CMS Decision

[Greg DeKoenigsberg]

On Mon, 5 Dec 2005, seth vidal wrote:

> > Wikis don't have a way to build a hierarchy of pages, move branches
> > around, etc. I realize that MoinMoin does have categories, but I don't
> > know that they're hierarchical, and AFAIK there's no way to turn them into
> > a nice little sidebar with an expandable tree. These basic navigation
> > things may sound stupid, but they're important to web site usability.
> 
> You mean like:
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CategoryExtras
> 
> and
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CategoryCategory
> 
> and
> 
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/CategoryDesktop
> 
> like that?

Actually, Seth, I'd say that your examples conclusively demonstate
Elliot's point.  Those pages are scarcely more useful than running a
search through the wiki.  And since they're not on a sidebar, a user has 
*no way* of figuring out where they are without visiting one of these 
pages.

Information architecture is hard -- and more information == more hard.  
That's one of the reasons I'm kinda skeptical of the whole "CMS" idea in
the first place, tbh.  For dynamic content, use the wiki.  For static
content -- which includes high-level content, a decent current map of the
dynamic content, and very little else -- I'm in favor of plain ol' web
pages, with a handful of people who are tasked with auditing the content
every few months on a set schedule.

The surface content on Ubuntu's site is certainly well-maintained -- but
go a couple of layers deep, and it's the same kind of chaos we face,
Drupal or no Drupal.

My $0.02.  I'm just trying to make something out of what we've got now.

--g

_____________________  ____________________________________________
  Greg DeKoenigsberg ] [ the future masters of technology will have
 Community Relations ] [ to be lighthearted and intelligent.  the
             Red Hat ] [ machine easily masters the grim and the 
                     ] [ dumb.  --mcluhan