Re: Improvements of the website
On Mon, Apr 16, 2007 at 09:25:49PM +0200, Grégoire Duch??ne wrote:
> 1/ There is too many informations on the homepage : when a visitor
> comes and wants to get Debian, he needs to see clearly where he can
> get the lastest version of Debian. Thus, I believe that the "Getting
> starterd" can be removed, and replaced by a simple box "Get Debian"
> which leads to another page with a simple list of choices.
I think we had these kinds of discussions a few years back, but some things
didn't change since...
You're assuming that a visitor comes and wants to get Debian.
Do you really think that all those people want to instantly download
and install an operating system? I don't think they do; I think that
there is a sizeable chunk of visitors who will just be browsing,
come across a link to our site, and then click to see what it is.
There are also people who are already users of Debian, even the latest
version of Debian, who maybe installed already, and now want to find
something else about Debian. Chances are that many of those people will
be people with installation problems (who want to read the install docs
and FAQs), or people with upgrade problems (who want to read the release
notes), or people who can't find a program (who want to go to packages.d.o).
These are all fairly common cases, aren't they?
The problem with the first page is that it has to accomodate various groups
of users. There is more than one kind of users out there, in the wild :)
Obviously, the front page doesn't look modern, it's like it's stuck in time,
has been for a while. We can discuss ways to fix it, but just because it's
not too hip, I'm not automatically convinced that we need to gut it in
order to fix it.
> 2/ The news are not easily reachable on the website : there is only a
> little list of events and news with a title and a date. This is NOT
> enough. We need to display the news in the top of the homepage, with a
> good summary.
That's a portal-like view of the web that seems to prevail these days.
The local angle is that our 'news' are barely news by these standards,
because they track debian-announce. These news displayed there are more
like important bulletins instead of what is conventionally known as 'news'.
> 3/ Althought security advisories are important, we can afford to put
> them on a separate page (with of course a link on the left menu).
I'm inclined to agree with the sentiment that the security advisories take
up too much space, but they are very important to all users. For operating
systems, security is among the top-5 issues, regardless of whether we're
talking servers or individual users or anything inbetween.
> 4/ I think that the two menus must be synchronized : the first on the
> top would give the main parts of the website, and the second would
> give a more precise view of a part.
That's also something that became popular on today's web. I'm inclined
towards it, but then we also have to discuss what exactly to put in the
left-hand side menu, and that's a painful matter in its own right...
--
2. That which causes joy or happiness.
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