[openbeos] Re: the new website
- From: "Jorge G. Mare (a.k.a. Koki)" <koki@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2006 13:11:14 -0700
Hi,
Here is my take on how the new website should be organized. I think this
approach would address the most important issues at hand, and hopefully
they can be doable within the framework of what we now have.
In order to make it easier to manage the content, and have a clear
separation between the marketing message, the technical documentation
and the community driven content, I propose that site be organized into
sections that are managed by those who actually contribute and manage
the content.
Here are the specific categories and their respective sections:
1) Marketing
- Front page
- About (which includes FAQ)
- News & Events
- Newsletter
2) Engineering
- Download (instead of "Get Haiku")
- Documentation
- Development
- Developer's blogs
3) Community
- Forums
- Community Wiki
- User blogs
Content rights would be given to those individuals responsible for each
type of content (marcom team for marketing and devs for development),
while the community would be open to anyone who registers. If you are a
Haiku fan and want to be part of the community, you can register and
participate in the forums, have your personal Haiku related blog, and/or
contribute to the Community Wiki.
This separation would allow marketing to manage the message to the
outside world, the devs to freely produce all the technical
documentation that is is required, and the community to have a place to
express itself and feel part of the project.
So, how do we get there? I do not know. :-) (beat me up if you want)
Ideally, this is what I would like to see, but I am flexible:
Each section would have to be independent so that, for example, you can
list the latest entries of only that section (as opposed to listing the
latest entries from all content in the site). For example, from the menu
structure below, when you go to the "News & Events" page, the "Related
Items" should only list news, and not technical stuff from, say, the
development section.
This is how I envision the the top menu to be:
- About
* What is Haiku
* Haiku Tour (screenshots or videos)
* FAQ
* Teams
* Sponsors
- News & Events
* Latest news
* News archive
* WalterCon
- Development (as is + Documentation)
- Community
* Forums
* Wiki
* User Blogs
The common menu on the right top (next to Search), could be:
- Download
* Haiku images
* Development tools
* Anything else that would be of use to devs?
- Report Bugs
- Contact
I would also like to see some visual aides that identify the community
section, in order to distinguish it from the rest). If it is possible to
use a different logo depending on the page you are at, I would like to
do something like this (disclaimer: this is just a crude
paste-up/mockup, not a design proposal):
http://www.zeta-zone.net/haiku/forums_mockup.jpg
Note the "Community Forum" co-branding added to the right of the Haiku
logo; this could be used with the other community sections (ie.,
Community Wiki, Community Blogs).
The front page is also key, and I think that it needs to be repurposed
to our current goals. There needs to be more visual elements that lead
to the key pieces of information that are important for our audience
(the developers). We also need a "Highlights" box or block where we can
expose events/milestones that are relevant at any given time (for
example, we could have a "Come to WalterCon" visual element, with a link
to the WalterCon page. I will try to put together a mockup for later
today or tomorrow (Waldemar, can static information be added to the
front page?)
BTW, this is not the conceptual proposal that I have been threatening
with :-) since last week; that one is more far reaching and it is not
done yet (and on hold for now).
I think this proposal would be a good compromise to achieve the best
manageability of content possible, while giving more freedom to all the
contributors regardless of their nature (devs, marcom or community), and
without the risk of people inadvertently stepping on somebody else's
toes. :-)
I really hope we can do this. :-)
Koki
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