Re: Fixing pango.org

[Tom von Schwerdtner <tomvons gmail com>]

On 8/25/05, Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> wrote:
> I've set up MoinMoin-1.3.5 on the GNOME web server and done some
> initial configuration:
> 
>  http://wiki.pango.org/
> 
> Right now I'm keeping the wiki faith and allowing any logged in user
> to edit it, so if people want to start migrating content from
> www.pango.org, have at it!
> 
> When it is better than www.pango.org, I'll repoint that.
> 
> Eventually, I think we'll want to #acl protect at least the front
> page; there are some reasonably clever wiki-spam-bots out there.
> 
> On Thu, 2005-08-18 at 03:10 -0400, Tom von Schwerdtner wrote:
> 
> > > One option would be something like the Ubuntu wiki:
> > >     https://wiki.ubuntu.com/
> > >
> > > This is basically the moin-1.3 "modern" theme with the tabs removed.  So
> > > the only wiki related stuff is:
> > >
> > >     * the search and login controls in the top right corner
> > >     * a single strip below the header with the various wiki links.
> > >     * one line in the footer giving the last modified date.
> >
> > IMO the Ubuntu wiki still looks a lot like a wiki, but it is a lot
> > less cluttered than some others.
> >
> > I started playing around with a moin 1.3 theme (titled 'mango') when I
> > saw Owens mail (though most of the time was spent trying to figure out
> > how to use/setup/theme moin):
> >
> > At the moment I have the general look of the site straightend out in
> > my head and I'm working on removing anything that screams "I'm a
> > wiki!" (by either actually removing it or just hiding it a little).
> >
> > Here is a random screenshot of a random page to give you an idea of the style:
> >
> > http://tvon.etria.com/images/mango.png/image_view_fullscreen
> 
> Hmmm. Interesting. I like the moving of the site navigation to the
> side; but the left sidebar is a little big and cluttered.
> 
> Going from the "Clean" theme - what is on wiki.pango.org now, I think
> the changes I'd like to see are:
> 
>  - Move site navigation (what is currently 4 tabs at the top) to
>    the side - probably to the left.
>  - Remove the top Wiki actions line ([Show Changes, Get Info, Subscribe]
>  - When the user isn't logged in, remove the bottom Wiki actions line
>    as well.
>  - Remove the MoinMoin/Python/HTML stuff at the bottom; sure, great
>    technology, but irrelevant to a visitor.
>    (I'm happy to have http://pango.org/Colophon/...)
>  - Get rid of the little pictures by HTML links (should be a user pref
>    so we could swap the default, but the user pref doesn't seem to
>    work for me)

Some of that was done the next day, an updated screenshot is here:
http://tvon.etria.com/images/mango-2.png/image_view_fullscreen
it is still in a half-done state in terms of wiki cleanup though. 
Using this as a reference point I'd say that:

- The 'User' menu should be somewhere else
- The main navigation should be the main navigation and not wiki-related links.
- The little images in the bottom right should go but the same
functionality should be provided through text links somewhere
- the edit link should be a little easier to find
- The traditional FrontPage should probably be changed to Introduction
(not sure how to do that)
...

I do agree with your next mail (that it should "remind people of a
well designed book"), and what I've done so far does not move in that
direction at all.

I'm going to toy with something from scratch a bit over the next week
(as time permits) and see if anything comes out of it, otherwise maybe
Gora has some design talent to spare :)

Gora, if you don't want to mess with Moin (or python), I could try
coming up with a vanilla theme better suited for CSS-ificiation than
the default (eg, more logical structure, more classes/id's, etc...).

Regards,
Tom