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On Wednesday, February 5th, the Stack Overflow homepage at https://stackoverflow.com will begin redirecting to the questions page for anonymous (logged out) users. Currently, anonymous users landing on https://stackoverflow.com are shown our company landing page. The landing page at that URL will be deprecated and no longer displayed. Materials regarding our business-to-business offerings may be found on https://stackoverflow.co (note the ‘.co’ ending).

Logged-in users will still see the new version of our homepage when visiting https://stackoverflow.com.

We are making this change because we believe that it is critically important to bring users directly into the Stack Overflow user interface as soon as possible after they arrive here. We believe that users landing on the company landing page may be substantially less likely to sign up for and/or use Stack Overflow. Putting users directly into the Stack Overflow Q&A UI when they first visit is therefore a crucial change. Additionally, it is our goal to make it clear that Stack Overflow Q&A is of central importance to us.

We will be monitoring to see whether this change has adverse effects on the Stack Overflow community. However, we consider this outcome unlikely, and this change should not be regarded as a test or draft.

(Feb 5, 2025) - Change described above is live.

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    Kudos. One of the changes that seriously make me considering getting back to contributing regularly on Stack Overflow. Took 6 years, but that's fine, better late than never. Commented Jan 30 at 19:21
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    Still no Hot Questions in the right sidebar for logged-in users then! 🤦🏻‍♂️ Despite anonymous users now seeing it (since they will be redirected to /questions instead). Why did you even remove Hot Questions from the homepage in the first place? UI should be consistent throughout; not display it for some people and not for others. As an aside, I'm not in the slightest little bit surprised that you're getting rid of that godawful anonymous landing page - how to kill your traffic 101. Commented Jan 30 at 20:19
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    This is fantastic! This is the first unabashedly good change/feature that I've seen announced in... what seems like years. And to something that I was quite angry about (the anger has a way of fading after 6 years of worse things, but still). So, no notes, no criticism, just a thank you to whoever made this happen. Commented Jan 31 at 0:49
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    Ha ha :) How long will it take before a suit comes up with the brilliant idea to put a company landing page as the home page to maximize brand exposure :) It's the circle of life. But for now: well done. Commented Jan 31 at 9:48
  • I would really love to be able to access my custom filters right from the homepage instead of having to click the hamburger menu in the top left and having to click questions. Commented Jan 31 at 12:30
  • Thanks so much..and here was me thinking "ugh...another UI change" Commented Jan 31 at 14:29
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    Now that you mention it, @Gimby, that might be a great way to maxi-- Commented Jan 31 at 20:41
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    Nice. But this is just how it was in the past, or not? The reasoning reads a bit as if this would be a new invention. Commented Jan 31 at 21:09
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    Pretty much, @NoData. Not a totally novel change. Unsure if it's a direct revert though, don't recall what view used to be displayed on the landing page. Commented Jan 31 at 21:14
  • It would be better if, instead of receiving a login prompt you received a "What is so for?" prompt Commented Feb 5 at 16:10
  • Sorry if I'm missing something, but how do we see the list of "newest" or "bountied" or "unaswered" questions, like we used to get earlier? Commented Feb 7 at 5:28
  • @SouravGhosh go to stackoverflow.com/questions Commented Feb 7 at 7:10
  • @VLAZ yeah, it was down recently, and I was not sure if that's status-by-design or a temporary issue. Now, after the confirmation on stackstatus.net, looks like it was a temporary issue which is being taken care of. Thanks. Commented Feb 7 at 7:15
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    @BhargavRao So, do we update the SO meme from "6 to 8 weeks" to "6 to 8 years"? Commented Feb 12 at 23:34

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I'm pleased for logged out users; they will get a better home page experience than logged in users. Maybe this'll be an incentive to visit Stack Overflow logged out more often.

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    I think this means I win the over/under bet on how long it would take to get a nonspecific negative remark about the logged-in homepage ;) Commented Jan 30 at 16:13
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    If you're making bets you'll get feedback that quickly, @Slate , I'd like to hope that really does tell you what you need to know. ;) Commented Jan 30 at 16:15
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    Well, yanno. I'd fall far short of a proper oracle, but I've also read the majority of answers on every product release we've done during my tenure. I like to think I can make some pretty good guesses. At any rate - feedback noted, and I've passed along that it came up here. Commented Jan 30 at 16:22
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    Thom, this is a great change. It's not entirely fair to turn it around and find something bad (although I agree that the new homepage is undoubtedly not good). But, now that we are complaining about the new homepage, @Slate would you also advocate for getting this bug fixed? :) Commented Jan 30 at 19:35
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    I've got tampermonkey redirecting me to /questions in case I accidentally navigate to the home page. Commented Jan 30 at 21:27
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    @canon, the less advanced users (like me) can simply update bookmark to stackoverflow.com/questions if they don't want (like me) ever see useless clutter on top of home page. Commented Jan 31 at 13:13
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    Nothing to do with advanced, really... I simply don't bookmark anything; I just navigate to sites manually. It's not normally a problem because the logged-in experience for most (good) sites presents you with your first-order concerns on the landing page. That said, I'm also using tampermonkey to rip the blog out of the sidebar. ;) Commented Jan 31 at 14:14
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    Guess...cmon...were slacking. 35 whole minutes to get a nonspecific negative remark...cmon Commented Jan 31 at 14:43
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    Can logged-in users have a setting in their profile to choose which page they want to land on? I'd stop objecting to the new home page if I could set my home page to /questions. Commented Jan 31 at 14:45
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While this is something that is long overdue... what is the default filter of the questions page? I think it'd generally be a better introduction if users land on a list of recently active questions (like the current logged in home page) rather than a list of most likely unanswered ones (these are also completely un-curated, given they haven't existed long enough to be closed, edited, voted on, etc.)

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  • "what is the default filter of the questions page?" it's Newest. Users would see questions with maybe 2-3 views that were posted a minute or so ago. i.sstatic.net/ZUbyFhmS.png Commented Jan 30 at 15:43
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    Good thought. The default filter is Newest. Maybe it should be otherwise (Active?). I'll double check with the team. Commented Jan 30 at 16:30
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    the claimed issues when this change first happened (that i believe were just justifications after the fact rather than why it was changed to a marketing page) was that the home page was "too negative", that more often than not it had a half dozen downvoted posts. the /questions/ active filter will have this same issue, and it should, because people looking for active questions should also see the downvoted ones. i don't think there's really a great option among the existing built-in filters on the /questions page that don't have some kind of issue Commented Jan 30 at 16:34
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    By memory, I think that for logged-out users (and users without enough rep, maybe?) still get some basic filtering for downvoted closed questions. Don't hold me to that, though, I'd have to double check. Commented Jan 30 at 16:36
  • If anything it's far less prevalent of an issue now days, possibly due to the reduced activity, but by page 3 i reached 3 downvoted posts. there were far more of them way back when Commented Jan 30 at 16:40
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Can you give logged-in users the option to choose this homepage instead? I personally prefer this homepage to the logged-in one.

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    Is there a use case for this? Commented Feb 10 at 16:58
  • @rugk Hence the option to choose Commented Feb 10 at 17:29
  • When they made those gawdawful changes to the logged in home page, I went to the questions page, and that's now my home base on my SO tab. (Not going back to the home page until they address all of the complaints regarding it.) Commented Feb 13 at 17:22

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