XWiki - Open Source Wiki and Content-Oriented Application Platform (XWikiOrgRedesign.WebHome)

Marta Girdea, 2009/10/09 16:23

The horizontal navigation menu blends in really nice. I'd make all the links bold, for two reasons: a) to make them more visible (I confess I didn't notice the menu at the first glance, but maybe that's just me) and b) to make sure the menu width does not vary when switching to another section.

Jean-Vincent Drean, 2009/10/09 16:33

I've modified it so that the entries width remains constant, and you're right it looks better with all the links bold

Jean-Vincent Drean, 2009/10/09 16:38

Any idea why I can't set the ColorTheme at the space level ? is it because of some tweak on incubator or is it unsupported for the moment ?

Marta Girdea, 2009/10/09 16:40

Not supported

Jean-Vincent Drean, 2009/10/18 15:48

I see you modified the hue for the "try" button, I've the .psd somewhere if you want to modify the colors

Sergiu Dumitriu, 2009/10/18 16:28

It was just trying to avoid having too many colors on this page. Indeed, I'd go with an orange instead of a yellow, especially since orange will probably be the color for XE, but I guess this will be decided a bit later.

Ecaterina Valica, 2009/10/19 16:28

the content was using excessive bold

Marta Girdea, 2009/10/19 16:53

I think it was a good thing that the first paragraph was bigger. It provides information that needs to be visible at the first glance: what the products do, the fact that they are under LGPL, that they are developed in Java. These are things a user would want to see without searching too much. Now I'm not saying that it had the perfect styling before (large, bold and italic), but the intention was good: to catch the eye. Could you suggest a way to achieve this without over-charging the page's aspect?
- Ecaterina Valica, 2009/10/19 17:02
  
  The page lacks a title of some kind. That text is too long to make it a title.
  Anyway, is this the only text we are going to have on the first page?
  - Jean-Vincent Drean, 2009/10/20 10:25
    
    I liked the first paragraph bigger too. I'm not sure the page misses a title, the first paragraph looked like a preamble to me (it was emphasized by the use of italics) and the title is XWiki Enterprise.
  - Marta Girdea, 2009/10/21 11:50
    
    Indeed, the content needs work. Also, I looked a bit at the home pages of other wikis, and noticed that some (Confluence, Mindtouch) have a screenshot on the first page. I think a nicely styled collage of screenshots that emphasize some of the features would be a good thing to have. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
    
    Ecaterina Valica, 2009/10/21 12:02
    
    We could have also a embedded video demo of the platform
    
    Jean-Vincent Drean, 2009/10/21 12:15
    
    Yes we need a screenshot gallery, I've looked around for nice JS carousels but haven't found any that seemed simple enough (at least to me). There's a french website about linux and OSS (linuxfr.org) which always insist on putting a link to screenshots in submitted news, the reason is that screenshot links gets at least as many clicks as the link to the main related website, so I'm definitely +1 for screenshots.
    I'm -0.5 to embed a video on the homepage:
    - we're not that good at making videos
    - it makes the page less responsive
    - we'd have to use flash
    
    Marta Girdea, 2009/10/21 12:23
    
    I'm not so fond of videos on the home page either, for basically the same reasons (only in reverse order ). We could prepare some videos and link to them somewhere deeper in the site, either in the feature page or in the user guide. Which reminds me: there's no link to any kind of documentation on the home page right now. Shouldn't there be one?

Ecaterina Valica, 2009/10/19 16:41

Instead of the single big blue Twitter panel, we can have a "Stay in touch" panel with more social platforms. We could use the icons from http://www.komodomedia.com/blog/2009/06/social-network-icon-pack/#icons

Marta Girdea, 2009/10/19 16:45

+1
- Jean-Vincent Drean, 2009/10/20 10:23
  
  AFAIK the xwiki _community_ (!=SAS) doesn't communicate through any social platform today. I think we should use a twitter channel to announce releases, tech blog posts, etc (we could have a page on xwiki.org for admins to post on this channel), but for the moment this is just an idea. I'm sure we can handle a twitter activity but I think multiplying social mediums would be overkill.
  - Ecaterina Valica, 2009/10/20 10:36
    
    The panel I was thinking about was not supposed to handle the social platform activity, but to be just a way of enumerating them.
    
    Jean-Vincent Drean, 2009/10/20 11:04
    
    Yes my point is that we don't even have one to enumerate right now
    
    Ecaterina Valica, 2009/10/20 11:55
    
    maybe we should ask Emilie. We have several tweeter accounts (xwiki, myxwiki), we have a Facebook one, Flickr page, RSS ... I'm sure there was one more
    I don't know for sure if they are only related to xwiki.com (sas).
    For the XWiki UX exists a Flickr page and a Vimeo account
    ...so, accounts exists. Depends what we want to develop and promote.

