I think that much of the disagreement stems from different audience / use cases in mind when proposing changes to the web site. I see a few main user profiles that visitors to the website could be lumped into:
- Neophyte users who are looking for information about CouchDB to see if it interests them; install it for the first time; upload first data; write first view; etc. - Slightly more experienced users who are looking for support; either they have a question not answered by the docs, they've found a bug they would like to report, etc. - Contributors to the project, looking to do whatever it is they're wanting to do today. Looking at it from the outside, I would say that the website simply can't meet the needs of both the first and the last group well at the same time. The use cases are just too different. Also, since I think that there are at least an order of magnitude more potential users than there are actual users, and there's another order of magnitude more users than there are contributors, if you want the most impact, the website needs to target potential users first and foremost, while throwing a bone or two to current users, and totally ignoring contributors (because honestly, you guys did fine with the old website, and I'd bet a dollar none of you needs to have a link to click on to get to JIRA; it's in your history, bookmarks, or is your homepage ;). I understand the motivation to try and get more contributors to help the project progress, but I think that getting more users and letting the contributors come organically will be much more sustainable than going after contributors directly. I could be wrong. Either way, figuring out the target audience will probably make a lot of these "do we need a link to JIRA; should it be called JIRA or Issues" questions have obvious answers. Cheers, Eli On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 1:15 PM, Miles Fidelman <[email protected]> wrote: > Jonathan Porta wrote: >> >> Does anyone think it would be a good idea to list the proposed >> changes/issues to/with the site and then have the community vote on them? > > > Yes! > >> Opinion: >> >> >> - I think the new site feels very much up to current design trends. >> - The current site far surpasses the previous's site delivery of the >> message: "CouchDB is alive and ready for you to start using it!" >> - I think the focus on the text keeps it simple and easy to understand. >> - The "Quick Links" listed under "Development" could be a good thing to >> have at the very top of the "Want to Contribute?" section. That way a >> person could jump right in instead of TL;DR'ing that section. > > > Seems to me that there are some fairly standard things that people look for > along the top of a software-related web page, that are conspicuously missing > from the CouchDB page, unless you go digging at the bottom of the page or by > clicking through links. A fairly common list is: > - About (or Learn More) - missing > - Downloads > - Documentation - missing > - Support - missing > - News (or Blog) - missing > - Development - missing ("Contribute" is ambiguous) > - Community - missing (admittedly "Mailing Lists" is there, but what about > links to unofficial archives, other Couch related sites, .....) > - Events > - Demo > - Facebook and/or Twitter > > I'd take a look at other sites, like erlang.org, drupal.org, mongodb.org, > and so forth. > > -- > In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. > In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra > >
