Task:Improving maemo.org/proposal

Contents

[edit] Improving maemo.org

[edit] Goals

We will:

  • Reorganise existing content to allow most common use-cases to be fulfilled easily
  • Create new content where appropriate to fulfill use-cases
  • Remove or move information which does not contribute to the most common use-cases
  • Make the site visually attractive and fresh, to match the maemo.org visuals
  • Make different maemo.org sites visually consistent
  • Ensure the site works well on the tablets

[edit] Non-goals

We will not:

  • Re-write all content
  • Move away from Midgard
  • Load the site with heavy content such as flash (see tablet goal).

[edit] Use cases

The following are the core use-cases to be addressed by the website rework:

  1. A new tablet owner wants to install some software on his tablet. He arrives at http://maemo.org/downloads after a web search for "Nokia tablet software download", and navigating through the #6 link. (NOTE: search for "Nokia N810 software download", the download page on maemo.org is not on the first 10 pages).
  2. An interested application developer comes to maemo.org to learn how to write a new application for the tablet.
  3. An existing application developer comes to maemo.org looking for information on modifying his application for Maemo.
  4. A Maemo Community member is looking for the latest news from around the world of Maemo
  5. An interested user wants to know how he can help make Maemo better
  6. A community member wants to know what the future plans for Maemo are, and wants to suggest features and priorities
  7. A tablet user has a problem which they would like to resolve.
  8. A site maintainer or community member wants to create a new news item, or promote new important content so that it gets more attention.

[edit] Current maemo.org website

For reference.

Content:

  • Introduction
  • Dowloads
  • Community
  • Development
  • News

Sub-menu:

    • Documentation -> Development/Documentation
    • Tutorials -> Development/Documentation/Tutorials
    • Roadmap -> Development/Roadmap
    • Lists -> Community/mailing-lists.html
    • Bugzilla -> http://maemo.org/bugzilla
    • Wiki -> http://wiki.maemo.org
    • IRC -> Community/IRC
    • SDK -> Development/SDKs
    • Repositories -> community/wiki/applicationrepositories

[edit] Disparate websites

Plus: External articles, reviews, blogs, press, tutorials, FAQs, wikis, ...

[edit] Proposed steps for revamp

1. Pages we need to revise substantially:

We don't need to substantially revise the Intro, News or Downloads pages.

The front page will primarily be portal pages to help get people where they want to go, but also to let people get a flavour of the Maemo community.

The community page will show the Maemo community in all its glory - covering communication, people, projects, what's new, what's cool, what we're up to. The page will be almost entirely dynamic and will reflect the current state of Maemo.

The Development page should respond to four different needs - getting software development kits and images for development, getting general introductions, tutorials, overviews of the platform and other general information, exposing searchable reference documents for the Maemo platform APIs, and finally (but very importantly, giving a visitor a map of the developer-focused communication forums that exist in Maemo, including itT, mailing lists, IRC and the wiki.

2. Theme:

We need a refreshed look & theme corresponding to maemo.org visual identity change.

Proposal: Open proposal for community generated mock-ups, and one or two Nokia sponsored mock-ups from INdT.

INdT have started work on at least one proposal, which will be forthcoming very soon, and which will be influenced by the content of the maemo.org front page.

3. Content Organisation

There are two aspects: content and its organisation.

  • Content: Need to evaluate existing content for its usefulness for common use-cases. Need to ensure it is obvious when content is out-dated/deprecated.
    • Delete old wiki content completely - it is polluting Google juice, and confusing users who see it as new information
    • News page should include links to outside articles, blogs, official announcements, high-ranked ITT threads, etc. It should be a window on the highest-ranked Maemo time-sensitive content
  • Sub-sites:
    • Midgard vs Wiki vs gtkdoc vs ...
    • Ask gronmayer to take site off-line, in favour of a really useful extras (we're getting there)
  • Organisation: Existing content should be presented and linked to in a way that makes popular tasks easy, and unpopular tasks available through linking, and also through search (site search and web search).
    • We will reorganise information on tutorials, SDKs, and platform APIs so that the site user will encounter the most up-to-date information by default, and must dig a bit deeper to get out-of-date legacy information
    • Link to HTML reference documentation in favour of PDF
    • Promote useful wiki pages to http://maemo.org/documentation

We need to look at 3 things:

  • Clean page layout for all portal pages - pages must bring you easily to the content you're interested in, if you are in the most common use-cases
  • Efficient search on website
  • Web search indexing of Maemo content
  • Ensure all outdated content is removed from the primary navigation paths of users interested in common use-cases.

[edit] Proposal

  • Proposals for information to be given place of honour on the maemo.org front page, and on each of the sub-portals, in particular documentation, news, community (see proposal by timsamoff at Task:Improving maemo.org/Community) but also review intro in light of redesign.
  • Proposal for hierarchy which makes most useful information easily available

Proposals due for October 1st.

Suggested items for proposals:

  • Re-organise documentation by release rather than by purpose:
    • OS2008/tutorials, OS2008/SDK reference, etc...
    • Currently, OS2008, OS2007, ... docs are all mixed together in each category
    • Makes it easier to archive outdated information when they're done this way

I'm unsure what to do with outside content. The ideal would be to have a kind of call-back system, where we link to it from the most appropriate place in maemo.org, but this isn't a maintainable solution right now.

3. Marrying content and style

  • Ruthlessly reduce the number of words on portal pages
  • Need graphics and navigation structure which are ergonomic and attractive
  • Suggest that web designers behind the themes must be involved at this stage. A first draft of the new portal pages can be part of the new theme proposals (thus the deadline for themes being later than content organisations.


Themes to be evaluated by a group of community members named by the council, winner to be chosen from mock-ups November 1st.

Deadline for accepting both theme and content re-organisation: November 1st.



Once we have a theme, and an organisation of the existing content which makes sense, we must execute, with the participation of the web design & graphics team and copy editors, to ensure that the portal sites fulfill their goal, while remaining manageable over time.

The website re-work should be completed by December 1st.

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