[openbeos] Re: the new website

Waldemar,

Waldemar Kornewald wrote: 
My fault: by "personal rants" I did not mean to imply that we encourage
the devs to post about their personal life. Yes, all content should be
related to Haiku; but within that context, they can have a personal
touch; that is the nature of blogs.

It's not a blog! :) 

I think you are getting confused. :-)

This was in reference to your question of what was the difference between the Newsletter and the Developer Blog. Please see this, and you will understand:

http://www.freelists.org/archives/openbeos/08-2006/msg00560.html

The newsletter is a different animal. It is a bit more formal, and also
meant to build value. As mentioned in my reply to Axel, I see the
newsletter as a potential incentive for people to write articles (beyond
their blog), a means for promoting the project (and eventually the
product), and potentially a space for our sponsors (both existing and
future) to advertise in, opening the possibility of raising funds for
the project.


Hmm, I'd have to see something more concrete before I continue
commenting on it. I just think that there is too much artificial
separation between all those content types.


Do you want me to write and print a full newsletter for you to approve? :-)

>> I am not concerned about the content; it is a blog, where people can
>> rant, and others can comment. It is more of a social thing.
>
> I think it would be too unprofessional to have this on our website.
> All important content should be part of the official website section
> and that doesn't leave much room for interesting Haiku-related
> articles in the user section. This will end in too many off-topic
> discussions and that's exactly what we should not have on the official
> site.

What user section?

"Community" section.

OK, in that case, the co-branding is good enough for visitors to understand that this is a community area. Many projects have this, and it seems to work OK.

The Community area is meant to give the community a place to express
themselves and to nurture a sense of community. There is really no need
to have a separate site for this, as long as it is clearly
distinguishable from the rest of the site.


In my recent over-exaggerated email I hope to have made clear which
cocerns I have with blogs. What is our focus? Haiku or end-user rants?
Who needs those rants, anyway? Why do we want to "pollute" our
official website with off-topic personal discussions which don't
express our own opinion and might even be harmful for us because they
go too far into the "personal rant" category? Why would people coming
to our site want ot read personal blogs? What does that have to do
with Haiku the product? Why don't you answer directly to these
concerns? :)
I have a very big problem with putting something on our website that
is bigger than all the on-topic content we put there.

We actually want to capture the Haiku blogging that currently happens elsewhere, so it in general it would not be off-topic. Having that under the Haiku umbrella would help nurture a sense of community.

So the question is: is it possible to change the logo for the Community
area to one with the community co-branding signature?


Yes, with some theme hackery (hard-coding which page needs a different
logo) it should be possible.


Can we do this then?

>> The *Community Forums* (with a special stress on *commnunity*) are
>> another place for the community to exchange ideas, tips, or to simply
>> socialize. It is for the community, and will not be confounded with
>> anything official.
>
> Exactly. Our phpBB forums already do this job.

Does that mean that we will migrate the phpBB forums to the new website?
If that is the case, that should go under the "Community" area.

I'd like to keep the content itself it separate.
I'd love to have it visually integrated,

I am not sure I follow you. From a user perspective, as long as it is visually integrated, it is not separate, so that should work. :-)

But aside from that, what's wrong with the Drupal forums?

It's OK that the core devs have full access; but it would have to be in
a manageable way. The "anybody can post anywhere, anytime" approach does
not work if you want to have a cohesive, compelling message, and that is
what marketing is all about.


Well, that's an acceptable compromise. The developers let you do all
the work, but still get full access. :)
The fact that anyone can post anywhere doesn't mean that we *have* to
actually do it. We can leave this to you.


If they can, they will. :-)

If you think of it, the fact that you have such a narrow view of what
news can be, and clearly underestimate the persuasion power and
usefulness of a well thougthout and designed front page is in itself
proof that Haiku could indeed greatly benefit from a marketing function.


Now you're getting personal. I just do not like splitting everything
up too much and I have never seen news which could not be part of the
"article" section I'm having in mind. You're still calling it a
blog...
If you want to make a more pretty front page I'm all for it, but may I
remind you of the fact that you mentioned *three* article types?
- News & Events
- Newsletter
- Developer's blogs
(actually four if you count user blogs, but I really have doubts about
them being a good idea)

OK, this is simple. First, the front page is exclusively for generated stuff, so you will (should) not see any community entries; most likely it will just be the link on the top menu.

The other three categories are not a problem at all. Again, take a look at freebisd.org, and you will see that they have listings for not three but fours types of content (Lates News, Upcoming Events, In the Media, and Security Advisories). Not that we will replicate freebsd.org identicall, but I think that is a really smart format to expose a lot of information in a well organized way.

I'm well aware of news items as you can already see on the current
website. But I really don't understand what you have in mind for
newsletters that could not be part of "member articles" (not developer
blogs!) and why you cannot use the same for both. You seem to have
ambitious marketing plans if you need a separate newsletter which
should flood companies and is so extremely different from the "member
articles" that you cannot unify both and only pick the
markting-related content when sending it to companies and sponsors.

News needs to be a section on its own, with an entry in the top menu, a
page with the latest (10?) entries and links to the archives. In the
front page we can have a block that lists, say, the 10 most recent
headlines (just the headlines, not the news). I would like to use the
real estate in the front as wisely as possible (mockup coming).


Gavin? Do you still want to code? We need you (and other web
developers) to implement Jorge's ideas. That's too much for me... :)
I'm really getting too busy for this.

I'm happy that this can at least be done without giving out shell access...

If I go to http://plonetest.haiku-os.org/blog/ I see a the latest entries regardless of the article category. Forgive my ignorance, but is it not possible to have http://plonetest.haiku-os.org/news/ with the same function but for news? Would creating a "News" article type pointing to the /news/ forlder work?

We indeed need a place for the "marketing stuff" that would include
logos, branding guidelines, etc. I am inclined to think that this needs
a menu entry, but perhaps it is not imperative. Usually, such content is
targeted to the media, which is why many projects put it under an area
called "Media", "Press" or something along those lines.

What about "Resources"? 

The meaning is too broad.

Koki


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