New website! ... not yet, really (Fwd: [28303] trunk/www)

[Juan Manuel Palacios]

(DISCLAIMER after reading my message before hitting send: Hope it  
doesn't come off as confrontational, that's really not my intention!  
Rather, I want to be really sharp at pointing out our shortcomings so  
that we can do a better job at fixing them)


On Aug 28, 2007, at 12:33 PM, Weissmann Markus wrote:

> I personally like the services that Apple provides for us via  
> macosforge; with this installation we do have someone who is  
> updating our software and caring about our server.
> Therefore I'd rather prefer to try to modify the macosforge  
> provided framework to meet our needs, at least as far as this is  
> possible. We can still add a ports page and a documentation  
> subdirectory and keep the wordpress installation etc.
>
>
> regards,
>
> -Markus


	I'm not proposing we forego any of Mac OS Forge's services if we  
don't strictly have to, nor that we go back to our old website  
(certainly not that! --not because of its functionality, which was  
good, but because of its outdated look & feel--). All I had in mind  
when recovering trunk/www/ from the ashes is that people take a good  
look at those pages in their rendered form to better asses what we'll  
need and what we'll discard in a new design going forward.

	What I am indeed proposing is that we use the services we currently  
have at our disposal in a dramatically improved and more efficient  
manner. We now have on one end a wordpress front posing as a sorely  
lacking home page for the project; and on the other end, for the most  
part disjoint from the former, a considerably disorganized trac front  
that, OK, is good at its main purpose of tracking issue tickets and  
serving a source browser portal, but for the rest is really  
inconsistent with the overall project look and feel which we...  
eeeehhhhhhhhh, hhhhhmmmmmm, don't even have to begin with!

	Added to that, our current layout has no space for a guide section  
nor an "Available Ports" page providing dynamic listings our software  
offerings, something many many users have been craving for ever since  
we moved away from OpenDarwin. Those two areas of our old site now  
exist mostly as independent efforts (http://geeklair.net/ 
new_macports_guide/ & http://apollo.homeunix.net/macports/ports.php),  
so in my opinion they are even more than disjoint from the two fronts  
listed above.

	We clearly need to get our act together and correct the current  
situation by developing a unified site that does our web presence the  
justice the project deserves. Take a look, for example, at Adium's  
web page, www.adiumx.com, and focus on how their portal integrates  
rather seamlessly with a blog, trac services and other sections users  
might be interested in, both in functionality and in look & feel. No  
need to stress what a long way a clean design like that can go in  
making the whole web experience a valuable one... something not many  
have expressed about our current site, if anyone...

	With this initiative I'm stating that we need a whole new website,  
complete with redesigned functionality, new look & feel and, if  
resources allow, a new project logo (& mascot ;-). We are all aware  
that's quite a bit of an undertaking, I'm not day dreaming here, so  
lets try to put together a protocol of how we should go about finding  
the resources we'll need to make it all happen. Do we have something  
we can work our way up from? Is Chris' mockup not only an appealing  
one (it is to me), but also one that will scale up well? Do we  
already have any volunteers that want to start coding/designing  
something? Do we have to go out to our user base and ask people to  
join this task force? If so, how? What should the rules look like?

	Before answering any of those questions, I think it would be wise to  
asses what it is that we all want to see in a new web page, in order  
to be able to tell anyone donating his/her time/resources: "this,  
this and that is what we want to have". I'd now like to refocus this  
thread on exactly that, with my personal take following:

-) Home: a front page detailing what the project is about (including  
a brief description of our ports tree), mission goals (very brief  
summary of a project roadmap) and introductory text of how to  
participate/join;
-) Download & Installation: section describing exactly what its name  
says;
-) Available Ports: old ports.php page with some extensions I'll  
explain below;
-) Documentation: new guide with automated regen in place;
-) Support & Development: link to our (revamped) trac portal.

	If you (any reader) have payed attention to trunk/www lately, you'll  
realize I'm pretty much in line with the old web page, which I do  
believe was good in functionality. Differing from it, though:

-) first and foremost, of course, new look & feel and logo (and  
project mascot? ;-) that wraps *all* of our site;
-) blog/news section, which can be provided by our existing wordpress  
front, but which I wouldn't be too sure on how to integrate with the  
rest of the site (separate tab? just below the introductory text in  
the home page? maybe someone more webdesign savvy can chime in);
-) Help section can easily be eliminated if we revamp trac's  
welcoming page (take a look at trac.adiumx.com);
-) love Chris' idea of a sidebar, which can have a "Shortcuts"  
section with direct links to areas we infer will be of special  
interest to users. Chris does this but calls it "Development", and I  
think that overlaps a tad too much with "Support & Development" as a  
main section; I'd just call it "Shortcuts" and make it as broad in  
scope as we like (shortcuts don't have to be developer oriented  
only ;-). Another good example of a sidebar can be found in Webkit's  
site (www.webkit.org), another page I love and that I think we should  
study to design ours;
-) layout of "Available Ports" should be "re-thought" to allow room  
for a "Build Status" section that will be populated with html output  
from build log submissions, once we start our automated build runs  
(http://trac.macports.org/projects/macports/wiki/ 
PortLoggingProposal , which I/we will hopefully write before the sun  
becomes a white dwarf).

	What says y'all? Anything obvious I'm missing? Anything obnoxious  
about my ideas/proposal? I'd really love to get this show on the road  
ASAP, so it would be great to get at least some feedback to finally  
declare a "design freeze" that will allow us to set the design team  
that will hopefully form in a defined course.

	Regards to all and thanks for reading this far, as always ;-)


-jmpp