So I just had a look at the new NixOS website, and I have a major
problem with it... I can't find the documentation. And that's as
someone who already knows what NixOS is and why I'd want to use it.
Worse, anything about NixOps/etc is hidden away in a menu in the top
right corner!

I didn't even notice the top bar until I'd gone to look a few more
times. Why can't we have a Debian-style "places to go" menu on the
front page, front and centre? https://www.debian.org/
 Even FreeBSD's
is better in terms of being able to figure out where to go.
http://www.freebsd.org/


The current front page has a huge amount of fluff, but the call to
action (get it) is all wrong; nobody downloads new operating systems
on a whim, they want to see examples of what it would do for them. The
"getting started" section on the Debian front page goes a long way to
fixing this.

So basically, what the front page needs is (a) a fairly comprehensive
and obvious menu of things a user would want from the site, and (b)
links off to places where a new user can find out more. Probably a
hook ("NixOS is a Linux distribution which uses a fully declarative
package manager and integrated configuration management system, making
system configuration and upgrades painless"), maybe a snippet of a
configuration.nix showing off how easy it is to set up, say, a simple
web server or a desktop environment, and maybe a little widget saying
what the current version is + a couple of titles of the latest news
articles. I'm not sure the "declarative, reliable, devops-friendly"
fluff helps anybody.

Just my two cents,
Shell

On 30 May 2014 14:26, Ertugrul Söylemez <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello there,
>
> I'm looking at the new website with mixed feelings.  Being less static is a 
> good idea, so I appreciate the news, blog posts and commits sections.  On the 
> other hand it's way uglier and less lucid compared to the old website.  These 
> are minor design issues that we can talk about and fix.
>
> However, one issue with the new site I would rate as critical:
>
> As a good web developer NEVER EVER download anything from external servers 
> unless it is necessary, especially not from entities like Google, Facebook or 
> Twitter.  If at all, do it server-side.  The new website unnecessarily 
> downloads jQuery from the Google servers, not only compromising our privacy, 
> but also every NoScript or Ghostery user will be told: "This website 
> compromises your privacy!".  And for what?  For a dropdown menu?  Come on!  
> You don't even need JavaScript for that.  CSS alone can handle it much nicer.
>
> I have managed to keep my browser from sending my browsing habits to Google 
> for a long time now.  Indeed, I don't even use Google as a search engine 
> (there's DuckDuckGo).  And today my very Linux distribution forces me to 
> allow access to Google servers.  That's not going to happen, so currently I'm 
> unable to navigate the website at all.  This is the top issue, so as kindly 
> as my current anger allows, I'm asking you to fix this as soon as possible.  
> I hope I'm not the only privacy-minded NixOS user.
>
> As SPJ once said, avoid success at all costs, because this is what happens 
> when you don't.  I'm not sure the old website really needed to be replaced, 
> but since it was, please remove the badies and bring back the goodies.
>
> Also in this case please don't tell me to send a pull request.  This is web 
> development!  What would take the original developer five minutes would take 
> me hours.
>
> By the way, the Hydra frontend has the same issue.
>
>
> Greets,
> Ertugrul
>
> --
> Ertugrul Söylemez <[email protected]>
> _______________________________________________
> nix-dev mailing list
> [email protected]
> http://lists.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/nix-dev
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