Dear Wiki user, You have subscribed to a wiki page or wiki category on "Couchdb Wiki" for change notification. The "Website_Design" page has been changed by MilesFidelman: http://wiki.apache.org/couchdb/Website_Design?action=diff&rev1=10&rev2=11 + <> <> - <> - <> = Intro = - Read the [[http://s.apache.org/NsT|mailing list thread]] that spawned this page. = Guidelines = - We do not vote for changes to the website design. This leads to a design by committee situation. And design by committee situations always produce bad designs. A good design is usually the result of a unified vision. That means it is usually driven by a single individual. As such, comments and suggestions should be given to that individual, and they can use it to inform their vision. At the moment, we do not have a designer with that vision for our website. @@ -65, +62 @@ * We should have links to Twitter and Facebook accounts. * The website needs a clear demographic target. - * ''Commentary: Are we targeting new users, new contributors, or existing contributors? Potential new users are our biggest slice, and carry the most potential, so we should focus on those. Getting contributors is important too, but maybe we over do it? Existing contributors probably don't need the website at all, and managed perfectly fine with the old one. Sorting out the answer to this question will help the solutions to other comments seem obvious.'' - + * ''We need to support the entire community - ranging from evaluators who have not yet decided to use CouchDB, to new users, experienced users, sys admins, to developers. The front page is primarily an entry point - it should provide navigation and links to pages tailored to more specific audiences. In particular: '' + * ''For evaluators (and I do a lot of software evaluation), the questions are: - what is this thing - what are the details (functionality, architecture, implementation) - is the project "alive" (not in terms of a pretty site, but in terms of an active community of users and developers) - which implies things that change (blog, news, events, mailing lists with lots of activity, bug tracker that shows things getting fixed, etc) - who's using it - details of what's involved in using it (demo, install instructions, documentation, some slideshows) - a sense of the community (blog, archives, forums, links to related sites)'' - * ''For evaluators (and I do a lot of software evaluation), the questions are: - what is this thing - what are the details (functionality, architecture, implementation) - is the project "alive" (not in terms of a pretty site, but in terms of an active community of users and developers) - which implies things that change (blog, news, events, mailing lists with lots of activity, bug tracker that shows things getting fixed, etc) - who's using it - details of what's involved in using it (demo, install instructions, documentation, some slideshows) - a sense of the community (blog, archives, forums, links to related sites)'' + * ''For new users, what counts are documentation, tutorials, FAQs, an active and friendly support community, etc.'' - * ''For new users, what counts are documentation, tutorials, FAQs, an active and friendly support community, etc.'' + * ''For experienced users, updates, detailed documentation, code libraries (when users are developing stuff), support for odd problems, etc.'' - * ''For experienced users, updates, detailed documentation, code libraries (when users are developing stuff), support for odd problems, etc.'' - - * ''For contributors it becomes a matter of technical documentation, community, Git, JIRA, lists, and community, etc'' + * ''For contributors it becomes a matter of technical documentation, community, Git, JIRA, lists, and community, etc'' * There should be an additional section that gives new users a tutorial, or getting started guide * There should be an interactive tutorial, like the one MongoDB has * We should link to the Markmail interface for the mailing lists. + * ''Against: We already link to the official ASF interface, and that should be enough for this site. The Markmail links can be put on the wiki.'' + * ''For: search is important, the ASF interface doesn't provide it.'' - * ''Against: We already link to the official ASF interface, and that should be enough for this site. The Markmail links can be put on the wiki.'' + * ''Web sites are, by and large, NOT like print ads - they generally are not'' ''the first point of contact that someone has with a "product." Rather they<
>are "collateral" - akin to brochures, spec. sheets, case studies, and the<
>like. Someone is likely to go to the CouchDB web site AFTER<
>hearing/reading about CouchDB somewhere else, and goes to<
>couchdb.apache.org (or more likely couchdb.org) looking for details -<
>specs, white papers, slide shows, a list of who's using CouchDB, a live<
>demo, and signs that the project is alive, widely used, and supported by a<
>strong community of maintainers and developers, (and perhaps a commercial<
>ecosystem that can provide hosting, development, and other forms of<
>support).''