Please checkout wiki homepage proposal

[Ace Suares]

Hi Uwe,

Thanks for your reaction! It's very nice to hear from all of you. Even 5 
days into this project and I am already feeling quite alone.

Apart from that, the wiki is so terribly slow that 10% of my edits just 
disappear (timeout) and that 80% of the pages take 30 seconds or so 
after I press 'Save Changes'. I can not find some person who could 
troubleshoot the problem with me and be able to fix it. So once again, 
thanx for your reaction! It keeps me going.

The page https://wiki.edubuntu.org/Edubuntu/Wiki/ProposalWikiHomepage
is just what it says: a proposal. I totally agree there should be a 
slightly better design. I've never been good with colours, so I took the 
colors from the edubuntu logo to make those boxes. I would like these 
two boxes to be with rounded corners and a lighter version of the 
colours, preferably with a gradient.

The focus for now, is the content, which links are on the page, where 
they go and so on. So let the design be of later importance, just the 
general distribution, i.e. 'an area about eduntut', 'an area with 
important latest news (i.e. release), 'an area with links to the four 
main areas (or 5, or 3)' and so on.

To illustrate my point about the content, try this:

1. go to www.edubuntu.org
2. click on downloads
3. where to go ? releases? no... first cdimage link? try it. Is that 
encouraging for a user to download something?
second cdimage link? omg... last link ? oh no!
In fact its' complicated to just download the cd ! Ubuntu website does a 
much better job at that.

Or this example:
1. go to wiki.edubuntu.org
2. oh wrong page? This is ubuntu. where is the link to edubuntu?
3. it wiki.edubuntu.org/Edubuntu
4. hmmm let's request a free cd. click shipit
5. whaaaat?

In fact he whole site is like that. Almost never you land where you 
expect to land. This is the main concern for now. When that's cleaned 
up, I'd like to improve the design. But first the structure.

I made a download page already. Now the other three....

Some comments:
> 
> - I think it has to many different color at the top
yes, will fix later.
> - the table below "What can I find on this site?" seems to be too large
> and the icons are too far left. maybe you can reduce the width to e.g.
> 75% and vertically align it in den middle, which will move things more
> in the center of the view of the visitor.
Good point, maybe fix that sooner than later cause it's simple.

> - at the bottom I see a copyright 2005. in my view, every page should
> have a clearly visible date, when it was last updated. in many cases on
> the web I search for pages and only after reading through it I
> understand that it is outdated. a visible date helps people to
> understand how old the page is.

the 2005 copyright notice is outside our control - it's from the ubuntu 
site and automatically added to the wiki page. There is a clear date 
though: Edubuntu/Wiki/ProposalWikiHomepage (last edited 2009-07-25 
15:06:55 by Ace Suares)

> - top right there is a "Home", top left is the edubuntu logo, top right
> side is a pen. these all link to edubuntu.org. I think "Home" should be
> the start page of the wiki. edubuntu on the left is ok but I don't
> understand the mening of the pen drawing on paper

This stuff is also added outside our control. It could sure need a change!

> - I am located in germany. the login textbox and the buttons on the
> right are all in english, but the combo box on the left is localized and
> contains german entries (which are not sorted well). it would be goog to
> have either/or but not mixed.

Same.

> 
> so much for the moment. thank you for the effort. if there is nothing to
> do for me on the current site I could also do some translations from
> german to englisch. but I also speak fluent italian.


If you want to help, then I will send you as soon as there is such need, 
a simple task that you can execute (for instance move 20 pages to a new 
place or something like that).

For the rest, all your suggestions are very welcome!

Cheers,
ace


> 
> rgds and a nice weekend,
> 
> uwe
> 
> 
> Am Samstag, den 25.07.2009, 02:11 -0400 schrieb Ace Suares:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I made a document to try to get an overview of the current status of the 
>> wiki and website, you can find it here:
>>
>> https://wiki.edubuntu.org/EdubuntuWikiCleanupEffort
>>
>> A proposal for the new wiki homepage is here:
>>
>> https://wiki.edubuntu.org/Edubuntu/Wiki/ProposalWikiHomepage
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> ace
>>
>>
> 
>