Re: [Lubuntu-desktop] New web site for Lubuntu
On 11/25/2011 04:02 AM, Martin Olesen wrote: I am showing this to more people than the ones who are registered users of the wiki page. If I demand that they begin with a registration I will lose half of the responses. OK, please at least link to the demo site and response page from the wiki page, so people who know about the wiki page find the other one. Maybe do the reverse too, so those who read the comments on Google Docs can easily go read the other comments on the wiki page? I think real beginners will find it hard to ignore the lack of pretty graphics and theme, so you might want to mock up something using Raphael's proposed simple blue Ubuntu theme before exposing this to large numbers of real newcomers. (1) Seven tabs is too many; let's keep it simpler than that. Fine with me, but that does not help me much. Which tabs do you want? Rafael's first three choices borrowed from the ubuntu.com site (Home, Download, Support) are nice and simple, and self-explanatory. Their purposes are each very clear. His next two were Community and Wiki, which may also be appropriate, but seem slightly less obvious for real newcomers (what exactly will I find under Community, a live chat with Lubuntu people? When do I need to use Wiki, and what *is* a wiki?). I think things like Modify Lubuntu are potentially a bit too scary for newcomers to be top level items (you mean I have to hack on it??) and so should be avoided :) So maybe just Home, Download, Support, Community. Then have links to wiki-based information as needed within the site, and discuss the concept of a set of online documentation that all in the community can easily add to and improve, under Community (and, with emphasis on what it contains, rather than on editing it, under Support)? I like the idea of differentiating between Trying out Lubuntu and Installing Lubuntu; these could be sub-pages under Download (so we encourage people to download it, try it, install it, in that order), and the Installing one could be linked from under Support too. Incidentally, have you considered documenting use of a VM for trying out Lubuntu without removing your old operating system? More techie than booting from a LiveCD, but also much closer to experiencing the real thing. For users with decent PC hardware, it may be much less scary to set up Lubuntu in a VM than to repartition their hard drive or remove Windows! Once you find yourself needing to ask what if the computer has four primary partitions already?, you are not meeting the needs of newcomers any more! Are you going to explain UEFI booting and configuration, for those with modern motherboards, too? :) (2) Proposed site home page is basically content-less, and so not useful. Not even a button to download the most commonly wanted Lubuntu ISO! Correct, this is an early test. You will see more and more content being added over time. OK, but getting the front page correct is really important. Deciding what should be there, and what should be on subsidiary pages, can make or break a site (cf. your comments on all the videos that used to be on the front page of the old lubuntu.net!). So this should be thought about (and tested) early in the design process. (3) Proposed site content (and look/feel/theme) does not connect at all to (or address the whole issue of how it relates to) existing online Lubuntu documentation at wiki.ubuntu.com and help.ubuntu.com As I wrote, please give suggestions regarding text, layout and navigation. Pictures, colours and the like come at a later time. Never mind how it looks, for now. Your proposed pages include things like hardware requirements, which are already documented elsewhere; are you proposing that the new site will ignore the wiki and so we end up having to maintain that information in two different ways on two separate pages? If not, how does the new site blend into the existing wiki pages? Once browsing within the wiki, how does a user get back to the lubuntu.net site? For theme and navigation, I like Rafael's make it look like a simpler blue Ubuntu site concept, but the graphical look is less important to me than ability to easily find information, and to know that information is likely to be correct and up to date. For that, the basic principle of how and when the lubuntu.net site links to the existing wiki pages, and vice versa, needs to be clearly established, and then consistently implemented. (4) In English, we say operating system not operative system. There are a couple of other places where the English needs tidying up. Sure, we need a native Brit to proof-read. I'll correct this one when I get home. Did you find any more of these? I am a native Brit (born in England, although now living in California); my father is a (now retired) schoolteacher with an M.A. in English from Cambridge University... so he made sure my English was pretty good :) I'm not volunteering as an official site proofreader,
Re: [Lubuntu-desktop] New web site for Lubuntu
I will offer to be official proofreader-I'm a bit of a pedant. On Fri, 25 Nov 2011 11:20:04 -0800 Jonathan Marsden jmars...