[Mageia-marketing] Web site, a few updates pending, open for comments

[Romain d'Alverny]

Hi there,
(xposted on mageia-webteam and mageia-marketing, I'll track answers on
both lists)

I'm working on a few changes on the Web site:

 a. (related to below) a new global top navbar, that's consistent
across all mageia.org; a preview is available here:
http://www.mageia.org/en/about/?testnav=1 ; documentation for
using/spreading it is available here: http://www.mageia.org/_nav/ ;
improvements brought by this new design:
   - it's consistent and can be consistently deployed and updated in
all mageia.org sites and apps (using the javascript snippet);
   - it embeds the Mageia project logo, so branding is consistent too;
   - it structures and highlights how the mageia.org Web at large is organized.

 b. (related to above) a more obvious site map, a preview is available
here: http://www.mageia.org/fr/map/?testnav=1 ; there are several
(new) sections here that are not ready/do no exist yet; and parts of
the existing contents need to be reorganized; but this will give you
an idea; it's the Community and Contribute sections that need a lot of
thought and work; the site map is organized in 6 sections:
   - About Mageia (learning about the project and NPO - that's the
institutional part of the site)
   - Downloads (learning about and getting the software, updates, etc.)
   - Support
   - Community (what's happening, who is in this project, what are the
tools at hand)
   - Contribute (what one can do in the project)
   - You (one's user account and facilities with Mageia)

 c. as introduced above, a new Community section with its own home
page (mageia.org/community or shorthand mageia.org/coop or ?): that's
where contributors and active users will want to go for what's in the
community, who is there, doing what, and what can be done; this
section's landing page is to summarize news (blog, planet, calendar),
activities (forum, bugzilla, buildsystem, teams reports)

 d. change how people get to mageia.org:
   1. the home page of www.mageia.org will focus and provide a single
major call to action: get Mageia; with a few, lower contrast other
actions (more info, contribute). Preview here:
http://i.imgur.com/nDlwK.png (not on par with Mageia bg design, I'm
still not sure how to integrate it properly); the rationale is:
      - most people coming to www.mageia.org/ leave quickly;
      - for (most) new/casual visitors, we tell them the main story:
download and use Mageia;
      - for other visitors, with a goal, we propose them shortlinks
to: Support, Community and About Mageia.Org sections

   2. loading the browser in Mageia currently sends you to
start.mageia.org which in turn redirects to www.mageia.org; I'd like
to change that so that start.mageia.org goes to
www.mageia.org/community/
   3. given these changes, in the new navigation bar, clicking on the
logo/home position would not redirect to the c.1. home (which is
targetted to fresh/new visitors) neither /community, but to /map which
provides a large, top-view of what's available in mageia.org Web site.
That's quite a change from usual navigation practices (although it is
used sometimes), and I'm not 100% confident yet, but I think it's
worth trying something a bit different.


There's still a lot of improvements in this (and other topic not
reached here, such as www pages layout in general), and I suspect some
of the proposed changes above won't make it for some people.

Among other noticeable, shipped changes:
 - rewritten http://www.mageia.org/en/about/ to better introduce the
whole section;
 - added http://www.mageia.org/en/about/constitution/
 - consolidated code for http://www.mageia.org/en/about/reports/
 - consolidated code for the downloads (in the background, still need
to articulate 1 and 2 pages and listings)
 - download redirector page
(http://www.mageia.org/en/downloads/get/?q=Mageia-2-rc-i586-DVD.iso&torrent=1&testnav=1
for instance) has room for two major call for action, once the
download is running (those would be: 1) what to do with the file once
download is complete, and 2) how to contribute back to the project ?)

Quick feedback welcome, so I can know what can be shipped for 2
official release or not.