Does anyone have any suggestions on alternatives to an introduction page for a website? The site I am managing used to have an intro. page which faded into the homepage. The site recently underwent a major code clean-up due to the fact the original developers were pretty sloppy, to say the least. The intro. page was removed during the clean-up and has not yet been re-introduced. I am very reluctant to re-introduce it because I personally cannot stand intro pages. Quite often I feel they detract from the purpose of a website - getting a visitor to the information they are interested in. However, without the intro. page the home page really does not make sence (the home page consists of an image (map) of an open binder sitting on a coffee table. Elements within this image are linked to internal pages. Th intro. page is a living room scene that has a panned-out view of the binder on the coffee table). So, any ideas how I can re-introduce the intro. page without it actually being an intro page? Oh...I do not know how to creat Flash-y elements. I was considering having the homepage act as a fade-out/in slideshow where the living room scene (original intro. page image) fades out and the open binder image fades in. The main issue I see with this: Every time a visitor hits the Home link from an internal page they will be returned to the living room/binder slideshow, which could get annoying (imo). Is it possible to have two "home" pages? One to act as the index page: the living room/binder slideshow, and the second one to act as the "home" page: the open binder without the living room fade out/in so selecting the "home" link from internal pages will not re-show the living room/open binder slideshow? Than you for your assistance /opinions.

Closest solution I can offer is to have the slide show option on the index page, then after the slideshow plays have the index page redirect to something like home.htm (this would be the binder page) and make all links home go to home.htm rather than index.

This way when a visitor hits the site for the first time they get the index page which plays the animation of the living room and then zooming in on the binder. Once the binder is on the screen the page will redirect to a second static page of the binder (which looks like the last frame of the animation).

You can use the time delay feature of HTML redirects to control how long the index page is there before it redirects to the home page with the binder. In other words time the slideshow animation and set the redirect for that many seconds.

Not the cleanest, but simple and gets the job done. Only noticable thing would be the moment it takes for the page redirect and that would depend on the visitors connection speed.

Hope this helps.

I am very reluctant to re-introduce it because I personally cannot stand intro pages. Quite often I feel they detract from the purpose of a website - getting a visitor to the information they are interested in.

Excellent thinking. I HATE intros... especially the cheesy animated flash ones.

However, without the intro. page the home page really does not make sence ...

If that is the case then you might want to reevaluate the site design. in your first quote you bring up a good poing about the user being able to find the info the need but it is then contradicted by the fact your site is admittedly confusing to a user that doesn't see some sort of flash movie at the start. My suggestion is to try and find a way to make your site less confusing while not compromising the design principles of the site.
It might be easier to offer suggestions if we could see the site in question.