[ART] Website mockup rev2

[ART] Website mockup rev2

[Luis Felipe López Acevedo]

Hi,

Here is a revision of the last mockup for the website [1]. This time
aimed at a techie audience.

http://sirgazil.bitbucket.org/static/temp/img/guixsd/home-view-rev2.jpg

Note that some sections that are currently available in
<http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/> are not present in this mockup. I'm
not suggesting to remove them, though. In the image I have of the future
website, I think these sections could be located in appropriate pages.
For example:

- Status and Downloading. These could be in the Download page.
- Getting involved. This would go in Contribute. And I'd suggest to use
a simple layout such as the one used in the GNOME website
<http://www.gnome.org/get-involved/>.
- Maintainer and Licensing. These could be in the About page.

What do you think?


[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2015-02/msg00500.html


-- 
Luis Felipe López Acevedo
http://sirgazil.bitbucket.org/

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Ricardo Wurmus]

Luis Felipe López Acevedo writes:

> Here is a revision of the last mockup for the website [1]. This time
> aimed at a techie audience.
>
> http://sirgazil.bitbucket.org/static/temp/img/guixsd/home-view-rev2.jpg

I like this a lot better than the previous mockups (which would have
been great for something targetted at a different audience).

Just one comment: I know that the screenshots are just placeholders, but
there is no GNOME in the system distribution, yet all but one of the
screenshots show the GNOME Shell.

I even wonder if screenshots are necessary at all or if it wouldn't be
better to show some diagrams of e.g. how the store works instead.  The
diagrams were used in the slides but they are not in the official docs,
yet I found them immensely helpful in understanding the system.

~~ Ricardo

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Adam Pribyl]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: TEXT/PLAIN, Size: 1078 bytes --]

On Sat, 21 Feb 2015, Ricardo Wurmus wrote:

>
> Luis Felipe López Acevedo writes:
>
>> Here is a revision of the last mockup for the website [1]. This time
>> aimed at a techie audience.
>>
>> http://sirgazil.bitbucket.org/static/temp/img/guixsd/home-view-rev2.jpg
>
> I like this a lot better than the previous mockups (which would have
> been great for something targetted at a different audience).
>
> Just one comment: I know that the screenshots are just placeholders, but
> there is no GNOME in the system distribution, yet all but one of the
> screenshots show the GNOME Shell.
>
> I even wonder if screenshots are necessary at all or if it wouldn't be
> better to show some diagrams of e.g. how the store works instead.  The
> diagrams were used in the slides but they are not in the official docs,
> yet I found them immensely helpful in understanding the system.

IMHO screenshots are needed - they very quickly show the state of the 
distro you may expect. Adding info picture like diagrams is a good idea 
too.

> ~~ Ricardo

Adam Pribyl

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Andreas Enge]

On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 09:02:50PM -0500, Luis Felipe López Acevedo wrote:
> Here is a revision of the last mockup for the website [1]. This time
> aimed at a techie audience.
> http://sirgazil.bitbucket.org/static/temp/img/guixsd/home-view-rev2.jpg

Very nice, I think it fits better!

Andreas

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Ludovic Courtès]

¡Hola!

Luis Felipe López Acevedo <felipe.lopez@openmailbox.org> skribis:

> Here is a revision of the last mockup for the website [1]. This time
> aimed at a techie audience.
>
> http://sirgazil.bitbucket.org/static/temp/img/guixsd/home-view-rev2.jpg

Very nice design again!

> Note that some sections that are currently available in
> <http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/> are not present in this mockup. I'm
> not suggesting to remove them, though. In the image I have of the future
> website, I think these sections could be located in appropriate pages.
> For example:
>
> - Status and Downloading. These could be in the Download page.
> - Getting involved. This would go in Contribute. And I'd suggest to use
> a simple layout such as the one used in the GNOME website
> <http://www.gnome.org/get-involved/>.
> - Maintainer and Licensing. These could be in the About page.
>
> What do you think?

Agreed on these points.

I have some more specific comments.

There’s some informal wording that I dislike; for instance, I would:

  - remove “We need skilled people”
  - change “Know the system...” to “Discover GuixSD”
  - change “Some screenshots...” to “Screenshots”
  - change “We have some news...” to “News”
  - change “Get in touch...” to “Contact” (?)
  - change “The devs are working hard...” to “Latest Development News”.

I would rather not have a Web interface to connect to the IRC channel.
The technical audience we’re targeting may know how to do that anyway.

Regarding the section at the bottom, I wonder whether/how it could be
implemented in practice.  For instance, we’re not going to move to
GitHub just for that, and I’d rather not call out to openhub.com or
similar to get stats.  Yet, I’m not sure the cgit/gitweb instances at
Savannah provide a JSON API to extract this kind of data.  What are your
thoughts on this?

Maybe the answer is that we’ll have to work with the Savannah hackers to
add whatever service provides such an API to Savannah, and in the
meantime live without that section.

One thing we need to decide is whether we keep the GuixSD web site
separate from gnu.org/s/guix.  I tend to think that it should be
separate (we can ask for guixsd.gnu.org), with the Guix web page mostly
unchanged, but I’m slightly concerned about overlap and the risk of
bitrot.  WDYT?

How can we make progress from here?  Would you be able to do the
CSS/HTML implementation of the web site?  What else is needed?

Thank you!

Ludo’.

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Luis Felipe López Acevedo]

El mié, 25-02-2015 a las 14:56 +0100, Ludovic Courtès escribió:
> ¡Hola!

Salut Ludovic, Ça va? :)

[...]

> I have some more specific comments.
> 
> There’s some informal wording that I dislike; for instance, I would:
> 
>   - remove “We need skilled people”
>   - change “Know the system...” to “Discover GuixSD”
>   - change “Some screenshots...” to “Screenshots”
>   - change “We have some news...” to “News”
>   - change “Get in touch...” to “Contact” (?)
>   - change “The devs are working hard...” to “Latest Development News”.
> 
> I would rather not have a Web interface to connect to the IRC channel.
> The technical audience we’re targeting may know how to do that anyway.

OK.

> Regarding the section at the bottom, I wonder whether/how it could be
> implemented in practice.  For instance, we’re not going to move to
> GitHub just for that, and I’d rather not call out to openhub.com or
> similar to get stats.  Yet, I’m not sure the cgit/gitweb instances at
> Savannah provide a JSON API to extract this kind of data.  What are your
> thoughts on this?
> 
> Maybe the answer is that we’ll have to work with the Savannah hackers to
> add whatever service provides such an API to Savannah, and in the
> meantime live without that section.

I just thought that a JSON list of recent commits could be generated
with a script+libgit2 (somewhere, once a day) and then put the JSON file
in the website repository. But if that's expensive or just silly, I
don't see any problem in leaving that section out.

> One thing we need to decide is whether we keep the GuixSD web site
> separate from gnu.org/s/guix.  I tend to think that it should be
> separate (we can ask for guixsd.gnu.org), with the Guix web page mostly
> unchanged, but I’m slightly concerned about overlap and the risk of
> bitrot.  WDYT?

I think that GuixSD should have its own website (at guixsd.gnu.org) and
Guix should stay on gnu.org/s/guix.

I can see a lot of overlapping too, because at this time both websites
would target the same techie audience. But I think this overlapping
would be eventually reduced as the GuixSD website evolves to target
average users and the Guix page remains more closer to techies. (GuixSD
website would not focus on Guix, but would have enough, higher-level
information about using it.)

However, to avoid maintaining very similar websites at this time, maybe
the GuixSD website should wait until the distribution reaches a beta
status. In the meantime, I would try to implement the middle sections of
this mockup rev2 in the current Guix page, if people think that's OK.

> How can we make progress from here?  Would you be able to do the
> CSS/HTML implementation of the web site?  What else is needed?

I don't know if Pierre-Antoine Rault (rigelk) is still willing to take
on implementation :)

In any case, I've worked in "mockup-to-implementation" before¹, using
Web frameworks like Django² or static-site generators like complexity³.
I don't have any formal training, but I'm willing to help.

As for what else would be needed for GuixSD website, 

- A GuixSD project in Savannah
    - CVS repository for website
    - git repository for website source
- A static-site generator



1. http://sirgazil.bitbucket.org/static/temp/img/faunista/home-view.png
2. http://djangoproject.com/
3. https://github.com/audreyr/complexity

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Andreas Enge]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 01:34:51PM -0500, Luis Felipe López Acevedo wrote:
> I think that GuixSD should have its own website (at guixsd.gnu.org) and
> Guix should stay on gnu.org/s/guix.

Honestly, I do not quite understand why we would need two different websites.
Guix and GuixSD are so tightly intertwined that I think it does not make
much sense to separate them (same git, same bug tracker, same mailing list,
same manual); of course, there could be subpages for one or the other aspect.
But everything could be subpages of gnu.org/s/guix/. Or do we not have the
right to several pages in one site?

Andreas

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Thompson, David]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 3:28 PM, Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 01:34:51PM -0500, Luis Felipe López Acevedo wrote:
>> I think that GuixSD should have its own website (at guixsd.gnu.org) and
>> Guix should stay on gnu.org/s/guix.
>
> Honestly, I do not quite understand why we would need two different websites.

Yeah, I'm not convinced we need two sites, either.

> Guix and GuixSD are so tightly intertwined that I think it does not make
> much sense to separate them (same git, same bug tracker, same mailing list,
> same manual); of course, there could be subpages for one or the other aspect.
> But everything could be subpages of gnu.org/s/guix/. Or do we not have the
> right to several pages in one site?

We can make as many pages as we'd like.  We already include many other
pages for the manual and such.

IMO, managing the site via gnu.org's antiquated CVS deployment setup
is undesirable for the long term.  As assistant chief webmaster I've
tried to influence a migration to git and more modern web development
practices, but it's not going to happen.  I propose that we do as
Mediagoblin does: Maintain a completely separate web server that we
have full control over, and redirect http://gnu.org/s/guix to that web
server.

Thoughts?

- Dave

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Andreas Enge]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 03:34:30PM -0500, Thompson, David wrote:
> IMO, managing the site via gnu.org's antiquated CVS deployment setup
> is undesirable for the long term.  As assistant chief webmaster I've
> tried to influence a migration to git and more modern web development
> practices, but it's not going to happen.

That is a sad state indeed!

> I propose that we do as
> Mediagoblin does: Maintain a completely separate web server that we
> have full control over, and redirect http://gnu.org/s/guix to that web
> server.
> 
> Thoughts?

Well, that would be fine as well.

Andreas

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Ludovic Courtès]

"Thompson, David" <dthompson2@worcester.edu> skribis:

> On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 3:28 PM, Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr> wrote:
>> On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 01:34:51PM -0500, Luis Felipe López Acevedo wrote:
>>> I think that GuixSD should have its own website (at guixsd.gnu.org) and
>>> Guix should stay on gnu.org/s/guix.
>>
>> Honestly, I do not quite understand why we would need two different websites.
>
> Yeah, I'm not convinced we need two sites, either.

OK but there’s the problem of the logo and focus.  Should perhaps the
main page be about GuixSD, and a sub-page would be about Guix as a
package manager, and such?  (Similar to what nixos.org does.)

> IMO, managing the site via gnu.org's antiquated CVS deployment setup
> is undesirable for the long term.  As assistant chief webmaster I've
> tried to influence a migration to git and more modern web development
> practices, but it's not going to happen.  I propose that we do as
> Mediagoblin does: Maintain a completely separate web server that we
> have full control over, and redirect http://gnu.org/s/guix to that web
> server.

That’s a terrible state of affairs, and I hope the FSF webmasters
realize that and realize that something must be done about it.

There’s the possibility of having a gnu.org sub-domain.  From a
practical perspective, we can probably get something on chapters.gnu.org
(administered by fellow hackers Nacho & José) very easily.  From there
we use either a static site generator or do something more Guilish if
someone is tempted.  We’d have a lot of flexibility.

How does that sound?

Ludo’.

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Luis Felipe López Acevedo]

El mié, 25-02-2015 a las 21:28 +0100, Andreas Enge escribió:
> On Wed, Feb 25, 2015 at 01:34:51PM -0500, Luis Felipe López Acevedo wrote:
> > I think that GuixSD should have its own website (at guixsd.gnu.org) and
> > Guix should stay on gnu.org/s/guix.
> 
> Honestly, I do not quite understand why we would need two different websites.
> Guix and GuixSD are so tightly intertwined that I think it does not make
> much sense to separate them (same git, same bug tracker, same mailing list,
> same manual); of course, there could be subpages for one or the other aspect.
> But everything could be subpages of gnu.org/s/guix/. Or do we not have the
> right to several pages in one site?
> 
> Andreas
> 

I'd be glad to have one website for both as long as they don't compete
for attention. And I think GuixSD should be promoted as the main
"product" when the distribution is ready for the average user. So,
potential users would visit the website in the future, and clearly tell
that the website is about an operating system, not about a package
manager. For this, I think it would be nice to have a subdomain at
gnu.org (guixsd.gnu.org) instead of using gnu.org/s/guix/.

