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[list at xenhideout.nl]

Erm, let me just summarize that piece a bit, it is a bit of a chaos writeup it 
seems:....


1. I have a WPML version that is the latest version and that might still work 
very well in WP 4+. It has a feature that in its (desired) mode of having a 
language URL as "site.com/xx/site-url-for-page" the default language also uses 
that setup, ie. a default language of english comes up as site.com/en/pagename. 
Apparently it does not work fully for pages (static pages) yet but that should 
be easy to fix with a bit of time.

Also, that behaviour can be removed again, probably not all that hard. In the 
sense that I can put the checks back in. So the current behaviour is to have a 
/en/ or /nl/ or /fr/ code or whatever languages you have, put into the url for 
default language as well as secondary posts, when you select that option in the 
WPML config (the option for that format). Other formats are of course having a 
subdomain (that is being rewritten by your hosting platform/engine) or having 
the language code (for secondary languages) in the url as ?lang=.

I'm not sure if there'd be an interest in that here, I just spent some fixing 
up my old site that I used as a demonstration for a certain thing i wanted to 
make.


2. I think the slogans for the feature page, to begin with, are not very 
attractive because they lack information while not being any intriguing. I 
could give a sample or a an example rewrite for all of the slogans (that have 
the big header format) as a form of showing how it would look, work and feel, 
to you.

Probably you'd want to rephrase the entire text if you make changes like that, 
but not necessary for a mockup like that, that I am proposing here.





On Wed, 8 Apr 2015, list at xenhideout.nl wrote:

