[General] Scooby project landing page

[Mikeal Rogers]

Comments in line.

-Mikeal

On Feb 13, 2006, at 6:24 PM, Ted Leung wrote:

> Hi Pieter,
>
> Pieter Hartsook wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> There have been some discussions regarding a "landing page" for the
>> Scooby project that we thought we should take to the maillists for
>> comments.
>>
> I'm confused about what you are asking for here, other than a high  
> level of visual polish.
> When we left the meeting last week <http://wiki.osafoundation.org/ 
> bin/view/Journal/MtgNotes0208>,
> I thought that we had agreed on a plan for the landing page, which  
> called for incorporating elements
> from the Chandler project page (the left side navigation) into the  
> Scooby project page.
>> When Scooby 0.1 is released we will have three major components of  
>> the
>> Chandler ecosystem in place as official active OSAF projects;
>> Chandler, Cosmo, and Scooby. For each project we want to make it easy
>> for potential developers and others to quickly and effortlessly get
>> information about the project in order to encourage them to get
>> involved and begin to build an active community. This effort is in
>> keeping with Fogel's observations about packaging and presentation:
>>
>> "A related mistake is that of skimping on presentation and packaging,
>> figuring that these can always be done later, when the project is  
>> well
>> under way. Presentation and packaging comprise a wide range of tasks,
>> all revolving around the theme of reducing the barrier to entry.
>> Making the project inviting to the uninitiated means writing user and
>> developer documentation, setting up a project web site that's
>> informative to newcomers, automating as much of the software's
>> compilation and installation as possible, etc."
>> --- Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free
>> Software Project by Karl Fogel, p. 10

In the last meeting we had a lot of people concerned more than  
excited that a lot of end users might be using scooby because we feel  
it really isn't ready for that kind of use yet. It can't really  
manage persistent data and it's not that practically usable yet, it's  
a proof of concept, and impressive one, but still not a usable product.

"The overall goal of Scooby 0.1 is to put in place the major  
application architecture pieces in order to provide enough of a basis  
to generate interest and have serious volunteers start contributing  
to the project. The target release date for Scooby 0.1 is February  
14th, 2006." From http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Projects/ 
FirstScoobyRelease

Reducing the barrier to entry this early, 0.1, will give us more  
users with the expectation that this is something they can use, not  
just play with.

Our target for this release is mainly developers who may want to see  
what we are doing, and I don't think that there is any real barrier  
to their entry with the current page.

I think a more polished page will be amazing for a future release.  
But I don't see the value in doing it for 0.1 .


>>
>> When Chandler 0.6 was released we collected information from various
>> sources and created the Chandler landing page
>> <http://chandler.osafoundation.org> as visually appealing home page
>> for the project that organizes and clearly leads visitors to
>> appropriate pages for more information. Some of the links on the
>> landing page go to wiki pages, some to the OSAF website, some to the
>> group blog, and some to secondary html pages on the landing page site
>> itself. By creating the landing page site instead of using the  
>> wiki we
>> had more control over the design of the page and made it more
>> attractive and easier to understand and navigate.
>>
>> We of course want to provide those interested in Cosmo and Scooby  
>> with
>> similar easy-of-entry access to information about those projects as
>> well. The question at hand is, What do we do over the next couple of
>> weeks to prepare a landing page for the initial 0.1 release of  
>> Scooby?
>>
>> There are a continuum of solutions:
>> 1) At one end we can create a "landing page" on the wiki and simply
>> continue to provide a redirect from <http://scooby.osafoundation.org>
>> to the wiki.
>> 2) We could make a simple html, mostly text-based page that would  
>> free
>> the landing page from the wiki navigation and editing kruft and allow
>> a more appealing presentation of the content.
>> 3) We could borrow from the work done on the Chandler landing page,
>> keeping much of the navigation aids and style the same but modifying
>> the content to target the Scooby 0.1 release.
>>
>> At this point, I'll interject my opinion, that if time and resources
>> allow, I am in favor of option #3. I see the advantages that Fogel
>> pointed out in having good presentation in the project web site early
>> in the project in order to lower the barriers to entry. I also  
>> believe
>> reusing similar design elements on the different project landing  
>> pages
>> not only makes it easier for someone who is familiar with one project
>> to more easily find their way in a sister project, but it subtly
>> reiniforces the familial relationship among the projects.
>>
>> There is some concern that a graphically polished landing page for
>> Scooby may inappropriately set expectations that the software is more
>> mature than the 0.1 release is. I think that we can set expectations
>> appropriately through the messaging/content on the page. And as the
>> project matures we can maintain the interface and change the
>> expectation messaging. Similarly, at this early stage in the Scooby
>> project some of the documentation (like some of the features and
>> functionality) may not have been created yet. Again, going back to
>> Fogel...

I agree that we do need to state very clearly on the demo page that  
this is not in a state that people should start putting their real  
life calendars in to this product.

The work that has been done makes this application look pretty damn  
good for an 0.1, and I think additional packaging is only going to  
attract the end user base that we just aren't ready for yet.

Was this end-user base the kind of users targeted in 0.1 releases of  
Chandler or Cosmo, or for that matter any other successful open  
source project?

>>
> If you look at the website for Subversion, which is the project
> Fogel is currently working on, you'll see that our project pages
> go way beyond the Subversion site in terms of graphics, etc. I'm  
> sure that Fogel finds the Subversion site adequate to the task. So  
> I don't really think that we need to spend a huge amount of effort
> beyond the basic look of the Chandler project page.
>
> _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
>
> Open Source Applications Foundation "General" mailing list
> http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/general