[Design-team] spin maintainer's requirement for the website

[Chitlesh GOORAH]

Hello Design Team,

Since there are a lot of information and mockups about how to get to
the new spin website, but not about the layout of the spin website
itself.

I want to share with you some of my needs as a spin maintainer for
FEL, which I believe might be for other spin maintainers.

Before I get started, I want to emphasize that FEL's website should
look as professional as possible. This is because I want to give those
companies that are willing to collaborate with us the feeling that FEL
is a mature platform and they can trust us with their contribution and
time.

That said, there are 4 important aspects what the website should convey:
* information for upstream 20% : showing them how their software is
being treated and what they are missing if their software is not part
of our collection
* information for users 30%: basic things : download urls, who are we
behind the spin, some screenshots of the software, future events,
event slides, photos on events reflecting our maturity, spin's
portfolio, Main highlights of the tools, history of the spin (helps
the user to choose F-n or F-n+1), spin achievements in real life
* information for our contributors 10% : slides templates, our spin
fedora hosted website, its tickets, next event, a place to post their
publications, developer section
* spin portfolio 40%: this is the most important part: It reflects all
the key features of all the software under the spin's umbrella and not
only copy-paste description of the software. It is accompanied by
screenshots, and different solutions for usage.

If these 4 aspects are respected, do marketing for the spin should not
be difficult (by anyone, even those who have no clue what the spin
does). The contents of the four items will be produced by the spin's
team and not design team. I would however request that the template
being prepared for the spin be less geeky and less crowdy by
unnecessary artwork such as gradients etc.

As far as I am concerned, Shakthi  and I are pushing hard with so that
FEL's opensource solutions meet real life user requirements. Our spin
technical niche obliges us to opt for a template which tags us as a
leader in our field and a EDA distributor such as these:
http://www.synopsys.com/home.aspx
http://www.mentor.com/
http://www.cadence.com/us/pages/default.aspx

I don't know how much time you have allocated to the spin website
design, however I have once designed FEL's old page based on Mairin's
mockup (F-8 to F-10 timeframe)
http://fedorapeople.org/groups/designteam/Projects/Fedora%20Spins/Wireframes/spindetailsmock4.png

I have migrated (during F-10 timeframe) FEL's website contents on
JohnPalmeri's initial moksha like fedora community webpage:
http://chitlesh.fedorapeople.org/FEL/

I have tweaked it from right-to left so that all the pages can be
viewed from _any_ browser. It is important that the spin website can
also be viewed under Internet Explorer as well, because some corporate
companies especially the managers, marketers and CEOs run windows and
they are the ones to seduce for ensure mass deployment of FEL. I would
encourage you guys (especially for the spin website :
MYSPIN.fedoraproject.org) to opt a template similar to FEL'S website
and improve it. It is clean and easy to get contents in without being
a web designer. I'm looking forward to be a beta user of the new
website.

Cheers,
Chitlesh