Re: Thoughts about our website

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi Lars,

lars.sonchocky-helldorf@hamburg.de wrote:
> Hi dear GNUsteppers,
> 
> 
> I lately came across a website which impressed me by its usefulness and 
> simplicity:
> 
> https://www.qemu.org
> 
> 
> It impressed me with its clearness and to the point information: you can see 
> everything important at a glance:

It is indeed a quite terse home page.

Remember, they have a simpler task: they need to present a single
application. We have a little bit a more complicated task: we are a
whole project: framework, libraries, apps.

> 
> On the top there are the most important links (Download, Support, Contribute, 
> Docs, Wiki, Blog), followed by a big logo and title as well as a one sentence 
> description of the project.
> 
> Then follows a section of three Screenshots, which each show a certain aspect 
> of QEMU in detail.
> 

I think as far as navigation goes, we have a decent setup, but our home
page is crammed with information. We agreed on this years ago.
Why? we wanted to put everything on the front, correct all
misconceptions at once, present most at once.

We are a framework, we are portable, we appeal end-users, we have
end-user apps. We wanted to push everything in one place, somehow a
committee failure because "a is more important than b" and tried
prominence to everything.


> We could, for instance reduce the copy text on the homepage to just:
> 
> 
> GNUstep is a [free software](-> Link to fsf.org or gnu.org) implementation of 
> [Apple’s Cocoa Frameworks](-> Link to Cocoa Documentation at Apple) (formerly 
> [NeXT's OpenStep](-> Link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenStep )) for 
> [Application Development](-> Link to Developer subpage at gnustep.org).
> 
> GNUstep can be used to create a desktop environment. (Here we could place a 
> link to a reference implementation)

We have more than one :)

> 
> GNUstep is not Window Maker and [Window Maker is not GNUstep](-> Link to 
> https://www.windowmaker.org/docs/wings.html ).

That part can be of a second page, really.. as it is now

> 
> 
> Then I would propose to follow the Concept of the QEMU homepage closely: 
> 
> show three recent screenshots, ideally with theming running on various OSes 
> including Windows. Short explanation of what it shows below.
> 
> 
> All this followed by I recent releases section and at the very bottom the 
> legal stuff like imprint, link to bug reporter and such stuff.

I would skip that part completely!
E.g. bug reporting is always prominent in a menu - currently under
External (which doesn't make that more sense as a section being on
github...)


> 
> 
> This is just my proposal, I am open for discussion, so let’s discuss this 
> (also since we are on discuss-gnustep@gnu.org here). The more involvement the 
> better, I am not saying my ideas are perfect or such, I post those to get the 
> ball rolling towards a better GNUstep Homepage!

Let's discuss if we can push the information "down one" into the
respective pages, which we already have, and clean up the home page...
I'll attempt that. I am for it. Reading the rest of the discussion,
others have a harder idea.

We have the navigation menu already in the home page, so we can really
simplify the section if we wish. I'll attempt a gradual approach.

Riccardo