On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 5:04 AM, Graham Lauder <g.a.lau...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sun, 2011-07-03 at 10:23 -0700, Dave Fisher wrote: >> On Jul 2, 2011, at 9:29 PM, Graham Lauder wrote: > > >> > >> > Much of what is on there is legacy material that could be seriously >> > pruned. For instance all the old Marketing material that is V2.0 and >> > earlier could be deleted. >> >> What would you do to the main openoffice.org site if you were starting from >> scratch? > > Big question, moving to Apache has one big advantage from my POV. > (I should point out that my POV is marketing centric and is End User > focussed rather than developer focussed.) > > With the content going onto CMS it makes it a lot easier for marketing > content to be updated and changed as required. The Collabnet setup was > difficult. > > The OOo web presence is huge, not just the website itself but all the > NLC projects, the services part, maillists, forums, downloads and so on. > Each fragment is looked after by it's own team. There are overlaps (ie: > Distribution and CDROM) and global projects (Renaissance, art, UX) each > piece has it's user base and it's client base and so the website as an > entirety, obviously has to reflect that. >
Yes, there were a lot of teams. Everyone seemed to have an official project title, often several ;-) We had some earlier discussions on this. Personally, I was proposing that we take the opportunity to simplify. For example, right now we're doing all the work on ooo-dev. At some point it will be clear, perhaps soon, that we need an ooo-user list. And maybe a few others. But I'd resist the urge to recreate the byzantine complexity of OOo until we're sure that we need it. I'm hoping we never do. > The home page as it is now was designed originally with one overriding > goal: "increase downloads." > Do you think this should still be the overriding goal of the homepage? > Therefore we had to analyse our catchment, identify our user groups and > their specific needs and patterns of usage of the Website. We then > needed to specifically identify the Home page users and their needs. It > should be noted that while there is a crossover, Homepage users are a > different set to Website users. Regular community members tend to > bypass the homepage because they know where they can fulfil their needs > already, they either go straight to the wiki or the forums or docs or > whichever part is specific to their part of the community. > > IMS We identified 5 groups that visit the Homepage. > > Casual arrivals > People seeking a download, either for the first time or to upgrade > Users seeking assistance > People wishing to contribute to the community > Developers > What is a "casual arrival"? Is that someone arriving via a search? Have you ever seen any traffic reports for Openoffice.org? Or something like Google Analytics, that would show how the web site is being used currently? > Each of these groups have entirely different needs. The original home > page tried to cater for all these different groups and ended up doing it > badly. My intention for the homepage was to have each of these groups > headed to wherever they needed to be on the website within 15 seconds. > We did that by reducing the number of decisions and introducing the > "Action Statements". (There were over 120 links on the original homepage > we reduced them to about 15, not including those in the news column.) > > Did it achieve More Downloads? as far as I know, yes. Louis would be > better informed on this. A lot of debate went on with regard to the > concept of the "Action Statements", over many months, but once the web > team were onside the results were, to my eyes, spectacular. > > (Just for amusements sake > http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/mwiki/images/a/a3/Home_page_draft_11-27.jpg > was my first rather amateurish mockup which the website team, Maarten, Kay, > Ivan and others turned into http://www.openoffice.org .) > > So the homepage is simply a portal, a signpost that is geared to cater > to the Unsophisticated End User. These people require simplicity, > continuity and a feeling of security and it is only this group that the > warmth and comfort of http://www.openoffice.org would be significant or > necessary. > > So, keep the home page as is or find someway to get the CMS to display > it, action statements intact at least. > > Then to my mind the only subs to the OOo domain that I would think that > would be compulsory would be: > support.openoffice.org > Why.openoffice.org and > download.openoffice.org > > and the NLC subdomains > > The rest of the website could happily exist under OpenOffice.apache.org. > This is close to what I was proposing. Move the project-centric services and content, the stuff that project volunteers access most, to the Apache address. But keep OpenOffice.org as the public-facing, user-facing portal for the product. > Cheers > for now > > GL > > > > >> >> Regards, >> Dave >> >> >> > >> > Argument could be made for the marketing material to start from scratch. >> > Personally I'd like to see a whole new branding and get shot of the old >> > stuff, make the first Apache release: V4.0 (Historically, significant >> > global change has meant a whole number change in the version: V2 new >> > codebase, V3 Apple compatibility. I think this is significant enough: >> > pre V4 = LGPL license, V4 and later = ALV2) From a marketing POV it >> > gives us a handle to hang a campaign on. >> > >> > Cheers >> > GL >> > >> > -- >> > Graham Lauder, >> > OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ >> > http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html >> > >> > OpenOffice.org Migration and training Consultant. >> > >> > >> > >> > > >