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Ludovic Courtès]

Luis Felipe López Acevedo <felipe.lopez@openmailbox.org> skribis:

> El mié, 25-02-2015 a las 14:56 +0100, Ludovic Courtès escribió:

[...]

>> Regarding the section at the bottom, I wonder whether/how it could be
>> implemented in practice.  For instance, we’re not going to move to
>> GitHub just for that, and I’d rather not call out to openhub.com or
>> similar to get stats.  Yet, I’m not sure the cgit/gitweb instances at
>> Savannah provide a JSON API to extract this kind of data.  What are your
>> thoughts on this?
>> 
>> Maybe the answer is that we’ll have to work with the Savannah hackers to
>> add whatever service provides such an API to Savannah, and in the
>> meantime live without that section.
>
> I just thought that a JSON list of recent commits could be generated
> with a script+libgit2 (somewhere, once a day) and then put the JSON file
> in the website repository. But if that's expensive or just silly, I
> don't see any problem in leaving that section out.

If we go for self hosting as David suggests, we can do whatever sounds
appropriate on our own server.

>> One thing we need to decide is whether we keep the GuixSD web site
>> separate from gnu.org/s/guix.  I tend to think that it should be
>> separate (we can ask for guixsd.gnu.org), with the Guix web page mostly
>> unchanged, but I’m slightly concerned about overlap and the risk of
>> bitrot.  WDYT?
>
> I think that GuixSD should have its own website (at guixsd.gnu.org) and
> Guix should stay on gnu.org/s/guix.

Guix-specific info could go to a sub-page of the GuixSD site, I think.
This would avoid overlapping.

>> How can we make progress from here?  Would you be able to do the
>> CSS/HTML implementation of the web site?  What else is needed?
>
> I don't know if Pierre-Antoine Rault (rigelk) is still willing to take
> on implementation :)
>
> In any case, I've worked in "mockup-to-implementation" before¹, using
> Web frameworks like Django² or static-site generators like complexity³.
> I don't have any formal training, but I'm willing to help.

I would go either static (complexity or even Skribilo) or somehow use
Guile’s web server, but then again I’m not going to do it so I’m open to
whatever seems appropriate.

> As for what else would be needed for GuixSD website, 
>
> - A GuixSD project in Savannah
>     - CVS repository for website
>     - git repository for website source

Problem solved if we use our own server.  The Git repo for the site’s
source can go in a sub-directory of guix.git on Savannah.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[David Thompson]

Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:

> I would go either static (complexity or even Skribilo) or somehow use
> Guile’s web server, but then again I’m not going to do it so I’m open to
> whatever seems appropriate.

Using a static site generator would be nice, I think.  Serving dynamic
web pages (that are essentially static) would be a burden.

It would be a shame to use a static site generator that isn't written in
Guile. However, there isn't an available solution and my efforts to
write one (along with a Markdown parser) haven't produced anything
usable as of now.

Jekyll (Ruby) and Pelican (Python) are popular choices for static site
generators.

Anyway, I likely won't have the time to do the actual work, so this is
just food for thought for those that do. :)

-- 
David Thompson
Web Developer - Free Software Foundation - http://fsf.org
GPG Key: 0FF1D807
Support the FSF: https://fsf.org/donate

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer]

David Thompson <dthompson2@worcester.edu> writes:

> It would be a shame to use a static site generator that isn't written
> in Guile. However, there isn't an available solution and my efforts to
> write one (along with a Markdown parser) haven't produced anything
> usable as of now.

