[Scooby] Re: [General] Scooby project landing page

[Priscilla Chung]

So it seems to me that there are two very distinct issues here. One is 
about the content and the other is about aesthetics. From my 
interpretation of the Fogel quotes, it speaks less about aesthetics as 
about content, clear writing, and clear organization. I understand about 
the ecosystem, and how it is important to have engaging, clearly written 
documentation. In my opinion, for Scooby 0.1, the content is more 
important than aesthetics.

That said, from a PM's perspective of Scooby all that is needed on front 
facing pages is
a link somewhere on the main OSAF page to Scooby (and Cosmo), instead of 
being buried on the wiki. A Scooby centralized page that helps route 
developers to the right parts of the wiki.

The other point which is obvious but seems to be another project all 
together is the organization of the wiki. And to touch on Brian's point, 
everything already looks inconsistent: OSAF front page, the Chandler 
launch page, and the wiki, all have different organizations, different 
formating and different aesthetics. If we're serious about the branding 
for OSAF and the ecosystem of products, we should start by choosing  
common look for the OSAF front page, wiki and the project home pages.

-Priscilla


Sheila Mooney wrote:
> Sorry if this is repetitive...
>
> + I really don't think there is any disagreement that we want to have 
> something better than 
> this....http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Projects/ScoobyHome.
>
> + I also think there is agreement that we want to have some key pieces 
> of content like links to the blog, mailing lists, how to get involved 
> (whatever seems reasonable at this stage). I personally am not crazy 
> about links to placeholder pages that say "in progress", but that's 
> just my opinion.
>
> + Where we really disagree is giving the Scooby 0.1 landing page the 
> same look and feel as the Chandler landing page to make it more like 
> an "official" part of the ecosystem. To address one of Brian's 
> replies, it's not that we think putting together a custom html page is 
> beyond our capabilities over the next 2 weeks. Mimi is simply pointing 
> out that it's not as simple as Pieter just using the Chandler page, 
> adding the content and tweaking a few things. Matt and others will 
> have to do SOME work. When we decided in mid-Jan to just package up 
> whatever "Scooby" we had by a certain date, test it for a day and put 
> it out there, the PPD team just assumed we would go with something 
> sufficient but low key as a landing page. Low key certainly doesn't 
> imply crappy or that we wouldn't follow most of the principles 
> described by Fogel. Since the Scooby releases are expected to be more 
> frequent, we could plan for a more full scale landing page in 0.2.
>
> For all the time I have spent over the past 2 weeks on this, it might 
> have been better spent working on the larger branding effort we need 
> to tackle for all our products including the "ecosystem". I don't 
> think that when we designed the Chandler 0.6 landing page we were 
> thinking of the look and feel for all the products, the ecosystem or 
> how we want Chandler 1.0 to look. For me, one take-away here is that 
> perhaps it would be a good idea to start thinking about this sooner 
> rather than later.
>
> Just my 2 cents.
>
>
> On Feb 13, 2006, at 7:07 PM, Mimi Yin wrote:
>
>> Ted,
>>
>> I think one of the issues of pulling together an HTML page that 
>> incorporated some Chandler landing page elements to tie the landing 
>> pages together was that it would require resources (ie. Matt) for 
>> building it.
>>
>> There seem to be 2 issues:
>>
>> 1. Resources and time (less design and more front-end implementation, 
>> I think whether we do a wiki page or a custom HTML page, the design 
>> team will have to expend a comparable amount of effort)
>>
>> 2. What is the cost of waiting on a custom landing page until 0.2?
>>
>> All things being equal, a scaled down custom landing page that feels 
>> like it's a member of the ecosystem (as in related to Chandler) would 
>> be great. But 2 questions are:
>> + Can we accomplish this AND release on time?
>> + If not, are we willing to hold the release for a custom landing page?
>>
>> Mimi
>>
>> 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
>>>>
>>>> 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...
>>>>
>>> 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.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Scooby mailing list
>>> Scooby at osafoundation.org
>>> http://lists.osafoundation.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/scooby
>>
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