solution

Display a hyperlinked list of recently updated content, optionally categorised and optionally showing the author and time of update.

When showing the date on which the content was updated, do it in a human friendly way. For example, 1 hour ago or 2 days ago.

Why?

Visitors to your site are more likely to return if they feel it's always changing - i.e. there is something new for them to see. A list of recent updates is a very visible way of highlighting that your site contains fresh content.

A list of recent updates can also prompt visitors to view parts of your site that they have not looked at before.

Example

by Alain Moran (26 Jun) Recently Updated Pattern (User Guides)

by Alain Moran (26 Jun) Tree View Pattern (User Guides)

You can see more examples of recently updated lists in the Newsroom tab on our home page