For what it's worth, I have a tiny '(html simple)' module to write HTML
documents as SXML:

https://gitorious.org/taylan-guile/html/

Taylan

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Thompson, David]

On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 4:36 AM, Taylan Ulrich Bayırlı/Kammer
<taylanbayirli@gmail.com> wrote:
> David Thompson <dthompson2@worcester.edu> writes:
>
>> It would be a shame to use a static site generator that isn't written
>> in Guile. However, there isn't an available solution and my efforts to
>> write one (along with a Markdown parser) haven't produced anything
>> usable as of now.
>
> For what it's worth, I have a tiny '(html simple)' module to write HTML
> documents as SXML:
>
> https://gitorious.org/taylan-guile/html/

Hey, I also wrote a module for writing SXML as HTML!

https://gitorious.org/guix-web/guix-web/source/da5773741e2c53fb26558bfadf54938a974d9175:guix/web/sxml.scm

:)

- Dave

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Ludovic Courtès]

David Thompson <dthompson2@worcester.edu> skribis:

> Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
>
>> I would go either static (complexity or even Skribilo) or somehow use
>> Guile’s web server, but then again I’m not going to do it so I’m open to
>> whatever seems appropriate.
>
> Using a static site generator would be nice, I think.  Serving dynamic
> web pages (that are essentially static) would be a burden.

Makes sense.

> It would be a shame to use a static site generator that isn't written in
> Guile. However, there isn't an available solution and my efforts to
> write one (along with a Markdown parser) haven't produced anything
> usable as of now.

Skribilo would work I think, preferably with its extended sexp syntax.
Taylan’s (html simple) is another option, using sexp syntax.

There are building blocks for other things: the SXML modules, the stexi
modules (for Texinfo-syntax input), Andy’s Org-mode parser in
Guile-Present, and your Mardown parser.

With all this, it should definitely be possible to do something, but
it’s up to whoever takes up the task to comment on it.  Luis, would you
be willing/able to look at these options?  Pierre-Antoine?

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Luis Felipe López Acevedo]

El jue, 26-02-2015 a las 19:43 +0100, Ludovic Courtès escribió:
> David Thompson <dthompson2@worcester.edu> skribis:
> 
> > Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
> >
> >> I would go either static (complexity or even Skribilo) or somehow use
> >> Guile’s web server, but then again I’m not going to do it so I’m open to
> >> whatever seems appropriate.
> >
> > Using a static site generator would be nice, I think.  Serving dynamic
> > web pages (that are essentially static) would be a burden.
> 
> Makes sense.
> 
> > It would be a shame to use a static site generator that isn't written in
> > Guile. However, there isn't an available solution and my efforts to
> > write one (along with a Markdown parser) haven't produced anything
> > usable as of now.
> 
> Skribilo would work I think, preferably with its extended sexp syntax.
> Taylan’s (html simple) is another option, using sexp syntax.
> 
> There are building blocks for other things: the SXML modules, the stexi
> modules (for Texinfo-syntax input), Andy’s Org-mode parser in
> Guile-Present, and your Mardown parser.
> 
> With all this, it should definitely be possible to do something, but
> it’s up to whoever takes up the task to comment on it.  Luis, would you
> be willing/able to look at these options?  Pierre-Antoine?

I'm leaving the implementation job to Pierre-Antoine, but I'm studying
Tylan's tool and Skribilo, just in case :) I don't mind learning some
Guile.

Re: [ART] Website mockup rev2

[Felix Friedlander]

> > Here is a revision of the last mockup for the website [1]. This time
> > aimed at a techie audience.
> >
> > http://sirgazil.bitbucket.org/static/temp/img/guixsd/home-view-rev2.jpg
> 
> I like this a lot better than the previous mockups (which would have
> been great for something targetted at a different audience).

I agree with you that the previous mockups were certainly for a different audience. Personally, I believe the original mockups would be better, while this one more honestly reflects the current state of the project. After 1.0 (or whatever we are calling it when it becomes stable-er and easier to install) the first websites would be much better.

> Just one comment: I know that the screenshots are just placeholders, but
> there is no GNOME in the system distribution, yet all but one of the
> screenshots show the GNOME Shell.

I had noticed this too - I believe the person who made them had built GNOME him(or her)self, outside of the guix package system. As such they would be better suited to the first set of websites, as by the time we release the full version I hope there will be GNOME.

> I even wonder if screenshots are necessary at all or if it wouldn't be
> better to show some diagrams of e.g. how the store works instead.  The
> diagrams were used in the slides but they are not in the official docs,
> yet I found them immensely helpful in understanding the system.

Diagrams are necessary to understand the system, but not to use it. Possibly better to keep them in the docs (assuming the docs will be available on the website).

> 
> ~~ Ricardo

Felix Friedlander <felixphew0@gmail.com>