website reorganization plan

Tue Sep 5 22:03:33 UTC 2006

Andreas et al,
   I'll admit to be confused by the top level proposal where  
Participate, Community, and Help & Support all seem to offer many of  
the same underlying content, or perhaps just different paths to  
similar content.   In general the front page is doing a good job of  
pointing to current news(internal & external) and indeed should offer  
new content on a regular basis to have folks returning.  I like  
Matthew Paul Thomas's categories as being less confusing,  
particularly for new users.  I also LUV the Development tab (or  
perhaps it should be Developers) as it helps focus current and future  
developers into a certain workspace.  The resources developers are  
looking for and often not what 'regular' end users are looking for.   
Perhaps a compromise?

Ubuntu - current homepage with mix of static links and news teasers?
About/News/??  other tab for internal offerings
Community
Development (or Developers)
Help
Partners

Some rationale from a still new user (six months and counting)  
perspective.   Community says "get involved", "participate", "join  
others like you" so it seems redundant to offer both a Community and  
Participate top level index.  Partners is a hold over and currently  
the way Canonical fosters "a deeper relationship" in the commercial  
sector.  I would assume it's a necessary tab as they are the backbone  
of the whole project.

If you notice the "news" section on the top page it refers to  
external press or media items and not internally generated news items  
like the Fridge or weekly newsletter.  I think it's an important  
distinction, subtle but important.  Perhaps it could be changed to  
"Ubuntu in the Media" and make the "News" internally generated items?

The content underneath does overlap so the goal should not be to  
force an artificial index but just provide an easier path for most  
commonly used items.  Once a user has found an area they need, they  
will bookmark it and go directly there instead of the "front door."   
Some sites I've seen offer the top level tabs with rollover menus to  
give users an idea of what is behind each tab.  There is not even any  
extra text or "alt" information other than the URL with the current  
tabs so that's an obvious accessibility fix that needs to take place.

Is there a deadline or target date for the update?

cheers,

Belinda

On Sep 5, 2006, at 10:08 AM, Andreas Lloyd wrote:

> Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
>> I just posted a few bugs, but I think the most important issue is
>> getting the categorization issue sorted out, and finding a consistent
>> way to present primary and secondary categories. For example, which
>> page exactly is the top level of "Community", and does the Fridge  
>> look
>> like a child page of that category index?
>>
>> Possible top-level categories:
>> *   "News" (features, press releases)
>> *   "About" (what is Ubuntu, versions, etc)
>> *   "Get Ubuntu" (download, Amazon, ShipIt)
>> *   "Development" (wiki, /developers)
>> *   "Partners" (though I don't understand what this section is for)
>> *   "Help & Support" (help.ubuntu.com, community support, paid  
>> support).
>>
> Interesting, we discussed this a long time ago, as well. Based on  
> what I
> said then, and what MPT has suggested now, I have these suggestions:
>
> __________ _________________ _________ _____________  
> _________________________
>
> | Ubuntu | News | Participate! | Community | Partners | Help and  
> Support |
>
> That would give us the six tabs as MPT suggested, but with a different
> rationale:
>
> Ubuntu:
> The current start page much as it is, explaining what Ubuntu is and  
> with
> a big sign to where you can download it.
>
> News:
> Would this be the fridge? Or some of the extremely few official
> communications that come out about Ubuntu? Either way, it should have
> reasonable amount of news coming through. Press releases and so forth.
>
> Participate:
> A new page which both links to various teams and to simple things like
> filing a bug report, developer documents and so forth. A short, easily
> accessible page that can give an bird's eye view of the community to
> make it easy for people to get involved. I might try a put together a
> draft for this if I have time.
>
> Community:
> This should provide links to get in touch with the community: forums,
> mailing-lists and IRC as well as the Planet Ubuntu (maybe even have  
> that
> as the front page for that section?) As well as the sections on
> governance, local teams and so on.
>
> Partners:
> Might well be called something else. Possibly "Services",  
> "Corporate" or
> maybe "Services and Industry Solutions" like on the IBM front page.  
> This
> page should be the frontpage for corporate interest and they should be
> directed there. There they can get whatever corporatey information  
> that
> they might need. Corporate users have their own ideas about how that
> sort of thing should look, so we better not question it. ;-)  
> Inspiration
> can be found here:
>
> http://www.ibm.com/servicessolutions/us/
> http://www-19.lotus.com/wps/portal/showcase/
> http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/en/partners
>
> Support:
> This would be much like it is now. Though, of course, we discussed
> adding some buttons to make it easier to get direct access to the help
> channels needed. I played around with such buttons, but never got any
> good results. Feel free to have a look at it:
>
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Website/SupportSection
>
> (note that that having buttons would require a version of MoinMoin  
> that
> supports linking from via images - especially linking to IRC  
> channels).
>
> Just a bit of input. Hope this helps as well. I look forward to  
> further
> discussion on this.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Andreas
>
> -- 
> https://launchpad.net/people/lloydinho
>
>
> -- 
> ubuntu-doc mailing list
> ubuntu-doc at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-doc