[ciphershed] Re: Website & publicity
- From: "Alain Forget" <aforget@xxxxxxx>
- To: <ciphershed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2014 14:19:41 -0400
Unfortunately, the website doesn't look, read, or feel like a "normal" website.
It does have a very "developer" feel to it. The front page talks about the
project being managed by experienced and passionate programmers, KISS
philosophy, non-anonymous dev, public code edits...yeah yeah, that all sounds
good, but nowhere does the page say *what CipherShed is*! ("Cross-platform
on-the-fly encryption software." is horribly technical and doesn't tell users
anything meaningful) Any end-user coming to this page will think, "Uhh, I must
be the wrong place." It's a fine site for us technical people working on the
project (I'm happy we even have a logo!), but for any (non-technical) users
(who just want to use the software and not get involved), it could be better.
Perhaps it's as simple as putting our current webpage one level down
(accessible through a "Developers" or "Contribute" link) from a more
user-welcoming front-end that Niklas is suggesting.
Regarding the About page, I'm afraid it won't likely have the effect you hope
it will. It's just a bunch of words that anyone could have typed (or randomly
generated!); it provides no evidence that we are who we claim, and that we've
done the things we claim (and thus have that expertise). So there should be
links to those projects' webpages that people can go see and confirm that it
really exists and see that we did indeed participate in those projects. There
should be links to our own webpages that talk about our past and current work.
Both Bill and Stephen have such pages; I was rather surprised that you didn't
put a link from the About page to your sites. Basically, anything at all
(links!) that shows that we are real people with real expertise, real skills,
real history, and real reputability (and thus accountability).
Alain
-----Original Message-----
From: ciphershed-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ciphershed-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Stephen R Guglielmo
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2014 13:44
To: ciphershed@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [ciphershed] Re: Website & publicity
On Sun, Jun 15, 2014 at 8:30 AM, Niklas Lemcke - 林樂寬
<compul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> It appears that most people are more actively following the ML than the
> forum, so I'll repost what I posted there here.
>
> So far we have a wiki and a forum up and running. The wiki is good for
> looking for information and documentations on the project, the forum is good
> for discussion. None of them is good for a first public presence.
>
> As another goal for the first release I would suggest that we have a nice,
> clean frontpage at ciphershed.org with the forum and wiki being either at
> (wiki/forum).ciphershed.org or ad ciphershed.org/(forum/wiki). I believe that
> that appearance will be a major factor how much the common audience is able
> to trust the project, and how seriously we will be taken as an end-user
> product and not a geek-tool.
>
> I could create a simple suggestion around the end of next week and host it
> somewhere else, so we can discuss it.
>
> What I think it should contain:
>
> - these links (not too many!): home, download, wiki, forum
> - home containing recent updates on the development / release process (maybe
> short blogposts?) and a screenshot of the software (people love those).
>
> Of course this list is a) most likely not finished yet and b) things may be
> shifted around (e.g. maybe create a doc page with simple install instructions
> and screenshots?)
>
> What do you think?
Well, honestly, I feel as though everything you mentioned already
exists (or can exist) on the wiki. We have a Docs page. We have a nice
clean front page. We have an About page listing past projects and such
(home page links can be added...). We have a Download link. We have a
section for News updates.
We can easily add screenshots to the Wiki page.
I personally have done a significant amount of work on the wiki. If
this is transitioned into a regular website, how is everyone to edit
it? Give everyone ssh access and make them use vim?
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