It has been brought up by many people that there is no common way of organising subproject websites. I propose we draft a set of guidelines (_not_ rules) on a general structure.
Lets start with some discussion :) --------------------------------------------------------------- Navigation / Organisation --------------------------------------------------------------- The current website is presented as three layers: - Jakarta main - subproject main - subproject menu - subproject submenu so the deepest level you end up in is jakarta > subproject > section > webpage #position-on-webpage The jakarta site has grown a lot bigger than supported in such a hierarchy, hence the problems. Some projects try to adhere closely to unofficial convention by adding a layer: - jakarta main - subproject main - sub-subproject main - sub-subproject submenu jakarta > subproject > sub-subproject > section > webpage #position-on-webpage while maintaining the layout. Avalon is an example. Recently, Turbine has chosen a new layout to add this extra level. I don't really like this solution, as it will likely prove to be inadequate in time. Also, subprojects that organise themselves differently according to different criteria might not fit into such a layout IMHO, we should have arbitrarily deep levels, and a navigation structure which reflects this. There are five main approaches in websites tackling this: 1) breadcrumb trail site > subsection > ... > subsection > page example: www.dmoz.org 2) GUI-style menubar. Your browser probably has one. Requires DHTML or similar technology, _still_ doesn't seem to work well (ie combined with html forms etc). example: http://www.webreference.com/dhtml/hiermenus/ 3) GUI-directory style tree. Don't know of a file browser that hasn't got one (ok, so you can do something different in MacOS 10, so what?). Also requires DHTML or similar technology to work; scripts available that _do_ work well. example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library 4) keyword-associated. Kinda difficult to create by hand; WikiWiki's are usually structured into tree-like structures by many people. example: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki 5) criterium-selected. An example is slashdot where the criterium is date of placement. Older items fade into oblivion. Each of these is often accompanied by a keyword-based search facility, and depending on the site can have specific search options as well. They can, of course, be combined. There are, of course, silly sites that have an approach that's different from these. Users get lost on those. So far for stating the obvious. I would like to combine #1 with listing a limited tree containing the current subsection and the parent subsection. Its scalable and simple, and degrades well towards older browsers. Also, it is very commonly used on many websites so users are familiar with it. --------------------------------------------------------------- Common Sections --------------------------------------------------------------- These can only be commonly defined to a limited extent. However, recognising that we are dealing with open source software projects means the subproject sites (can/probably should) have more than just a navigation structure in common. For each subproject, I propose, based on what the various projects are currently doing, the following sections and subsections: Essentials - Overview - News and Status - Features - Downloads - <project specifics> Documentation - Installation - Getting Started - Tutorial - User Guide - Developer Guide - Javadocs - <project specifics> Development - Changes - Todo - Proposals - Resolutions - References - <project specifics> <project specifics> for subprojects that do not have further subprojects. For those that do, I propose the following sections and subsections: Essentials - Overview - News and Status - Downloads - <project specifics> Subprojects - <list of subprojects> Development - Changes - Todo - Proposals - Resolutions - References - <project specifics> <project specifics> regards, - Leo Simons -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
