Ubuntu Community Docs Home Page Modifications

[Marc Kaplan]

I hope I don't step on anyone's toes, but I made some major changes to 
the community's home page.

The first thing you'll notice is that the introduction has changed.

Previously, the original version had just bullet points linking to the 
[[Official Documentation]], [[Common Questions]], [[Screencasts]], and 
the [[Glossary]].

what I did was mostly do a bit of moving and shaking of the order, and 
fine-tune the language to make it more welcome to new users.

For example, I kept the link for the [[Official Documentation]] up at 
the top because that's what these are. But I moved the [[Common 
Questions]] and [[Screencasts]] lower on the page, as did "Switching 
 From Another Operating System"

Here's why.

After the [[Official Documentation]], I put the [[Glossary]], 
[[Terminal]], and [[Common Questions]] into a "Getting Started with 
Ubuntu" section instead. This gets the user/visitor more familiar with 
what they will be seeing throughout the rest of the entire documentation.

My thought process was that the "Switching From Another Operating 
System" would best be severed AFTER a section that introduces the user 
to aspects of Ubuntu instead of jumping them right into "what to do"

Then, originally, there was a whole section about [[Software]]. But 
before users can even think about Hardware Drivers or installing 
software, they should be addressing installation issues, so I brought 
that up on the page.

Then comes the Hardware and Software sections.

After doing a little checking, I found that both the content on this 
page, and the community home page was all repetitive and could all be 
condensed into the [[Applications]] page. So I did that, and then just 
added a link to [[Applications]] off of the home page instead, and set 
up a redirect on the [[Software]] page. This is actually part the 
"reorganization" by streamlining and grouping like articles/links together.

----Did I put them in the right place? Or did I put them in the 
"Official Docs" by mistake? I'm still trying to sort them out and tried 
to keep it all together.

If you take a look at the [[Applications]] page, you'll see that most of 
the information and links are now readily available to a user visiting 
the site for the first time. I recognize that it may need some more 
work, but it's work in progress.

I currently was planning on doing this with the [[Hardware]] portion of 
this article too, which is currently above [[Applications]].

BTW-I agree that this page ended up being longer than it should, and 
want to make it as clean/organized as possible.

Then, in the logical flow of the article, going from Introduction >> 
Installation >> Working With, I concluded the article with where users 
could get additional help, and how they could contribute.

I would value any input, criticism, complaints, issues, etc that anyone 
may have.

In addition, I would like to propose that we make this home page even 
more of a welcome jumping off point instead of a bunch of links thrown 
together. There is a very clean, organized, and logical entrance to 
"help.ubuntu.com". Something similar should be in affect for 
"help.ubuntu.com/community".

****"Sidebar"**** It has come to my attention that this was sitting in 
my drafts folder and didn't go out as planned. I realize that this may 
have been a little on the extreme side and looking back, maybe I should 
have built it in a sandbox first. I will be sure to proceed more 
cautiously in the future.