Re: [GMG-Devel] Clarifying site's organisation

[Jef van Schendel]

Hi,

I'm not the one to talk to regarding the docs/wiki separation, so I
will skip that part of your mail. But I have been working on a
redesign for the MediaGoblin homepage so I will comment on that.

For reference, this is the latest mockup:
http://schendje.fedorapeople.org/goblin/homepage/wireframe3.png
And this is a version with notes:
http://schendje.fedorapeople.org/goblin/homepage/layout_explained.png


2013/1/25 Tumulte Dogma <address@hidden>:
> - The wiki is not the place to dispatch users, the main page is.

You used the word "dispatch" a few times, but I am unsure as to what
you mean by it. Are you talking about directing visitors to the
appropriate locations?


> - Any information on where to contribute, fill a bug, find info, help...
> should be on the main page.

I agree. Looking at these one by one:

 - Contributing. As you can see I've put the "Get involved" button in
the "Our community" section, as well as links to IRC, the mailing list
and other ways to contact the developers.

 - Fill a bug. The mockup contains a link to the bug tracker, so this
is also included, but it might be good to have a link in the actual
MediaGoblin software as well.

 - Find info. The homepage itself should contain enough information
about MediaGoblin, the software, as well the MediaGoblin project and
community. I believe my mockup satisfied this as well, though it is
(intentionally) heavy on the software-side.

 - Help. Depends on what you mean by help, but if it is help as in
"how do I get this thing to work", this is (or should) all be included
in the documentation. The homepage has the "Use MediaGoblin" call to
action, which links to the docs. However, it might be good to add a
"documentation" link separately.


> Additionally, since I want to put so much in the main page, I've made a
> quick and dirty sketch of a One Page App design for mediagoblin.org.

Thanks for taking the trouble to include a mockup! That's really helpful.

However, I believe it is starting to contain too much info. For
instance, having a spot in the layout for "Contributing" is great, but
we don't have to describe all the ways to contribute right away.
Instead, we can show that it's an option for the people who are
interested, after which they can choose to visit a page with more
info.

Likewise, the "Learn" section has useful sections, such as how to
install and how to configure MediaGoblin. But I think displaying such
a large amount of information right away is counterproductive and we
should simply link to the docs instead. Keep in mind that adding more
content doesn't just cost more pixels, but also requires curation and
maintainance. A wiki page is much easier to update than the project
homepage. ("How to code for it", by the way, should be placed under
"Contribute").


In conclusion, both mockups share a lot of ideas, that's interesting.
There are *a lot* of aspects to the MediaGoblin project so the trick
is include everything that's important in an orderly and clear
fashion, which is why I think we need to keep things simple.

I think my mockup could be improved by adding some of your ideas, namely:

 - Adding a more visible link to the documentation.
 - Finding a place for the "donate" button, because I had not included it yet.

Jef