Gnome.org needs major improvement

[Martin Alderson <mail martinalderson co uk>]

I've just spent some time looking at Gnome.org and how it could be 
improved.

It is a pretty sad affair as of now, with no focus on any elements of 
the site and really bad design and usability practices on the site. I 
wish I had time to write a full essay about this but sadly, I don't, so 
a quick list and some ideas for improvement will have to do for now.

The main problem is focus and audience. Currently, the site has very, 
very little focus on anything and instead has 5 things, each very 
unrelated.

First, Audience - who is it? I don't know. It doesn't say on here and 
has a big bold underlined 'user' link which I'd expect to take me to 
the users page with nice, easy to understand stuff on it. But alas, I 
get sent to the home-page again? What is going on here - as a user I'd 
expect that clicking the big 'user' link would take me a different page 
than the current one. I then have to assume that the current home-page 
is designed for users and therefore this is a end user page. I hope 
this is a mistake.

Second, these stupid banner style 'ads' that are way too big. What on 
earth is GUDEC? (I know, but most of your end users will not!) "See you 
next year", again, what is this meant to mean? Does this mean GNOME is 
over until next year? I'm really getting confused now.

We then come to another problem that is badly thought through - GNOME 
is not a descriptive name to those who don't know already what it is. 
The 'what is GNOME' box is therefore vitally important. It's good that 
it's there at all but, the content is not up to scratch at all. 'GNOME 
is a Unix and Linux desktop suite and development platform'. What is 
the point of this? The vast proportion of people who knows what Unix 
and Linux will already know what GNOME is. Therefore, this needs to be 
much better phrased. Something like 'Gnome is a free, open and stable 
desktop suite'. Also, the next bit makes no sense - 'here'.. what does 
this mean? The homepage, or the 'what is GNOME' box? Again, very 
confusing and badly worded.

Below this there is the GNOME news - THIS NEEDS SEPARATED OFF!, and 
preferably split into a different page with just links of headlines. 
Currently this is way too in-depth for the site. The GNOME Foundation 
needs also put somewhere else, not on the homepage. Homepage's are 
designed to welcome new users and usher them to the right place on the 
site, or maybe grab someone's attention. Currently, Gnome.org does none 
of this. Again, the foundation needs placed somewhere else because if I 
am a new user I am not going to donate straight away at seeing the 
home-page. I may do later, but certainly not now.

The top level links are also disastrously bad. They need split into two 
categories, 'user' and 'developer' and then provide links to each of 
them. User could be things like 'About GNOME', 'Download', 'Features' 
etc and Developer things like 'Report a bug', 'CVS' and 'Help 
contribute'.

The font is also a size too big for the homepage. Not a big issue but 
severely stops you putting more on the home-page.

Another problem is how you edit the homepage, which I think is way too 
hard. Designers are not good at programmer style CVS commands, and 
programmers are not good at design. Simple as that, in general, please 
don't make designers use CVS. They won't like it at all. A few 
designers will learn to live with it and use it, but think of the 
talent you may of lost if you did have a good system - not sure what 
that is exactly, but it's something that doesn't require setting 
environment variables.

So to conclude, 3 things that need implemented in the new site. Focus - 
target one issue - say GNOME 2.6. Put a nice screenshot with a 'top 3' 
new features. Provide information with plenty of easy to read and 
understand lists of features and ideas on how to use the software. Then 
put sections below that for news and other issues.
Audience. Have developer hidden away better. Get rid of the jargon that 
is obviously developer only.

The third thing is get a better design process going so people can 
contribute easier. If people had to fill out 25 pages of IRS forms to 
donate charity, people would not donate. This is what you are doing at 
the moment using CVS for changes. Provide a simple .zip file which has 
all the pages in and then work out a way for people to send their new 
pages back. This would make it insanely easier, and lead to homepage 
that is not such a bad representation of a great piece of software.

Martin.