Taking a step back for a moment......

[Ryan Muldoon <rpmuldoon students wisc edu>]

I am a little worried that we are getting a little ahead of
ourselves......I'm going to address a few things point by point, and
interject a few ideas on what may be a good way to implement the
website.  Feel free to disagree as you see fit. ;-)



1. Navigation
we don't need to plan out elaborate schemas for navigation.  Just a
simple one that works.  I think that we have basically all agreed that
we should organize navigation by task.  This makes sense, as this is how
people want to use websites.  I agree with Shawn Admunsun that we want
to make the names short and easily scannable.  I also think that it
should be text-based.  If we want to get fancy, we can do a javascript
tree expansion type thing so someone can (if they have a browser that
supports it) get to the page they want right away.  This wouldn't stop
normal users from getting there in a normal fashion though.

2. Software Map
I think that it would be very nice to have a software map that listed
gtk apps, gnome apps, and components.  It should be broken down by
category of software, and each type of app (gtk, gnome, component)
should be clearly labelled as such (with an icon perhaps).  There should
be an option to filter by type of app as well, so if someone just wants
to see components, they can select "show only components" or something
similar.

3. Maintenence
We need to remember that everything that we add to the site, we are
going to have to maintain.  That means that multiple news sections, or
anything that requires fresh content will have to be "owned" by someone
to keep up maintenence.  I've seen a lot of projects fall by the wayside
for this very reason.

4. Stress Involvement
We should try and gear the site towards pushing the GNOME platform.  To
do that well, we need to offer ways for people to get involved.  I
suggest that we prominently feature a "Projects of the week"
section.  Basically, it would be a place for new people to get involved,
by doing a fairly straightforward task.  There could be a listing of
needed projects broken down by different areas: translation,
documentation, website, etc.  I am sure that each project under the
GNOME umbrella has a decent sized list of simple things that the core
members just don't have time for.  We could post a list, with
descriptions and contact info for people to browse.  When someone
completes a task, we post it on a "new developer of the week" section or
something similar.  Mozilla does this with their "Friends of the tree" -
this seems like a good community-building technique.

Hopefully this email will help to spark some discussion in these four
areas.  Once we have these things ironed out, we will probably be in a
pretty good position to start more of the actual implementation
planning.


    --Ryan