[thelist] Usability question: home page vs dashboard at same URL

[erik mattheis]

I have a project that has a "public home page" containing marketing
messages and overviews of the site's functionality. There is also a logged
in dashboard with user generated content.

I am implementing the design and noting the absence of a link to "home"
from the logged in page and an absence of any way to get to the dashboard.
I heard from the UX person on the project that "there won't be a public
home page if they're signed in".

Sites like Facebook and Twitter have completely different content at the
root URL, but there are two major differences I see:

A. We have a lot more than a login form on the not-logged in home page -
videos, marketing materials and overviews of services.
B. We are not Facebook or Twitter

Is it that big of a deal to make a significant amount of mostly marketing
material unavailable to users after they have logged in?

What are your thoughts? If we are going to hide the content what is the
best way to do it? redirect logged in users to the dashboard from / or
replace the content of / with the dashboard?

What would be the best way of explaining the problem I see so if I end up
being overruled, I'll know I did everything I could?



-- 
Erik Mattheis

http://www.flickr.com/gelk