Overall it looks like good pointers. I will look at it closer tonight and see if I can fix some of the things you point out.
On 1/4/07, Christopher Arndt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Here are a few observations on the offical TG website that I made while going through it, comparing it to other web framework sites and having in mind that we are now post 1.0 release, along with suggestions for improvement. If I should enter them into trac (which component? Docs?), please let me know! Chris General ------- Observation: There is no news section or something similar. There is the changelog page, but the link is not clearly labeled as such and a history of other events and announcements (DVD, book, conferences, etc.) would be nice to have too. Suggestion: include a link in the Header labeled "News" and either point it to Kevin's blog (http://www.blueskyonmars.com/category/turbogears/) or a news page on the wiki (which the should include a prominent link to the editor, where news items could be sent to) Observation: there is no site map and it's hard to be sure whether you've read all pages on the site, since they are not linked from a central place. Suggestion: auto-generate a flat link-list of all static pages on the site and link it from the footer. Header/Main Links ----------------- Observation: I expected something like a tutorial behind "Learn", instead it points to an "About" like page. Suggestion: either call this link "Learn more" or "About" Observation: The Django website has a "Community" link prominently in the header, pointing to a planet-style blog aggregator. On the TG website, the link to planet.turbogears.org is only in sidebar under a mis-leading heading ("Get involved") and only on the front-page not on sub-pages. Suggestion: include a link labeled "Community" in the header that points to planet.turbogears.org Suggestion: Maybe include a link in the header labeled "Development" that points to a page on the wiki with resources for developers of TurboGears proper (SVN, IRC, trac, trunk ML). Observation: the "CogBin" link does not work again after the move to WebFaction. 404 Errors for the main links in the header shed a VERY bad light on the project. Suggestion: Drop in at least a static "Construction work in progress" page. Sidebar ------- Suggestion: the "Get involved" section should include links to the Bugtracker, maybe the IRC channel and the page with developer resources mentioned above. Observation: "Book available now!" doesn't seem to point anwhere. Suggestion: make it a link to Amazon (like in the main content area on the front page) or the book homepage (http://www.turbogearsbook.com/) Suggestion: Change the text in the 1.0 announcement labeled "and much more" to read: "and much more. Read what else is new in the changelog" and only link the word changelog to /about/changelog.html Observation: there seems to be no factual reason to include the "Hosting Options" section so prominently on every page. I supsect is a revenue generating thing. Suggestion: this section should be marked as advertisment or state clearly that you help the project by choosing one/some of these options. Observation: some pages have a "Comment on this page" link at the bottom of the sidebar, which links to trac, but does not work, because anonymous ticket submissions are disabled. Suggestion: install a good spam filter for trac and allow anonymous submissions or provide a guest account and give the password below the link ("Log in with guest/XXXXXX") Home page --------- Observation: in the link "try it today..." at the bottom of the content area it is not clear that "it" refers to TG not Python. Suggestion: rename link to "Download and try out TurboGears today..." Observation: it is not obvious at a casual glance that "TurboGears Under The Hood" is a list of sites using TG. Suggestion: Introduce subsections named "Success Stories" and "Testimonials" or "Quotes" (that may have links to subpages with more extensive lists) /about/ ------- Observation: the last sentence of the first paragraph of text doesn't make any sense. It seems to be truncated. What are those three goals? Does this refer to the headings? Then the second heading "More than the sum..." lacks a verb, i.e. should be "Be more than the sum ...". Suggestion: Introduce a first level heading "Project goals" and put the first three headings as second level headings after the first text paragraph. Suggestion: In the section "Play well with others", introduce third level headings "Project philosophy" and "License" or better, make them first level headings and rewrite the whole page. Suggestion: have a TOC at the top of the page. Observation: "1.0 in beta" has to be updated. Suggestion: Rename the heading "1.0 in beta" to "Development status" /download/ ---------- Observation: the page starts of with some reference to Pyrex which is rather irrelevant to the goal that a vistor to this site is trying to achieve, which is "installing TurboGears". This is confusing. Suggestion: Introduce a second level heading "Supported Python versions" and a paragraph reading: "TurboGears is based on the Python programming language. Currently it requires either version 2.3.x [is that still true?] or 2.4.x [which are the exact correct version numbers here?] of Python to be installed on your system. Using Python version 2.4.x is strongly recommended. The new *Python version 2.5 is not yet supported*. See the the progress status of the support for Python 2.5 here [link to wiki]." Suggestion: Introduce two new second level headings: "Quickstart instructions" (before 2nd paragraph) and "Detailed installation instructions". (after quickstart instructions) Suggestion: Extend second paragraph with: "If you don't have Python installed on your system (or are not sure about it), please refer to the detailed installation instructions in the next section." /download/filelist.html ----------------------- Observation: there are several versions of each package listed on this page, because this page is mainly ther to be parsed by easy_install. This is confusing to people who are just looking to download RG. Suggestion: Include a paragraph at the top of the page that reads: "This is a list of packages needed by TurboGears ind different versions. This page can be used by the easy_install script or to download a particular package manually. If you are just want to install TurboGears, please look at the installation instructions [link to /download]. >
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