New MacPorts web site

[Craig Treleaven]

At 10:01 AM -0500 4/7/14, Ryan Schmidt wrote:
>Dear fellow MacPorts developers and enthusiasts,
>
>I've been working on a new MacPorts web site for some time, and I 
>would like to share with you my work so far:
>
>url: http://macports.ryandesign.com:8080
>username: mp
>password: 333
>
>It is not yet complete but I hope it gives an idea of the direction 
>I'm going, and I very much hope that you like it.
>
>In some areas I tried multiple different page designs; on those 
>pages you'll see a widget for selecting among them.
>
>Gentle feedback about what works and what doesn't (both functionally 
>and conceptually) and what else you think should be there would be 
>helpful; with any luck I'll agree with you. But let's distinguish 
>between features which are essential to get to a functional first 
>version that we can publish, and those features that would be nice 
>to have eventually but which can be postponed until later so as not 
>to delay the initial release.
>
>My focus so far has been on the following areas:
>
>  * Make the homepage simple and inviting

Very nice!

Possible tweaks:  The first section of the page takes up half a 
screen on my Mac.  I think it could be a little more compact.  I 
agree that the Lean More and Contribute sections should move to their 
own pages.  Personally, I think the recent port updates section 
should be more prominent.  Shows that the project is active and gives 
a flavour for the software that MacPorts actually provides.

>  * Make the install page as simple as possible, providing 
>instructions specific to each OS X version

Well done, enormous improvement.

>  * Provide a page for each port, containing helpful information 
>extracted from the Portfile, logically and attractively presented
>  * News
>  * Site infrastructure
>  * Database
>
>Further work to be done, in no particular order and not necessarily 
>before the first release:
>
>  * Further database and import script overhauls (maybe later)
>  * Port search, at least equivalent to what ports.php on the current 
>web site can do (essential)

Agreed.

>  * Port pages:
>    * Variants (essential)
>    * Licenses (essential)
>    * Subports (essential)
>    * Distributability and binary package availability (nice to have; 
>pretty easy)
>    * Version and revision history (nice to have; difficult)

Agreed.

>  * Maintainer info pages (later)
>  * Category info pages (later)

15 ports per page is too little.  Perhaps make it user-selectable? 
I'd think 25 is the absolute minimum.

However, no one is going to browse the 3,500+ ports in devel.  In the 
badge view it says 2,072.  Does that mean 2,072 where the first 
category is devel; 3,520, have devel somewhere in the list of 
categories?

I think we should have sub-category pages for the high-volume 
categories.  For example, libhttpd has categories {devel www}.  So 
the devel page could lead to a devel/www sub-category with a much 
narrowed list.  Same for perl, python, php,

As ports are updated, we can try to add/modify categories.  There are 
20+ categories with 10 or fewer ports according to the badge view. 
All of these should be pruned.  I'm sure others could be combined, as 
well.

I think each category page could also show the most-requested ports, 
perhaps the top 25.

>  * Learn how the new statistics-gathering code in base works and 
>integrate with it

To me, the number of reported installs (split between requested and 
installed as a dependency) is interesting.  Perhaps comparing last 
week, last month and last year.  I think there should be a separate 
page with more detailed statistics for each port (by OS, by version, 
etc).



Thanks for all your efforts; it is a huge improvement.

Craig