Hi,
On Wed, Nov 12, 2014 at 9:45 AM, Chris Colman <chr...@stepaheadsoftware.com> wrote: > Hi fellow wicketeers! > > We all know that Wicket has to be the most awesome and productive Java > UI framework around but I am worried when I point new clients to the > Wicket website because it's look and feel is possibly a little dated or > '2007ish style'. > > I feel like the look and feel of the Wicket website doesn't do justice > to the full awesomeness that we all know wicket has. > > We all know that, using the wicket Java UI framework it's possible to > create websites with *any* look and feel but unfortunately many clients > don't have this same technical awareness and see the website for Wicket, > a framework for building web applications in Java, and assume that the > Wicket website itself is an example of the type of webapp/website you'll > end up with if you build it with Wicket - which we all know is not the > case: we're building awesome AJAX enabled, modern, sexy Bootstrap > templated webapps in Wicket. > > A few years ago someone had produced a prototype of a refurbished Wicket > website that looked really quite nice but it never was deployed to the > live server for some reason. I guess you mean https://github.com/dashorst/wicket-site. > > These days I think most developers know that it's fairly easy to make a > great, modern looking website using one of the many Bootstrap > customizations (eg., Bootswatch). > > First question: > > Does anyone else think a wicket website makeover is overdue (or are most > people happy with the current look and feel)? > I do! But I am not capable of doing it myself because I am not an artist. I don't have this kind of imagination to create something pretty. Functional - yes, but not pretty :( Recently I've had a conversation with a client about this topic. (They use Wicket Bootstrap) Me (explaining why Wicket Bootstrap is not a module of Apache Wicket distro): <quote> Today Bootstrap is the hype. Tomorrow something else will be This is the main reason why WB hasn't been merged as a sub project of Apache Wicket itself. </quote> The client: <quote> Agreed, and I think the strategy of Wicket is fine for experienced web developers. However, for every experienced developer, I assume there are 10 novices trying out Wicket and if you don’t steer novice users towards a HTML/CSS framework to use with Wicket to create great looking apps, most of them will be disappointed and wander off elsewhere. </quote> More or less he said the same as you ! But I think he meant Wicket Examples instead of http://wicket.apache.org/ > If the answer is yes then please continue reading: > > Any chance some people are interested in offering time to perform a > Wicket website makeover? > I'll be glad to help with infrastructure, testing, fixing issues, etc. ! > > Some questions for the site maintainers - > > > Are the current web pages: > 1. Generated from any tool via XLST or anything? > The code is hosted at https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/wicket/common/site/trunk. We use http://jekyllrb.com/ to generate static HTML files. It is simple and fast. > 2. Served from a content management system? > No. > 3. Just static pages edited directly in HTML? > Yes. 4. Served as a Wicket app? (would be awesome!) > No. Apache Infrastructure team doesn't allow usage of dynamically generated stuff because this leads of the higher maintenance cost. > > I guess the answer to these determines the quickest way possible to a > refurbished website if Wicketeers agree that is appropriate. > > Could we hook together a simple system that actually uses a very simple > Wicket app itself to host the pages? Eg., provide page content in some > wiki style text format and have a simple Wicket page class that > interprets this and outputs formatted content? > No. See above. > > Aside: We have actually built a content management system for > editing/hosting websites using Wicket but it's proprietary and I don't > think Apache would approve of an Apache site being served by a > proprietary content management system so that's probably not an option. > We don't mind hosting it if they didn't mind but I'm thinking that's not > going to be approved. > > > Regards, > Chris >