Ecaterina Valica, 2009/10/19 16:58

download2.png another idea of representation for Download links. BTW, just as an observation, Colibri is very sharp | straight angles. The download/try buttons and the tweeter panel are the only elements that are round corners borders.

Marta Girdea, 2009/10/19 17:07

Would you put these links in a side panel, or in the page?
- Jean-Vincent Drean, 2009/10/20 10:16
  
  I think those 2 buttons should be in the page, in the "xwiki enterprise" area, since they are about XE.
  About the rounded corners:
  - I don't think we should restrict ourselves from using rounded corners for buttons even if colibri is sharp, those are special button and embossing+rounded corners make them more visible IMHO
  - about the twitter panel I agree it looks a bit weird but I wanted to try something more graphic (the bird) to make the home look more "humane", the speech bubble seemed like a good idea. TBH I even wanted to make another try, have the blog panel in a speech bubble from a sketched "geek" and the support panel in one from a sketched person with a tie

Guillaume Lerouge, 2009/10/20 16:39

Looks very nice and lively overall, well done guys :-)

Raluca Stavro, 2009/10/26 18:17

For the intro I would go with: a 120% font size and normal (not bold), a background-color and some padding. If you don't like the styles, you can remove them, it's just a proposal. The bold is too much in my opinion. It looks verry nice anyway emoticon_smile Strong colors is a courageous idea emoticon_wink

Raluca Stavro, 2009/10/26 18:19

120% is too much to

Raluca Stavro, 2009/10/26 18:34

On active WATCH menu, I would use #ccc instead of #000 to mark the active action link. Using #000 makes the text unreadable because the background color of the top menu and the background color of the text are also dark colored and the eyes tend to focus on lighter colors in order to distinguish different actions/links/text.

Vincent Massol, 2009/11/09 10:45

I wouldn't use "Try" since this word is often used for paying software. I'd suggest something like "Demo" or "Test" instead, which are more neutral.

Vincent Massol, 2009/11/09 10:52

Question: Shouldn't we have a "Documentation" tab? Will it be clear for users that they need to choose a project first?

JeromeVelociter, 2009/11/09 12:35

+1

Vincent Massol, 2009/11/09 10:52

I think we need to explain on the home page that there's more than just XE

Vincent Massol, 2010/02/11 10:37

For twitter, if we put it there it means we want to have a xwiki.org twitter account (this is different from a XWiki.com twitter account)...

hmmm

Or maybe better, make it a link to http://search.twitter.com/search?q=xwiki

Vincent Massol, 2010/02/11 10:38

Ideally we would set up a Watch instance at news.xwiki.org and link to it. That watch would aggregate all news: from blogs, tweets, searches, etc. in a single place.

Vincent Massol, 2010/02/11 10:40

so who proposes something for the social stats part of the home page?

Silvia Rusu, 2010/03/10 11:09
Under the support panel, we could have:
- The Twitter panel
- A link under the Twitter panel to "More XWiki on the web"
- A link or a box that would encourage users to subscribe to the XWiki.org newsletter (in which case we would also need a newsletter)
- The Blog panel displaying the recent articles.
- Silvia Rusu, 2010/03/10 11:24
  The newsletter could be a monthly digest that would focus on:
  Releases
  Contributions from the community
  Important changes/additions to the website
  Events
  News

Silvia Rusu, 2010/03/10 10:58

I like the idea of a Twitter panel better than a "Stay in touch" panel. The Twitter panel is an immediate call to action and the personal message (in addition to the drawing) also helps make the homepage more "humane".

My suggestion is to keep the Twitter panel and under it have a link to "More XWiki on the web".
This new page can contain all the social networks XWiki can be found on that bring value to the community (e.g. people may be interested in slideshare presentations and youtube videos from OS events):

XWiki on Youtube
XWiki on Slideshare
a Twitter Feed
a large Facebook fan box that displays the XWiki logo, some of the XWiki fans and a "Become a Fan" button
etc.

Silvia Rusu, 2010/03/10 11:02

I'm +1 for a dedicated xwiki.org Twitter account. The account could serve both the purpose of a communication channel and helping our existing and potential users find their way around XWiki.org:

As a communication channel the account could be used to broadcast:

XWiki releases and news
XWiki events that the community may take an interest in
XWiki.org blog posts
Tips about using XWiki
The latest XWiki contributions
OS events and news

Answering questions and approaching potential users:

The go to place for existing and potential users that are not inclined to use the lists to address questions about XWiki.
Follow back people that are following our company account.
Attract new users/potential clients by introducing them to XWiki. These are people already searching for a wiki, asking for recommendations on Twitter.

WDYT?

Silvia Rusu, 2010/03/10 11:20

I think the support panel is a very good idea, however I'm not sure about the anchor text ("Contact the makers of XWiki") + image choice. As I see it the whole community are the makers of XWiki and the text doesn't necessarily say that. If you corroborate the message with the image you might reach the conclusion XWiki SAS are the makers, which might arise some debates.

WDYT?

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