@fastmail.fm wrote: On 11/25/2011 04:02 AM, Martin Olesen wrote: I am showing this to more people than the ones who are registered users of the wiki page. If I demand that they begin with a registration I will lose half of the responses. OK, please at least link to the demo site and response page from the wiki page, so people who know about the wiki page find the other one. Maybe do the reverse too, so those who read the comments on Google Docs can easily go read the other comments on the wiki page? I think real beginners will find it hard to ignore the lack of pretty graphics and theme, so you might want to mock up something using Raphael's proposed simple blue Ubuntu theme before exposing this to large numbers of real newcomers. (1) Seven tabs is too many; let's keep it simpler than that. Fine with me, but that does not help me much. Which tabs do you want? Rafael's first three choices borrowed from the ubuntu.com site (Home, Download, Support) are nice and simple, and self-explanatory. Their purposes are each very clear. His next two were Community and Wiki, which may also be appropriate, but seem slightly less obvious for real newcomers (what exactly will I find under Community, a live chat with Lubuntu people? When do I need to use Wiki, and what *is* a wiki?). I think things like Modify Lubuntu are potentially a bit too scary for newcomers to be top level items (you mean I have to hack on it??) and so should be avoided :) So maybe just Home, Download, Support, Community. Then have links to wiki-based information as needed within the site, and discuss the concept of a set of online documentation that all in the community can easily add to and improve, under Community (and, with emphasis on what it contains, rather than on editing it, under Support)? I like the idea of differentiating between Trying out Lubuntu and Installing Lubuntu; these could be sub-pages under Download (so we encourage people to download it, try it, install it, in that order), and the Installing one could be linked from under Support too. Incidentally, have you considered documenting use of a VM for trying out Lubuntu without removing your old operating system? More techie than booting from a LiveCD, but also much closer to experiencing the real thing. For users with decent PC hardware, it may be much less scary to set up Lubuntu in a VM than to repartition their hard drive or remove Windows! Once you find yourself needing to ask what if the computer has four primary partitions already?, you are not meeting the needs of newcomers any more! Are you going to explain UEFI booting and configuration, for those with modern motherboards, too? :) (2) Proposed site home page is basically content-less, and so not useful. Not even a button to download the most commonly wanted Lubuntu ISO! Correct, this is an early test. You will see more and more content being added over time. OK, but getting the front page correct is really important. Deciding what should be there, and what should be on subsidiary pages, can make or break a site (cf. your comments on all the videos that used to be on the front page of the old lubuntu.net!). So this should be thought about (and tested) early in the design process. (3) Proposed site content (and look/feel/theme) does not connect at all to (or address the whole issue of how it relates to) existing online Lubuntu documentation at wiki.ubuntu.com and help.ubuntu.com As I wrote, please give suggestions regarding text, layout and navigation. Pictures, colours and the like come at a later time. Never mind how it looks, for now. Your proposed pages include things like hardware requirements, which are already documented elsewhere; are you proposing that the new site will ignore the wiki and so we end up having to maintain that information in two different ways on two separate pages? If not, how does the new site blend into the existing wiki pages? Once browsing within the wiki, how does a user get back to the lubuntu.net site? For theme and navigation, I like Rafael's make it look like a simpler blue Ubuntu site concept, but the graphical look is less important to me than ability to easily find information, and to know that information is likely to be correct and up to date. For that, the basic principle of how and when the lubuntu.net site links to the existing wiki pages, and vice versa, needs to be clearly established, and then consistently implemented. (4) In English, we say operating system not operative system. There are a couple of other places where the English needs tidying up. Sure, we need a native Brit to proof-read. I'll correct this one when I get home. Did you find any more of these? I am a native Brit (born
Re: [Lubuntu-desktop] New web site for Lubuntu
On 11/24/2011 04:26 PM, Martin Olesen wrote: The site is at https://sites.google.com/site/lubuntunet/ Thanks for putting up a prototype site. and comments can be written at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_mZ5dVbuY5Qk3E7MbqxEkGL1fphAwiSKRqzXkAzyqmg/edit I thought as a team we had agreed to use the wiki page at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/Marketing/Website_Plan for brainstorming about a proposed new lubuntu.net site. This was discussed in the recent Lubuntu Dev Meeting, see the log starting at http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2011/11/23/%23ubuntu-meeting.html#t20:04 Several of us have already contributed ideas to that page. Why are we now being asked to put comments at some other place, using Google Docs rather that the wiki which Lubuntu has been using for online documentation for some years now? It seems a bit inefficient. It is important that we work as a team, not in isolation. My initial thoughts on the proposed site are: (1) Seven tabs is too many; let's keep it simpler than that. (2) Proposed site home page is basically content-less, and so not useful. Not even a button to download the most commonly wanted Lubuntu ISO! (3) Proposed site content (and look/feel/theme) does not connect at all to (or address the whole issue of how it relates to) existing online Lubuntu documentation at wiki.ubuntu.com and help.ubuntu.com . I think that treating the site as 100% independent from these existing Lubuntu community resources, more or less ignoring them, is a significant part of what got the old lubuntu.net into disrepair -- let's not make the same mistake twice. (4) In English, we say operating system not operative system. There are a couple of other places where the English needs tidying up. Once I know where we really want comments and ideas for the proposed new lubuntu.net site, I'll add these to it. Jonathan ___ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop Post to : lubuntu-desktop@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-desktop More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
