Website redesign (was Re: Please clear up DarwinPort/MacPorts confusion)

[Sean Fulton]

On 2007-04-07 18:22:18 -0400, Juan Manuel Palacios <jmpp at macports.org> said:

> 
> On Apr 6, 2007, at 2:45 PM, Sean Fulton wrote:
> 
>>> 
>> 
>> That's all fine and good but I want jump in the pile-on and say that 
>> the site and documentation need some serious attention. Having outdated 
>> docs in SVN is less than ideal.
>> 
>> Now that 1.4 is out will there be some effort to providing useful 
>> documentation? Do the project leads need volunteers to help? I'm 
>> willing.
>> 
> 
> 
> 	At first I thought about saying "Ooohh, we so *totally* need 
> volunteers to clean-up/improve our site!!", but then I asked myself 
> "improve *how* and *what* exactly?"
> 
> 	I think it's pretty clear to everyone that we need a major website and 
> documentation overhaul (that said with my MacPorts Manager hat on!), so 
> I'd say that before we do any minor and possibly random rearrangements 
> and/or cleanups here and there, one thing we need to do, as a team and 
> as openly as possible, is to discuss what we would like to see in a new 
> website (including everything: welcoming portal, downloads section, 
> documentation section, headlines, trac integration, per ports page, 
> etc...).
> 
> 	I've been thinking about bootstrapping this discussion and putting 
> forth some initial ideas into the mix, and maybe even asking (inviting) 
> some of the WebKit folks to give us a hand with the redesign (they 
> obviously have a thing for websites ;-); but other than that, we as a 
> team don't have much of a roadmap with respect to our site, admittedly 
> and unfortunately. I'll bring the subject up with the other managers 
> and MacOSForge admin personnel to at least get an initial feeling of 
> what we can do (not only resource wise but also with respect to some 
> guidelines we have to stick by), and will post again on the subject 
> when I get a clearer idea. I think it's wise to ask everyone with 
> either a dire stray need for a new site (because the current one 
> sucks!) and/or the appreciated willingness to help, to wait until such 
> time for us to better coordinate all our efforts toward defined and 
> *specific* goals (other than the vague "we need a new site!"). Thanks 
> to all for your patience!
> 
> 	In the mean time, two documents I would like to work on (and could 
> frankly use some help with like *now*), are:
> 
> http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports/wiki/InstallingMacPorts
> http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/macports/wiki/TracTicketing
> 
> 	The first one was edited not long ago, but I haven't had a chance to 
> go over it. In any case, the installation page we had back on the 
> OpenDarwin site was pretty good and I think we could re-use some of the 
> material that was there (in svn, trunk/www/getdp). The second one deals 
> with the guidelines for filing trac tickets, and needs revising in view 
> of our new roadmap and milestones; I promised I'd deliver that document 
> a couple of weeks ago but I've been so up to my neck that I only 
> managed to complete the 1.4.0 release just some days ago!
> 
> 	If you, Sean, or anyone else reading is willing to help me with these 
> two docs, at least, don't hesitate to contact me to coordinate work. 
> Thanks in advance for your offer!
> 
> 	Regards to all and thanks again for your patience and for coping until 
> now with out *cough* excuse *cough* for a website!

Redesign the whole site would definitely require planning and 
discussion. I feel like the documentation issue is more immediate. 
Right now it doesn't exist except for anyone knowledgeable enough to 
delve into the SVN repository.

For a start I would like to see all of the old docs dumped into the 
Wiki so people have access to them and some could hack on them. I've 
found there are parts that I would have edited as I was learning/using 
DarwinPorts/MacPorts.

I'll help where I can.

	Sean

p.s. my account is messed up. I tried to update it as the macosforge 
site tells you but I still cannot access 'My Account' profile. And, is 
the Wiki open to editing by anyone with an account? I don't see any 
option to edit pages. The only thing I can seem to do is file tickets.