FrontPage

[Mary Gardiner]

On Tue, Apr 19, 2005, Matthew East wrote:
> I would like to renew my plea, slightly desperate now, for people to
> have a look at the following page, where some ideas have been developed
> on this question, and to add comments!!!!
> 
> http://ubuntulinux.org/wiki/IdeasForNewFrontPageStructure

OK, some thoughts:

 - Should "how to use this wiki?" be at the very top? I think we can
   assume that users are familiar with websites, and from a new reader's
   point of view, the wiki is a big website.

   What was intended to be put in "how to use this wiki?"

 - Is "Documentation" a meaningful name? How about "Using Ubuntu"
   instead?

 - I agree with Matthew Thomas that a task based breakdown is nicer than
   a "FAQ" section.

 - Development Documentation should be moved to a "Contributing to
   Ubuntu" or "Ubuntu Developers" section. I think this is another
   example where dividing things into Documentation/Other stuff is not
   very useful: development docs have a completely different reader base
   from installation docs.

 - Why does Hardware have its own top level section?

Just off the top of my head, a sketch of an alternative proposal. I'll
whack it on a wiki page this evening:

 - Using Ubuntu

   - Installing Ubuntu on your system

   - Getting started

     [the links at this level are the top 5 most viewed pages in this
     category, I just give five examples here]

     - Editing documents

     - Connecting to the Internet

     - Reading email

     - Playing music

     - Taking over the world

     - "more" [should this be an explicit link to demonstrate that the
       five aren't all we have?]

   - Troubleshooting [section with all of the "getting my weirdo
     soundcard working" howtos]

   - Getting help [links to a page describing all the user IRC channels,
     mailing lists etc.]

   - Ubuntu for system administrators

 - Ubuntu community

   - Ubuntu philosophy [maybe]

   - Contributing to Ubuntu [an overview of how to contribute]

   - Release development

   - Documentation

   - LoCo teams

 - About this site [maybe: describes the wiki nature and acknowledges
   contributors]

My sketch above is intended to give as many readers as possible an
instant place to click. It's devoted a fair bit of room to new users as
they're likely to be the ones who have the most difficulty deciding
where to navigate to, but I hope that all other wiki users have at least
one obvious entry point in that list.

-Mary