[maemo-community] maemo.org redesign

[From: Dave Neary]

Hi,

Quim Gil wrote:
> ext Andrew Flegg wrote:
>> The trouble is, if you just arrive at maemo.org semi-randomly[1],
>> being presented with a mass of news,
> 
> Present only 1 highlighted news + 2 additional headers to get a grasp of
> what is going on.

Agreed.

>> a "pearl" (there's no context for what that really is)
> 
> And why "pearl" matters when the app presented to you is something
> attractive and cool.

This is a labelling issue, call it "Featured download" and all is well.

>> a mass of downloads etc. is just overwhelming.
> 
> Agreed, no mass. I would show 2 or 3 downloads only on the top of the
> page. If the downloads are good, the screenshots are sexy and the
> descriptions are interesting 49% of the homepage mission is accomplished
> already.

You probably want "Featured", "most popular", "best rated" and the last
2 or 3 recent additions. Of course, "best rated" and "most popular"
won't change every day (and may even be the same application!).

>> If nothing else, can we have consensus between the various people
>> discussing this that the maemo.org *frontpage* shouldn't try to be a
>> daily/weekly/regularly-visited homepage for Maemo-related content for
>> existing community members?
> 
> Agreed, this would be the signed-in homepage. However, a good content
> snapshot that changes over time is still better (even for those
> semi-random users) than rather static welcoming messages.

I agree that the content needs to change over time. I'm not sure how far
down the road of providing something like "iGoogle" we want to go -
personally I have come around to the idea of a front page that reflects
activity with maybe 50% dynamic content. There is a News page, there's a
Downloads page, there will be a mostly-dynamic Community page, so there
are many potential home pages people could choose. I think I'd be going
for Community, which brings together people, news and downloads.

> Ok, let's not take for granted that the maemo.org visitors we want to
> satisfy know the basics of Maemo. But considering what Maemo is, we can
> take for granted that those users are fluent Internet/media people, used
> to see websites like those at
> http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode=global&lang=none and
> prepare to react when presented several choices (if presented well, of
> course).

I hope we can all agree on what I proposed last week - maemo.org is a
site aimed at potential Maemo community members - visitors will arrive
on the site somehow, and the chances are it'll be (a) because they've
read about it somewhere else and are following a link, or (b) they're
looking for it through a search engine, perhaps because they have a
tablet? So I agree with Andrew, it needs to be a portal page, because
people will be arriving on the front page with expectations, but it can
be partly (even mostly?) dynamic, to reflect the community nature of the
site.

I agree that we can assume that maemo.org visitors are all internet
users, too ;)

I think we've gotten to the stage where we have most of a great plan,
and with one or two small refinements, I'm happy to start moving on with
implementation now - we have to go from design to web page, with
Midgard. I'm hoping that I will get some help on this part from Nemein,
since I've had some trouble getting around Midgard in the past.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
maemo.org docsmaster
Email: dneary at maemo.org
Jabber: bolsh at jabber.org