Re: Site, apps and CMS (Was: Re: StepTalk blog)

[Rob Burns]

On 2005-08-12 02:56:53 +0700 Stefan Urbanek <stefan@agentfarms.net> 
wrote:

> I am against war, so I am not going to comment this either. I will say
> only that I have the same impression: the community is closed. Whether
> it is good or bad depends on your point of view. I think it is not 
> very
> good.
>
> Idea can be attractor only for wise. There are not so many we would
> consider wise at this time, but there are many that would learn. What 
> we
> can do is to observe what successful players are doing for attracting
> people and copy them. We have to offer what others want, not what we
> want them to want. Once we have them, then we can teach them 'the 
> idea'
> behind GNUstep ... if they would not get it first...
>
> Regards,
>
> Stefan Urbanek

My comments about *.gnustep.org and trying to avoid the work of 
restructureing www.gnustep.org were aimed at gaining more contributors 
(MJ Ray's concern) and making the gnustep site have a more active, one 
stop shop for all your gnustep needs sort of appearance, a la ubuntu 
(Stefan's concern). The additional contributors that would be served 
by apps.gnustep.org and planet.gnustep.org are the app developers. 
Some of whom are already contributing by writing blogs, and have put 
some information in the app database in the past. But these resources 
aren't centralized at the gnustep.org site. I think those sub-sites, 
and a unified look, by at least using the same header, with links to 
all sub-sites, as mentioned above would help out with this.

The gnustep.org site itself isn't very accessable to Joe random web 
surfer, as its mostly concerned with presenting GNUstep as a 
development framework, not something for the end user. While new 
screenshots would be nice, I think having those sub-sites, and links 
to them from gnustep.org (in the header, as mentioned?), would allow 
the main site to maintain its narrow focus more comfortably. I thought 
there was some consensus on the list in the past that GNUstep was a 
development environment, and that more end user oriented things like 
desktop environments and apps should be left to other parties: Etoile, 
SuaveOS, Backbone, app developer community, etc.

As, to the forum/mailing list gateway. At first I thought links to 
specific lists within the gmane site could help. But, I'm not sure if 
you can post form gmane. I think some variety of mailing list/web 
gateway, wether links to specific lists int an existing one, or 
something running on the gnustep site would be helpful too.

To sum up ...

1) gain more contributers to the gnustep.org web presence
2) gnustep gets a more active, accessable appearance
3) doesn't require lots of volunteer time to resturcture the existing 
site (which could use some better screenshots)


Rob