> Hi happy person,
> 
> PERSONALLY and you know I am hesitant to speak often, maybe the indications 
> indicate the contrary, but I am rather hesitant to speak also on IRC.
> 
> Personally I think the presentation of the information -- I called it "empty 
> slogans.." for a moment. It is the Dropbox style, the new style of content 
> presentation that is meant to draw people in..... by not giving any 
> information.
> 
> Trust me, been there, done that. I was once on a board for my study (just a 
> university course) and I did just that. In the end I reverted the whole thing 
> and wrote something else in like minutes, and it was better than the message 
> I had concocted before. People gave some feedback and I was like "what the 
> hell, this is true, this makes no sense what I've been doing".
> 
> It was just a course with about 20 members for a project and I was 
> responsible for the communication. And the presentation, while another team 
> member turned it into a Flash presentation.
> 
> The presentation of the information I mean.
> 
> If I just look at the new site (I hope it is kubwp.kubuntu.co.uk) I just see 
> many headers that are slogans for a commercial and they do not provide any 
> information. By contrast the old site (www.kubuntu.org) was ugly but 
> informative.
> 
> This is a new style of presenting that is not helpful. You see it all around. 
> It is supposed to draw people in but it frustrates because you don't see 
> anything and the impression is that you need to get in anyway in order to 
> know what it is about. So you are getting into a mindset, or you get into a 
> mindset where you just jump onboard, you just jump ship, you jump onboard 
> because that is the only way to get the information you want. It looks all 
> fancy and now you have to try it to know what it is really like. Instead of 
> having the information give you that info. Instead of the presentation 
> providing you with that information.
> 
> So it does draw people in but only if they feel they have no other choice 
> anyway. Ie. Dropbox is ubiquitous. Most people don't know an alternative. 
> That is the setting in which it 'works'. Just a little something. A little 
> 101. A technical person wants the opposite of that, and anyone or everyone is 
> at least slightly technical. You want to know what it does and why it works.
> 
> For example, this text that another person referenced:
> 
> "Amarok, Kubuntu’s default music player, has an intuitive and friendly 
> interface."
> 
> Who gets to decide whether it is intuitive and friendly? Why should anyone 
> believe you on your word? It comes across as offensive to any viewer whether 
> they realize it or not, that another person is going to determine his or 
> experience. It is not an objective statement. It is a personal experience of 
> the developers, or an opinion about that.
> 
> Something like "Was built to be intuitive and friendly" comes a lot closer to 
> that mark.
> 
> But ideally you just let the customer decide whether the product is any good, 
> you don't tell the customer that the product is very good. Not in terms of 
> power words, qualitative words. You supply the customer with information that 
> he/she can base a well-weighed (or enthusiastic) choice upon.
> 
> So what is missing is the "why"? Why is the interface intuitive and friendly? 
> THAT is where INFORMATION lies. Personally, for example, I pretty much hate 
> Amarok, but I love Clementine, which is a fork.
> 
> Can hardly try it here, I am in Gnome. I'd have to download a bunch of stuff. 
> Later.
> 
> Lol but I already have Clementine installed, just couldn't live without it 
> :P. (I am just doing rounds along various installs, or distribution, next up 
> will probably be to install a fresh 15.04 Kubuntu again to see if anything is 
> different.
> 
> So installing Amarok wouldn't take long. But it is not very important I guess 
> now.)
> 
> You see, personally, as a regular user but also as a knowledgeable or 
> technical person, I always want to know why people are making certain 
> challengeable statements.
> 
> I never take someone on his word, because if his word were true, he'd supply 
> me with information that I can base my own choice or my own appraisal on.
> 
> So the form of presentation gives rise to the sentiment of knowing what a 
> person is intending with that presentation. And it determines the quality.
> 
> For example "Browse images with a beautiful interface"
> 
> "We have an image viewer that might surprise you." <-- is a lot more 
> intriguing, a lot less of a lie.
> 
> "Seamlessly open documents" --> "Okular does it all, whenever you have a 
> document." <-- is already a lot more intriguing and more information as well 
> (because "open documents" can also refer to e.g. LibreOffice, but clearly 
> that is not meant, so while Okular itself does not provide much information 
> (as a word) "does it all" mentions or refers to a thing that is regularly 
> done with documents (which is to view them).)
> 
> "Surf the Internet with Firefox" --> "Firefox is included by default, but 
> there is a lot more."
> 
> And that is just staying with the current format, which would not even be my 
> choice probably.
> 
> You can make all of these messages a lot more intriguing and inviting without 
> changing anything else.
> 
> Just my 2 cents for now.
> 
> 
> ps. I am a WordPress hacker myself. Been on their hackers mailinglist for 
> almost a year now though, that much I can say for myself. I have not much 
> experience lately ie. I haven't even tried version 4 yet because it was 
> merely a minor update that broke things and introduced ugliness that was not 
> important to introduce.
> 
> But on the topic of multi-language:
> 
> **The default plugin for WP is WPML but they went commercial. The free 
> version is now very limited (or was) e.g. --- not free, the cheap version, is 
> very limited. the 15 dollar version. The 70 dollar version is what they were 
> before. When they were still free. Ie. the cheap version doesn't have any 
> widgets. Bummer. You need a widget to select the language.
> 
> Can't live without that, can we?
> 
> So I still have a copy of the older version somewhere.
> 
> I believe it is version 2.0.4.1 it is the latest free version I have it 
> patched (roughly) because it stopped working or started not working anymore 
> correctly since WP 3.4 or something. I am not sure about its state. I patched 
> it also (actually an older version, like 1.8.1.2) to include a feature what 
> was later introduced by default. Let me just check if those changes are 
> there.....
> 
> It seems the first part of the patch is no longer needed in 2.0.4.1. It was 
> about using /en/ prefixes in urls. For the default language too, ie. by 
> default it would do /url-to-post-or-page/ for the default language but 
> /nl/url-to-post-or-page/ for the secondary languages. I wanted everything 
> behind a language link.
> 
> There are three settings for:
>
>  switch($this->settings['language_negotiation_type']){ (init, line 307 in 
> sitepress.class.php)
> 
> The first (1) is /en/ in language url, (2) is en.domain.org in subdomain, (3) 
> and the default is ?lang= in url.
> 
> It used to have a check against ->get_default_language() to disable the 
> language parsing in the url for the default language. Or at least the 
> redirection, the parsing was already done.
> 
> Next up were checks in convert_url() and permalink_filter(), 
> category_permalink_filter() and tax_permalink_filter(). It seems I did patch 
> everything and quickfix an issue where the filters were called twice (in 
> recent versions of WP) without knowing really what the change was and why.
> 
> It should work though, I shall attempt an upgrade on an old site...
> 
> It works although my site is mostly broken (in terms of the customized 
> categories I had. But everything that is not customized just works:
> 
> http://1st.xenhideout.nl/nl/2010/09/arrogantie/
> 
> You can see how the url is given as /nl and /en and there is a language 
> switcher inside every post. The rest of the site is defunct still, I am 
> trying to fix it but not working very well yet. There was more wrong than I 
> thought, for some reason? It was just an experiment in dealing with "series". 
> The idea of the site was to have content organised in series, etc.
> 
> Just some primitive way of dealing with that, I guess. It's 5 years ago.
> 
> Almost. Anyway the database server was currently down for it.
> 
> Check it out if you like, it is a solution for having multi-language.
> 
> ((I have it almost done now, at least the language selector CSS for the 
> widget works again)). It is still using WP 3.4.1. Who knows what will break 
> when I upgrade :P)).
> 
> Regards..
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, 7 Apr 2015, Ovidiu-Florin BOGDAN wrote:
> 
>> Hello happy people,
>> 
>> The new Kubuntu site is pretty much ready for delivery.
>> I'm still waiting for some feedback from Rick, but mostly I believe it's 
>> ready.
>> 
>> Now come and prove me wrong! (please don't :P)
>> 
>> Please take a look over the site and give me feedback on everything.
>> There are 2 major issues that I'm working on: Feature page navigation 
> broken on firefox, and the team page.
>> Please add stuff to the *Kubuntu Promotion* Trello board in the *Feedback* 
>> list. If you don't have access to it, ask here.
>> For content propositions, please set up a Document and add it as an 
>> attachment. Please name it apropriately.
>> 
>> We've decided not to ship multilingual for now, due to some limitations of 
>> WordPress. I'll provide more details if needed.
>> 
>> I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
>> 
>> Regards,--
>> *Ovidiu-Florin BOGDAN*
>> GeekAliens.com[1]
>> Kubuntu România
>> 
>> --------
>> [1] http://ovidiu.geekaliens.com