[www-redesign] Current status, information, todo-list and everything else you want to know

[Sven Vermeulen]

Hi all

Let me start with welcoming you all to this Gentoo subproject. It is with
great pleasure that I start this mailinglist because of some very interested
contributors and developers. I hope we can work together closely to redesign
the Gentoo website.

This mailinglist is primarily meant for discussions on the layout of the
Gentoo website (from which we can deviate a bit, but not much, since it was
elected by our community), the structure of the Gentoo website (think
sitemap) and the backend of the Gentoo website (the underlying XSLT code and
XML formats). 

Although you will receive information on how the Gentoo webnodes (we have
several systems that operate under the same URL) interact, this is no place
to discuss the infrastructure on Gentoo. That privilege is preserved to the
infrastructure team who has probably far more experience in maintaining such
environments.

At this moment of writing, the Gentoo developers that made the initial
choice between all submitted designs and the publicised list of designs is
subscribed. Others will undoubtedly join quickly (if they aren't yet) since
their knowledge on particular subjects has been requested. I also hope to
welcome lots of contributors that are willing to donate some of their free
time to the development of this redesign.

Now what is the current status?

Well, Aaron has won the election and has already updated his design to suit
the various comments that were made on the Gentoo Forum [1]. This updated
design is currently available at http://www.aaronshi.com/gentoo but will
shortly be moved to our CVS so concurrent development can happen. 

Aaron should have finished his exams by now (he had his last ones this week
iirc) so he should join the upcoming discussions shortly. 

I have also put out a first thought on the structure of the Gentoo website
(the www.gentoo.org front). I'll repost here:

Main page
+- About
|  +- History               (Extend current history with release history)
|  +- Metadistribution      (Will need to write this one)
|  +- Advantages            (Substitutes "Performance" which is outdated)
|  `- Philosophy
+- Community
|  +- Forums
|  +- Mailinglists
|  +- IRC
|  `- Weekly Newsletter
+- Development
|  +- Gentoo Projects       (With link to Gentoo Hosted Projects)
|  +- Bugs
|  +- Online CVS
|  +- Developer List        (Perhaps beautify with more developer information)
|  `- GLEPs
+- Download
|  +- List of download mirrors
|  +- List of rsync mirrors
|  `- List of torrents
+- Documentation
+- Art                      (With appropriate license agreement)
|  +- Logos
|  +- Icons
|  +- Themes
|  `- Screenshots
+- Store
`- Sponsors

Yet this is just the beginning. We should now focus on various TODOs at the
same time.

First of all, the current design should be further fine-tuned. This is
layout-wise, not content. One shouldn't discuss the number of news items
that are to be printed on the main website, that's pure coding later on. We
use a total separation of layout <-> content, so only think on the layout.

We probably need content-drafts for 
  - the main website (such as currently made by Aaron)
  - the "More headlines" page
  - "main" pages (such as http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml)
  - "news" pages (such as http://www.gentoo.org/news/20041021-portage51.xml)
  - "guide" pages (such as http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml)
  - printable "guide" pages (such as http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-upgrading.xml?style=printable)

Note that everything else (such as a Handbook page, a Project page, the
project overview, ...) are currently created by the layouts defined in this
sort of pages. However, if you feel that for instance a Gentoo Handbook page
should use a different layout, don't hesitate to write up a layout change.
After all, we will rewrite the underlying code to suit the layout, not vice
versa.

During the design, you are free to use whatever Gentoo-graphics you may find
on our website (don't use them elsewhere). If you want to use graphics that
you didn't create yourself make sure we have the right to use it (legally,
you should be able to use modified versions of Gentoo official graphics
since those are still 'owned' by Gentoo, but if you're uncertain, be sure to
ask - we'll pass it along to our legal team).

After having a good layout that we can use (which shouldn't last too long as
Aaron has already done 95% of the work) we should target the underlying
XHTML code. First of all, it should be valid XHTML and CSS [2]. Second of
all, it should work on as many browsers as possible, /including/ Internet
Explorer (recent version). As as you are probably all aware, just using
standards doesn't fit - we will also have to limit ourselves to the
standards that are used by the majority of browsers. 

Don't deviate from the standards though!

When that's finished, we will start writing our XSLT code (and, if
necessary, update our XML DTDs) and use a dedicated webnode to use a "beta"
version of the redesigned website.

Now on to the possible questions you might have.

Q. Do I get CVS access?

A. If you don't have Gentoo CVS access yet (i.e. you are not a developer),
   probably not. We might deviate from this if you are contributing major
   stuff and are willing to continue developing for Gentoo as part of, for
   instance, the infrastructure team.

Q. How do I propose changes?

A. Upload them somewhere and put the URL on the mailinglist. If you don't
   have room where you can upload changes, contact someone (fex, me :) to
   put it on his/her http://dev.gentoo.org/~<username> page. Or you can just
   discuss them on the mailinglist. Depends on the change of course :)

Q. What is the deadline?

A. I don't like deadlines, but I will place a roadmap and a current status
   on the redesign somewhere (I should be able to find a spot somewhere :).
   This should be sufficient for people to see how far we have progressed
   and how many tasks need to be done.

Q. Will it be ready before 2005?

A. What are you smoking?

Q. You forgot something...

A. Please tell us; you know the mailinglist, just post :)

Okay, I believe that's enough for today. I'll keep you posted with more
information as it comes along (such as CVS location - so you can download
the intermediary result from ViewCVS).

Wkr,
      Sven Vermeulen

[1] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=227589
[2] http://validator.w3.org/

-- 
  Documentation & PR project leader

  The Gentoo Project   <<< http://www.gentoo.org >>>