Am Freitag, 10. Februar 2006 13:31 schrieb Peter Flodin: > On 2/10/06, houghi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Did I miss the discussion in some way? From the minutes: > > > > Action Item michl: > > - discuss front page redesign on opensuse-wiki > > > > If I have to wait a bit more. please let me know. > > Well we could start the discussion now... > > To summarise, the opensuse frontpage has over 3 million page hits (not > 1 million as the IRC log stated), and I feel (and I don't thing there > were any objections), that the current front page could do with an > overhaul as the 3 million hits could have been served something more > exciting, more informative, more captivating etc. > > We can either discuss the process of developing a new page, or discuss > what should go on a new page. > > I will start with what I think: > 1. I think the latest news should be more prominent, probably a > heading with a synopsis and then a link if you want to read more, for > each item.
Agreed, an having "Report a Bug" as one of the only two "main" themes on the page sort of makes you wonder about the quality of the product - at least it isn't hidden away under 30 levels of support options like Microsoft do it :-P Having it under "Participate" as it is now and taking the one off of the main panel would be a help... Then moving the Upcoming Events, News and Milestones as three items filling the main section, and putting a security announcements or something up there as well... A lot of people don't like mailing lists and never subscribe unless forced to - I know I used to be like that - so they don't get announcements, especially security announcements. If we can make a better news page, just have the headlines on the home page and more detailed information behind it... Having it (or the news page) as an RSS feed would also be useful, but I don't know if that is feasible with a Wiki page... I think a lack of easily visible information and the staticness of the centre frame of the front page put a lot of people off. I know there are sites I keep going back to because there is always new information coming along, whereas with the wiki I tend to go to the downloads page and additional repos page and that's about it at the moment. > 2. The different language wikis should be more prominent, unless we > create a "splash" screen for www.opensuse.org, like what has been done > for www.wikipedia.org, and not just redirect to the english one. How about having the openSUSE lizard taking up centre stage on the page and he is broken down into sections, each section being a representation of a language "flag" (E.g. Union Jack for English, Spanish flag for spanish, French for French, German flag for German Wiki etc.), of course you'll get somebody complaining about getting stuck with the butt and tail :-P I think having the lizard split into multiple flags would give a good show of community spirit... Possibly with breakout lines to the language names for those who aren't sure about their flags :-P The only problem is you might need to keep increasing the poor lizards belly size as more and more translations are put online... ;-) Alternatively having the logo in the middle with the languages around it in a circle semi-Wikipedia style might work better... You could combine this with the existing front page, have the lizard at the top, with the news and other information below... > 3. By using templates, we could allow community input to the front > page without unlocking the design of the front page. ie, the front > page has some templates inserted that are editable, even though the > front page remains locked to stop casual vandals. > > Peter 'Pflodo' Flodin. That would be an idea... Is there a way to make it an auto-feed from another page? There is much later and possibly more interesting and relevant news on the news page, but the front page has 2 links to much older news. Also, for example, the milestones is a little sparse, some indication of what each milestone is hoping to achieve (E.g. Beta 4 - what will it have that is interesting? XGL, Yum MD updates etc.), integrate that with a roadmap of where you see openSUSE and SUSE OSS going in the future (E.g. KDE 4 will be integrated when? Full XGL support?) The site also could do with a site map, several times I've known there is useful information buried in the Wiki somewhere, but I've gone through several false click-trails before I've found what I've wanted... Finally, and OT I'm afraid, when a beta is released, having its release note available to read whilst downloading might be handy. I know that I do this with some of the online games I play, while the servers are down or the client is patching I can go through the notes on what's new and what's been fixed. This could just be a link to a text file, it doesn't need to be fully wiki-fied Dave --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
