Re: CivicSpace site to test

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Mon, 2005-12-26 at 12:51 +0100, Quim Gil wrote:
> While we discuss the appropriate platform for wgo, here it is a place to
> test navigation, layout, etc:
> 
> http://gnomedotorg.ourproject.org/
> 
> This site is based on CivicSpace, a popular Drupal flavour focused on
> communities. Its purpose is to serve the wgo revamp discussion and
> planning as a testing platform. If you want to play with it register and
> request permissions.

A few comments, but first:

Quim, you are kicking some serious ass with the web stuff.
Don't let anybody tell you differently.  I'd love to be
more involved with these efforts, but I have too many other
Gnome responsibilities already.

First, I love having a unified global header bar with the
same structure on every page of every one of our sites.
Every single subsite and subpage should be roughly filed
under one of those categories.  The category of the page
you're visiting should be clearly marked (but not with
bold text please), but should still be a link to a "top"
page for that category.  See the wolfram.com and apple.com
websites for good use of the global header.

A second-level header could be employed when appropriate.
For instance, the documentation, usability, and translation
teams' sites could be second-level headings under something.
Web-based forums (like those currently on gnomesupport.org)
would be a second-level heading under Support.

Live.gnome.org seems to me to be where we put pages to be
abused and never found.  I know there's a strong drive to
push all the developer content onto live, but I really
think that's a mistake.  Developer content should live
within the site hierarchy like everything else.  With a
suitably good CMS, we'll still have the ability to edit
easily, and we won't have to break global navigation.

I don't know why, but that gradient-happy header you've
got rubs me in a very non-Gnome way.  Get Andreas to
make something really pretty.  Andreas rules.

Dual side-bars are evil.  On purely portal-like pages,
they may be a good idea, but don't force all pages to
have sidebars on both sides.  Sidebars that are common
to most pages and sites should be on the right.

I don't think it's necessary to have a full navigation
tree on every site.  It may force pages into a strict
hierarchy that might not otherwise be natural.  And it
can get very deep, very quickly.  Small subsections
(such as the documentation project's section) may want
to provide a navigation sidebar of all their content,
without it all being buried to the right because it's
four levels deep already.

Is a printer-friendly link really necessary?  Couldn't
we just use @media directives in our CSS to hide stuff
for print-outs?  I've done that for headers and footers
in Yelp, and it works perfectly.

Probably some other stuff that I can't think of right
now.  Keep up the great work.

--
Shaun