[Mageia-webteam] Mageia 2 Web site changes option

[Romain d'Alverny]

Hi there, (please followup the discussion in mageia-marketing, not in
-artwork or -webteam)

here's a peak at one possible option for Mageia 2 release Web site
update (not full at once, but for most important pages, and driving
other pages into that direction too).

The rationale behind this update is articulated as such:

 A) the home page (mageia.org/) is targetted at one-time/first
time/casual visitors, with a single, main call to action: download
Mageia. There are others actions, such as: contribute, get older
version(s), learn more about the product, and the community and the
project. But there is no other navigation. It's really a poster-like
page, direct to a main action, with the following main channel for
visitors:

 - home => action 1: get the software
 - download => action 1: select your download
 - while-downloading => actions: how to use, how to contribute, learn
more about Mageia, what feedback you could provide

Pushing this page calls for updating the Downloads index page design
as well as the post-download page.


 B) a dedicated, community home page is for people coming back again
and again (contributors, activ users) with three main incoming
sources:
   - start.mageia.org (loaded by Mageia browsers)
   - a mageia.org/coop or another keyword.
   - home page lower priority action (see bottom nav links "Community")

Here go: news, calendar, teams, docs, and links to the various
resources/tools on mageia.org in an organized way.


 C) for past-home page pages, a new top navigation bar, organizing
more of the site and making it more accessible from everywhere;
especially, for easier embedding/deployment/update of it, the navbar
will be available in different fashion: a dynamic Web service will
produce the needed HTML/JS for it, and a JS snippet will allow to
dynamically insert it into all sites (so there's little integration
work). The top navigation bar exact content is still up to debate, but
the very top categories should not exceed 5/6 entries at most.

A, B and C are not strongly attached to each other, however they are
part of the same proposal. There's a missing download page (and
animation) from A page, but that's a start to go.

A (home page) is http://i.imgur.com/7Vqq6.png . It's a bold move for
us. It's heavily inspired from a Firefox page which is a nice example
of a product landing page. From a charter point of view, it reuses the
white/blue gradient from our original logo and site elements. It may
benefit from a very light, thin pattern in the blue background, or not
(not sure). Text copy may need tweaks.

B (community page) is ... still pending, I'm not satisfied with what I
have so far. We have http://www.mageia.org/contribute/ but I'm not
sure to change this one right now. Hope to have something to roll out
for review next week.

C (global nav) is ... pending too. I will roll it out for testing
later this week. What it needs is to refine its structure; currently
planned is:

 * Mageia (links to a special map page of the site)
 * About Us: mageia project info/history & mageia.org organization
info, what is under http://mageia.org/en/about/ already
 * Downloads:
   - Mageia 1 and 2 downloads and features pages,
   - updates downloads info and mirrors
   - mirrors
   - specific software (we used to host a specific mgaonline package for)
 * Community:
   - news (blogs, planets, other?), calendar
   - introduction to contributing
   - forums, mailing-lists, IRC
   - wiki, bugzilla, other doc resources
   - contributors corners
 * Support: current http://www.mageia.org/en/support/ page redispatched:
   - users support: community and commercial vendors
   - (security) updates info
   - product lifecycle
   - hardware stuff
 * Contribute: necessary? as a short link to the contributors guide
 * About You: not available for now, maybe moved somewhere else, but
supported by identity and other mageia.org services, would act as a
portal for every single user, to monitor her own activity/data.
 * Search (over mageia.org domain)

This new nav answer three concerns:
 - /platform: allow an easier, consistent deployment of the top nav
updates through all mageia.org; using here a javascript snippet;
 - /layout: embed the Mageia logo in the navigation bar, so that it
too brands the page to the project;
 - /content: better structure the mageia.org domain into main activities/zones.

I know that some may worry that some links currently in the top nav
bar won't be available/visible anymore in all mageia.org as a first
level item. It's a matter of context and of the very details of the
implementation and the navigation channels.

I don't have a B plan about that at this time, but it's not mandatory
to change all things either. So it either works, or it doesn't.


Note that (for a future/long term question), separating what is about
the product (Features, Downloads, Support, News) from what is about
the project/community (About Us, Community, part of Support,
Contribute) would help a lot (different life cycles for the sites),
but it needs to have a separate name for each too.