Hi, I've been watching the mod_perl site issue as it has progressed. Just last week Stas mentioned that voting at the online booth has been poor. (Low turnout.) I think I know why voting has been poor. And in my off-list conversation with Stas he's mentioned that other people have had the same opinions. I also think I have some constructive ideas. So, without further introduction, lets get into the thick of things. :-)
I almost didn't vote for a site design. I went and looked at the three options: Allan Juul's design has navigation that doesn't help very much: it doesn't give "top level" links from every page and doesn't let you know where you are inside the site. The leaf pages don't even mention mod_perl anywhere, which is really weird and somewhat broken IMO. Carlos Ramirez's design is broken: broken navigation and pages that don't even exist. The page look is somewhat nice, but I can't really evaluate the navigation because it's so broken. Thomas Klausner's isn't broken in anyway and acceptable, but I don't really *like* the page look very much. So, because I liked none of the options and felt straight-jacketed with only one choice that was minimally functional, I almost didn't vote at all! In the end I voted for Klausner's in a simple defensive move to prevent a broken design from winning. I wish I had the time to create my own site and enter it into the competition. I'm think that others probably feel this way. However, the cause is not lost. We are not *required* as a community to pick one of these three proposed designs. This competition is just a tool to get a working site design. The mod_perl site needs a new design because: (a) it looks crummy and we are probably loosing users, (b) Stas is in the process of integrating the documentation into the site and therefore needs a new site design (and he's not a web designer). We can really do whatever we want. OK, now for the CONSTRUCTIVE PROPOSAL. :-) I propose that we simply use a site design that is the uniform "psudo-standard" for the Apache Software Foundation. A number of ASF projects are using this site design: http://www.apache.org/ http://httpd.apache.org/ http://jakarta.apache.org/ http://www.apache.org/foundation/ I used to think that this site design used by the ASF looked really dumb and plain. Now I think it rocks compared to these other three sites. It's simple and effective. Best of all, most of the design choices have already been made for us! Stas has pointed out the ASF site design uses different navigational features than the boilerplate site that he published back on 11/13/2001. This is true, but I think that we have some flexibility in changing the navigation. (I have some issues with the navigation in Stas' boilerplate, anyway.) I also suspect that one of the reasons that we've only had three sites contributed (and a couple of them broken) is because of the learning curve for learning Yet Another Publishing Tool (DocSet) that Stas is using. Additionally, we are a list mainly of programmers, not graphic designers. Perhaps having the graphic design issues solved by using the ASF site design, more people will be willing to volunteer to solve the programming issues of merging the existing DocSet boilerplate and the ASF design. OK. Now what to do with this? First what NOT to do: Please DO NOT respond and say "Oh, well, that's nice but please integrate some of the ideas from some other website that I like." This causes endless discussion that GOES NOWHERE. We need concrete proposals. This e-mail is not intended to cause a general discussion of what people would like to see in a website. This has happened before and resulted in no forward progress. (So you ask: why is David allowed to propose a new idea? What I'm proposing is that we just wholesale copy an existing site design -- one that already exists, is related to us through Apache, and we can copy without any shame. So, in effect, what I'm proposing is as concrete as the example sites already posted for voting.) The purpose of this e-mail is as follows: (a) See if others also think that the three alternatives for a mod_perl site are not very desirable. If you agree, please speak up and say that you agree. (b) See if others also think that using the ASF generic site design (even though it's not "cool and distinctive") would be a good idea. If you agree, please speak up and say that you agree. (c) Perhaps elicit a volunteer to design an example site that includes Stas' content and the ASF generic design. If enough people agree with the first two points, someone may be willing to volunteer to do this.. perhaps even one of the existing contributors who have already figured out DocSet. Perhaps even Stas! Lets try to keep this constructive, focused, and concrete. :-) Also, lets keep in mind something that Stas pointed out to me: most anything is a step up from our existing site design. So, if we go with one of the three existing options it's still a step up. David
