Hi,
On 2007-10-29, at 15:50 , :murb: [maarten brouwers] wrote:
Hi Louis,
How am I not being clear?
:-)
I agree with you and with Kay. I don't like privileging Portal,
either. But: as long as we must use Collabnet for
www.openoffice.org, I am loath to sending users offsite for the
primary gateway.
That should always be www.openoffice.org
Is this clear? :-)
portal.ooo is *temporary*
You have been quite clear about this, I'd think. The main concern,
however, that I have is that portal.ooo seems to have a predefined
user
group already as well (without stating really what the problem is).
The problem is that we do not have the technology for one-click
downloads. Nor do we have a single space for enduser elements
currently offered on support, extensions, documentation, etc. The
problem in short is that endusers are left in the dark after they
download OOo. The immediate problem is giving them one-click download.
We can do that on download.openoffice.org *now*, using a different
server and asking CollabNet to deploy that virtual host. I see little
reason for delay.
Portal has more than one set of users. It has, as a class, those who
want to download OOo as well as those who hae downlaoded it and want
to add to it or their environment, as well as those who want to
contribute to the the project and otherwise participate in it.
Especially when looking at the slides of Matthias, I am not sure
whether there is clear plan where more flexibility is needed
(flexibility not allowed for by the collabnet infrastructure).
I doubt if there is a "clear" plan, but there is a plan. I want a site
that does what CN does not and which offers users and contributors
access to tools and objects that we are limited from offering now b/c
of the infrastructure. One click downloads, as well as links to
extensions (can do now), templates, documentation, support; and also
for participants, information. Drupal is a capable CMS and one can add
other things to it that we have not discussed, such as relevant news,
information, etc., though obviously not in a cluttersome way.
Download for example is still suggested to stay at
download.openoffice.org (thus still relying on the collabnet
infrastructure), whereas this is exactly one of the problematic
parts in our website. This is an important place where we need
serverside scripting... I know that focussing on the download part
is nitpicking, but what is definitively lacking is a plan.
Suggested but only until such time as we have portal.ooo and it
becomes unneeded. Matthias' plan was his take, not mine. I see no
reason to maintain download.openoffice.org after we have portal; that
would be confusing.
I think the claims made by Drew in his last e-mail are very valid,
and I would not like to see that some designer is putting a lot of
effort in a website design that is hardly being used because we had
an unclear strategy.
Well, the basic needs are pretty clear:
* easier download
* more obvious download
* comprehensive access to things users and also developers might want
If something is temporary, why not just wait till things are set up
properly?
several reasons:
1. the design process is hardly fast :-) and getting things going now
is better than waiting.
2. sun very much wants an easier (one-click) download page for OOo and
a better homepage, one that makes it easier to download OOo. You
recall that Sun gave 45K or so to the Community Council to pay a
designer for the change? The money is still available for the homepage
redesign, but believe the difficulty lies not in actual layout but in
the download process itself. We could replace download.openoffice.org--
my original idea--but it seems to me that we can also add a lot more.
This in the end will cost more than 45K but that money will go toward
offsetting the cost.
That said, it may just be easier now to go with a replacement for
download.openoffice.org using Drupal and then work on www.oo.o using
Drupal later. The thing is, I don't know when that "later" is. I'm
open to a discussion on that subject, and leave portal.ooo as such, to
be populated later with useful things. Meanwhile the focus would be on:
* improving www.openoffice.org homepage (www/www/index.html)
* making download/www/index.html a one-click destination for downloads
**portal.openoffice.org could then be populated later (and designed as
needed)
3. finally, Filip, for one is hardly holding his breath :-) He
proposed OOoPortal a couple of months ago and his company is likely to
go ahead with it, anyway. I'd rather that users or downloaders not be
confused and would like to seize this opportunity. But I don't
disagree with you, maarten, and appreciate that this takes time (see
#1).
Before thinking about what how portal.openoffice.org should look I
think
we should think about openoffice.org as a whole. If end-users are a
concern right now, I am not sure whether we need to say goodbye to
collabnet if it is about static pages. As others have pointed out,
other
projects have been able to build good looking websites around
collabnet. We need a plan before moving all to a new domain.
Other projects using collabnet do not have our problems: netbeans for
instance, does not offer binaries in >70 languages on >5 platforms.
Nor does it have to deal with radically and fatally naïve users :-) We
do, alas. Our user base is in fact a lot like Mozilla's--hence the
similarity of solution.
To summarize, if it makes sense now to go ahead with:
* redesign of homepage with a strong aim to promote the download and
community
* re-do download.openoffice.org so as to get it to use a one-click
process (different server, Collabnet gives us this virtual host)
* hold off on portal.ooo; but to think of using it *as* a portal but
not rush into it....
then let's indicate as much.
best
louis
g.,
Maarten
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