Re: The relation with gnomefiles.org

[Gergely Nagy <greg gnome hu>]

Hi,

On Fri, 2006-07-14 at 00:34 -0700, Eugenia Loli-Queru wrote:
> > Can you please provide thoughts for an optimal collaboration with a 
> > gnomefiles.org?

We are currently in the progress of rethinking pretty much everything
about Gnome's web presence, trying to keep the good parts and improving
on others. We have a time line [1] for revamping the main www.gnome.org
site, with a release set for October.

At this point, I suggest a "high-level" cooperation of the two sites.
Lets start by aligning policies and appearance. We can go for tighter
integration after our first relaunch.

> I would like to see either the XML feed used somewhere in the gnome.org site 
> so new Gnome users find out easily that there IS an active source that 
> provides GTK-dependant software. Now, if it would be possible to also get a 
> bookmark in Epiphany or an entry in a future Gnome RSS client, even better, 
> but it's not really a requirement.

We have not yet decided on a CMS, so we cannot really say how we can
integrate. Cross feeding would be nice, so we'll consider this as a
requirement.

I like the idea of shipping links in apps, we should make some policy
for this for all the gnome websites. I suggest to do this after our
October release, once we start to concentrate beyond www.gnome.org.

> In turn, I have a few ideas to make things more smooth for the new Gnome 
> users visiting the site:
> 1. I think I can remove the ad banners completely, I think the owner of the 
> server won't have much of a problem with it as long as the page views don't 
> skyrocket. Gnomefiles currently averages on about 25,000 pages daily (which 
> is 1/10 of what osnews.com on the same server does, so I guess the owner 
> might not even notice ;-).

This is probably necessary to "blend in" with the other gnome sites. We
could look at your CMS to make it more proxy friendly to reduce traffic
volume (you might even be able to keep stats from HTTP HEAD requests,
we'll see). XML feeds on other sites might reduce traffic even more.

> 2. Make it more clear in the page if an app is proprietary so users can 
> choose to avoid it (that was RMS' request last year).

I guess first we have to come up with some policy about what is
free/commercial/proprietary, as murrayc pointed out in his replies, this
is a non-trivial issue. Then, gnomefiles.org can display / filter on
these parameters.

> 3. I have already changed the Gnomefiles icons to Tango icons. I did that 
> yesterday with the help of the Tango team.

Looks nice. We are considering Tango [2], but have not decided on it
yet. 

> A few things that _I can not_ do:
> 1. Change the code to XHTML/CSS. The current HTML code is there for 
> compatibility reasons with older browsers and mobile ones (we have good 
> support for all smartphones and PDAs via cHTML and for plain cellphones via 
> WAP/WML). The site won't pass validation, but that's on purpose so it 
> renders better with older, buggy, browsers. It was a design decision (you 
> won't believe how many people browse the site with Dillo and Lynx!).

I personally have some experience with accessible CMS and markup (wrote
my BSc thesis about it), so I offer my help with that. Though I'm
currently working on my MSc thesis...

> 2. Open source the PHP code. I would love to do that (in fact an early 
> version of the CMS was open), but the admin of the server is against this 
> idea now because my code might... *cough*... not be very secure.

Wow, great! Though let's not rush things, our resources are limited.
Let's agree on common policies and do "high-level" integration first.

> 3. Remove non-gnome, non-OSS apps. Gnomefiles is a software repository for 
> all Gtk-dependant software, open or closed, black or white, thin or fat, 
> short or tall.

I think even non-(gnome|gtk) can be relevant for a Gnome user, so I'm
for filtering not exclusion. With common desktop standards
(freedesktop.org) and common look-and-feel other apps will be more and
more relevant. I'm not saying we should do a QT app repository, but
let's leave the chance to include some if it makes sense for our users.

> > We could start the approach in the current release, adding them to the
> > "Single gateway to all the news sources provided by GNOME subsites",
> > making clear they are not a GNOME subsite, picking their feed as well.

Excellent. I think with common policies, a common look and some
cross-feeding our sites can be nicely integrated, while keeping enough
independence.

> Sounds good. I would love to get this up and running.

I think all of us would ;)


Greg

[1] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/DevelopmentTimeline
[2] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeWeb/WebPolicies