GNOME News - Progress and Plans

[Allan Day <allanpday gmail com>]

Hi all,

A potential GNOME News redesign [1] has been brought up on this list a
few times in the past. We really need a better channel for
distributing and generating news about GNOME, something that can
handle original content as well as content that is syndicated.

Christy Eller has recently stepped up to the plate to create a better
GNOME news platform for us, and she has made some good progress.

Christy has been working on a new Wordpress-based web site. The idea
is that it will eventually be hosted at news.gnome.org. The new site
is intended to do several things:

1. Aggregate news feeds just like the current news site does
2. Carry a stream of original news posts about GNOME (ie. be a news blog)
3. Provide an easy way for new contributors to get involved in writing
GNOME news
4. Be a vibrant and engaging place

The new site will host a stream of news posts that can be subscribed
to (initially through rss/atom), as well as facilities for
contributing and generating content. Christy already has a test site
[2] that she is working on.

A key aim for the new site is to consolidate and maximise the return
we get on our existing news efforts. We are already creating a regular
stream of stories on gnome.org [3], but we get little back from that
effort in the way of new contributors or subscribers to GNOME news.

With the new site, we can generate our news at a single location and
then feed it to other sites. The news section on the gnome.org
homepage can come direct from news.gnome.org, for instance.

However, there are some outstanding questions that still need answering:

* Should we have a comments system on the new site?
* Where should official announcements, such as press releases, be
made? Do they have to be hosted on gnome.org in order to look
official, or could they go on news.gnome.org, for example?
* What does this mean for the role of GNOME Journal, if anything?

Please let us know what your thoughts are on these plans. It would
also be helpful to hear ideas for these outstanding questions.

Allan

[1] https://live.gnome.org/GnomeMarketing/NewsRedesign
[2] http://news-test.gnome.org/
[3] http://www.gnome.org/news/
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