feed'd front page ready

[Mike McGrath]

On Tue, 1 Apr 2008, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 21:44 -0500, Mike McGrath wrote:
> > On Tue, 1 Apr 2008, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:
> >
> > Lack of information?  Whats missing?  Be extremely specific.  Also let me
> > know that of the information you find missing, how it will be fulfilled by
> > linking to planet, devfu and FWM?  Remember, we're not adding content.
> > Just more things to click on.
> >
> You are right about the planet and maybe about devfu, what i do not
> agree is about fwn. I think that the idea of having a website for the
> project is to let people knoe about the project and not just about the
> released distro. News are important to the community and having news in
> the front page is always a good idea. I dont know anybody who likes to
> read news that also likes to start digging here and there just to find
> whats new. As in a newspaper the first page is what will catch people
> attention, and having a very simplistic style with no news and just
> saying the general idea of the fedora project is not that appealing.

You'll be happy to know that FWN is linked on the main page and other
pages via a banner ad then.  So that problem is already taken care of.

> As of what you said about google's success having a clean interface,
> its kinda irrelevant here (no offense) but, google is a completly different
> application. it is meant to be a browser and just that so it focus its attention
> on being a browser. Of course they have lot more applications and each one has
> its own interface but the thing is that... google is an aplication not an informative website
> which should focus on a completly different goal.

Fine, lets not talk about google.  Lets talk about www.debian.com.  Is
that more what you had in mind?  The fact is that its _HARD_ to say a lot
in a little space.  But its worth it to do it.  We still don't have one
persons vision on the website so everyone gets on board and says "Look
what we could do!"  Which is just going to turn the website to crap.

We've done it once already, less then a year ago the website was almost
unusable.  So much crap, most of it developer oriented, so when users
showed up they had no idea what to do.

> our primary purpose with the website (at least thats what i think) is to catch people attention
> and that can only be achieved by showing information. Perhaps this is not a discussion to be made on this topic
> but as an example, i cant see good information about how to get involved, we simply specify a link to the wiki
> and thats all, so we are leaving that kind of information to another application (the wiki) which i think
> its making useless the fp.o website.

Thats because the wiki is full of developer content.  There's a few things
in there for the end user.  But I'd wager less then 10% of the 10,000+
uncontroled pages to which no one is accountable is for an end user.  We
linked to the wiki because we figured people were used to drinking the
sand.  In my opinion the wiki shouldn't be linked to directly from there
anyway.

> Another example is the download section, yes we say "these are all the ways you can install fedora" but then
> we dont say which is better for the user (i385, x86_64, etc...)

So fix the download page.  Not the landing page.

> Having information in the front page makes it easier to let people know what they want
> without making them digg into the website, and in the website world i think thats a plus in terms of
> usability.

What information?  I was very VERY specific in asking you for what
information was missing from the main page and you (and no one else so
far) has given me any information thats missing from the front page.  The
fact is the categories we have on the main page are exactly what people
are looking for.  Getting involved, getting fedora, docs.

> Im not a marketing expert so i dont really know what would be better to set on the front page to get people
> atention, probably somebody better than me and more informed about the project could share his ideas about
> what catch people attention. As for me, i think news and Events are one of the more important things to show
> in the front page.
>

Yeah, www.debian.org is a real attention getter.  And at 117 links on the
main page its a wonder anyone gets anywhere.  Simpler == harder.  Simpler
== better.  But without someone taking care of the website people are just
going to constantly say "hey, this should be on the front page" with no
one saying no.  Just last month a group, very losely related to Fedora
(and as a group does not report to the board in any way) wanted to add a
whole other banner system to the website on the main page.

	-Mike