Unfortunately it will only get worse from now on. Even if we engineer all the infrastructure right, it's hard to beat mother nature's wrath with more frequent category 4 or 5 hurricanes and forest fires. There is more heat in the ocean waters now to intensify the hurricanes. We've been getting longer summer days and long hot and dry weather in the interiors. In our province we've had the worst forest fires since 1958. We had over 1,249 fires burning and over 40,000 people had to evacuate their cities. Some people lost their homes for the 2nd time this year to the fires. It's becoming the new normal now.

https://news.gov.bc.ca/factsheets/factsheet-bc-wildfires-quick-stats

Sadly it took first hand experienced like that for more people to realize that climate change is no longer some event in the future. We are facing the consequences right now. Read Less

Well, my link above is not just good for an UI adaption, it also represents some basic UX regarding the layout.

Layout: With the fixed sidebar menu I have access to all menus/submenus/streams. The idea to fix the sidebar avoids the user to scroll up again to switch to another stream. With the fixed header bar I have access to just user-centric features and menus (notification, profile, search, settings, help, logout). This layout is very well known, so the orientation is ensured (+1 for UX).

Now, you already started with the product analysis by comparing Anahita with Facebook, Twitter etc. This is necessary since these services are dominating the market, so they are mostly ruling the user's experience in a social network environment for years. Next roundtrip is the Anahita's user analysis. Here, Anahita members could share their experience, thoughts and pains.

Some points from my perspective:
- composer: I often saw you posting smilies and locations. To be honest, I have no idea how you do it. The composer fails to guide me through mixing story, photos, location and smilies. We need to place buttons to demonstrate these features. And let's remove the dropdown above the composer and replace it with tab bar to reduce one additional click.

- mentioning: First of all, mentioning people should be assisted by Anahita. By typing the letters "@R..." I should receive suggestions like "Rastin Mehr". Furthermore, mentioning people is based on their usernames instead of their first and last name which is visible everywhere. But to find out someones username, I have to visit their profile first. This is not convenient.

- add location: Did you know that this feature is disabled by default? There is no hint that this feature is related to the browser settings.

- avatar/cover: uploading an avatar can be also done directly from my profile. It's a nice shortcut.

- Repetitive stories: When I scroll through the dashboard I often see the same story twice. Example for me right now: "Separating Anahita API and Client side". One story is telling me that Rastin and 2 others commented on this topic. Directly below is the same story again telling me that Nick Swinford has commented. This is intentional? I feel confused.

- Sidebar: I mentioned it above, it should be fixed. Just to avoid the user to scroll up to the top again just to switch to another menu/stream.

- Notification counter in the header: At first I thought this feature notifies me about my personal stuffs (someone reacted to or likes my post, follows we, shares a comment on my profile). Today I know it's just another story stream kept minimal in a popover. This makes it useless for me since it represents the same content from the dashboard just without readable details. Since I am not using it, I most probably will miss the personal stuffs I mentioned in the brackets.

These are my experiences gained from using Anahita. If other members would share their experiences also (we could start a topic) then we could analyze similarities.

Another personal point regarding the UI: I hope this time the Shiraz template would use the whole wide screen. The current boxed layout (a width of 940px) is so outdated. Read Less

For inspiration I often visit themeforest. Give it also a try for exploration.

Anahita could follow this example. Best match from look and feel and very simple on top.
http://pages.revox.io/dashboard/3.0.0/html/simply_white/social.html Read Less

There were a few on themforest that caught my eye. I am more interested in conventions and UX right now. I found https://www.uplabs.com quite useful too. Studying and deconstructing the existing successful apps is quite useful, too. Read Less