> [ ] Yes, make "Rising Wicket" the front page of our Apache Wicket site
> [ ] Not yet, change .... and then make it the front page
> [x] No. This will make a great landing page for those wanting to download/get
> started using wicket, but needs content/navigation changes/improvements to be
> a home page.
non-binding vote. I could nit-pick this a lot, but I don't think that's
polite as this is *VERY* nice work. We're just trying to put it in the
wrong place imho.
I'm going to take a guess that the target audience for wicket site
visitors will want:
1) How to get started/downloads
2) Examples
3) Further Help
4) General information on what Wicket is/does (or the 5 W's)
This page does one of those really well and neglects the other goals.
Other points
1) How well will the design incorporate into the rest of the site
a. If we do plan to make it site wide how will it look when you start
adding more content pushing the bottom of the page down. (I should just
check this before asking I know)
b. bread crumbs can be nice for usability and site navigation..
2) Does anyone think the rising sun is annoying? (I personally don't
have an opinion) If we wanted to have some sort of animation in our
site I'd opt for something more like the way mootools.net does it and
just have the menu effect.
3) What will Googlebot's vote on our site be? We're really removing a
lot of content and the site will effectively be a series of links, two
big images and a paragraph.
I generally agree with http://www.useit.com/ and those with an interest
in the content/design/navigation/usability should at least have a glance
there.
The original issue was the current design was "Good looking, but dull."
However, we should take careful consideration into how to reach that
goal.. Possibly a flash ad for the new release of 1.3 with a nice
static fallback image.. or possibly other things which I could suggest
in another email on the reference
*IF* this vote does end in a yes result. I'd be very interested in a
comparison between old and new for:
1) Changes to click patterns
2) How long people stay on the site
3) If we lose/gain ranking on keywords. (Which at some point we should
start to look into SEO and other simple 'tactics' to increase our
exposure)
We should also at some point consider internationalizing/localizing the
site as our framework *does* handle this quite nice. IOW.. start eating
our own dogfood as the expression goes.
Once again I *do* like this. I just would like to see it as a dedicated
landing page for those articles pointing to getting people started with
wicket 1.3. Personally, I also think the font for 'wicket' being used
is very pleasing/readable. For some true unbiased professional
feedback/voting we should submit it to WSG [1] list.
Cheers,
./C
[1] http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/
