Re: wgo pages

[Dave Neary <dneary gnome org>]

Hi,

We recently went through this process with Maemo, and since our 
communities have a similar profile, our thinking & analysis might also 
be useful here...

Lots of information under http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Improving_maemo.org

The key point was to address the site in terms of the most common 
use-cases - why do people go to maemo.org? How do they get there?

* Tablet users - looking for new software
* Application developer - wants to know how to write or port an existing 
application to the platform
* Community member (someone already familiar with GNOME) looking for 
news (both technical and community).
* Potential contributor - an interested user wants to help out or get 
more involved in the project
* Looking for help - someone has a problem they want to fix, they want 
to get access to some kind of support forum, see if anyone else has had 
& solved their problem, and if not report their problem to the project 
or ask a question

To address these use-cases, maemo.org contains:
* Downloads & featured software
* Links to "Get help" and "Get involved"
* Site top level menu is grouped by user profile, not technology (gone 
are "Documentation", "Wiki", "Forums", we have "Development", 
"Community", "Talk" (which is actually just another name for forums, but 
anyway...)

Each of these pages groups content by theme - the development page links 
to official documentation, mailing lists, relevant wiki content, 
bugzilla, and "Getting started" guides, the community page contains 
links to forums, mailing lists, community guides, how to get involved, ...


Paul Cutler wrote:
>       /Get Started
>       /Get Involved
>       /About

I like the basic idea - but I would like to see more attention given to 
searchable user forums, bringing people to the development portal to get 
them started building software, and where to get extra software for your 
shiny new GNOME desktop. Luckily, we have user forums, mailing lists, a 
software site and a bug database already, so this is simply (!) a case 
of appropriately linking to existing resources.

Cheers,
Dave.

--
Dave Neary
GNOME Foundation member
dneary gnome org