Hi Henning,
I'm afraid this is a slow conversation since we both seem to be
responding to Velocity emails in our respective evenings :-)
Thanks for the detailed response. We're in rough agreement, but have
a difference in emphasis. Clarifying/responding to a couple of
points.
* You've convinced me about not having the top page to default to
"Velocity Engine" but have general-project content. I also agree the
main page needs to include a menu with brief summaries of all
subprojects.
* I want to make sure that the main page clearly communicates to the
users what Velocity-as-a-project is all about. (Hibernate does a good
job of this). The current draft is mostly organizational ("Velocity
is a project of the Apache Software Foundation, charged with the
creation and maintenance of open-source software... "); I'm proposing
we make this more technical. The first three paragraphs of the
current web site aren't bad, actually. With a little rewording we can
make them about the approach ("templating language", "separating Java
code from text content", etc.) and not about the engine.
* About webapps. I'm just asking for a link on the main page
"Building a web application with Velocity". (again, like the current
site). We don't need to insist that Velocity-as-a-web-tool is
predominant. But I'd guess more than 50% of the new users are looking
for this info. This is tricky for them to figure out, since the
possible answers cut across multiple subprojects and third party
frameworks. My impression is that we've had less clueless "where do i
start with the web" questions on the user list since I put up this
article, though it's hard to judge.
* About the ASF. I see your point about our Apache community being
important part of who we are. I still think this info is
overemphasized in the main page and would be better served by a two
links "About the Apache Velocity Project" and "About the Apache
Software Foundation" rather than 4 inches of valuable front page body
text.
I'll have some time later this week. If you don't mind, I'll do a
pass editing the front page and see if I can inject some of these
thoughts into your excellent first cut.
WILL
On 12/17/06, Henning Schmiedehausen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
So, finally having digged out of the heap'o'work, here it goes:
On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 09:48 -0800, Will Glass-Husain wrote:
> Hi Henning,
>
> As I mentioned before, the layout look great.
>
> I have specific thoughts on the front page of the site. This page
> provides the first impression for new users and is a frequent stop for
> intermediate/experienced users. I think we should aim it to provide
> immediate help to these two group and move all other content away.
>
> New users need to know
> --> What the heck is Velocity?
+1. So what is it? Is it a templating engine? A toolbox for a templating
engine? What is the "Velocity project". I'm struggling with that answer
myself. ;-)
> --> How do I build a webapp with Velocity?
-0. IMHO you are wrong here. If you say "how do I start developing with
Velocity", then I agree. I resent narrowing Velocity down to a "web
technology". IMHO we should much more focus on "general templating
engine" and leave the "developing a web application" to the domain of
Velocity Tools (and other explicitly web-related, velocity-based
technologies like Click and VelTools. Offering links on "developing web
applications with Velocity", "embedding Velocity into your project",
"writing a general templating solution with Velocity" would be great.
The question again is, "Is this part of the wrapper site or part of the
engine docs"?
> --> What's the latest version?
+1. Latest Version of what? We already have three sub projects.
> --> Is there recent activity or news about this project?
+1. And I want to automatize it with an RSS feed. Maven 2 plugin
anyone? ;-)
> --> How do I get help?
+1
>
> Intermediate/experienced users need to know
> --> Where can I find the Javadocs, users guide, etc
Hm. In my experience from projects where I proposed Velocity, the most
important question is "how do I download it". Javadocs, guides etc.
comes later.
>
> Stuff that isn't as important (and shouldn't take up valuable front page
space)
> --> Anything more than a sentence about the Velocity TLP organization
No. "The Velocity Project" is IMHO != "The Velocity Engine Project". Do
we want a first class citizen? This is the wrapper site for the TLP and
the most important thing for me is that this site should change as
little as possible.
Having everything at your finger tips means, that you can have a stable
page with all the information that you can bookmark. Not, that it must
be the first page on the site.
>From an user perspective it is (IMHO) much more important that if I
bookmark a page from the wrapper site, it is around for a very long
time. The information on it might change but the page itself should not.
The ASF has a number of projects that are notoriously bad in that
respect. So these projects end up with "everything on index.html"
because this is the only page that they can guarantee to be always
there.
> --> Anything about the Apache Software Foundation
-1 here. Velocity is a part of the ASF and either we are doomed to have
"this is our license", "these are our goals", "these are our rules"
pages or just say "we are a part of the ASF" prominently and then link
to the general information pages.
> --> Long menus in the body of the page.
>
> It's tempting to say "this is a hierarchy -- we shouldn't put engine
> specific info on the home page-- everything goes on the individual
> project page". But I disagree-- for ease of use we need to orient
> users immediately on the main page of the site.
And I disagree here. If you are a first timer, the TLP site should give
you an overview on what is there. I remember coming as a first timer
(and initial exposure to Apache/Jakarta) to the Turbine web site and
getting swamped with "Turbine", "Fulcrum", "Stratum", "Scarab", even
"Ant" and later "Maven" and not being able to make heads or tails of it
because there was simply no overview there. I want to avoid that with
Velocity first-timers.
You get to the site. You see what is there. You might even decide that
"Tools" is the right thing for you, even though you came here hearing
about "Velocity" as in "Velocity Engine". If you are a seasoned user or
just a "Velocity Templating engine" user, you bookmark
http://velocity.apache.org/engine/ and you are done.
The one project I try to model the site after is the Struts web site.
Struts basically is one project. However, the actual project information
is *not* available from its title page. It is general information. If
you are a struts developer, you don't bookmark the first page. You
bookmark e.g. http://struts.apache.org/1.3.5/ for struts 1.3.5. And that
page will not change.
> It might be helpful to look at other multiproject sites, e.g.
> Hibernate (http://hibernate.org) First two paragraphs - about the main
> project. Short third paragraph about the organization. Then comes a
> short summary of each project. Then recent news (with dates). On the
> left is clear, bold menu with prominent link to "Documentation",
> "Download", and "Forum & Mailing Lists". Not saying this is perfect,
> but all the user questions listed above are answered with a minimum of
> scrolling or clicking around.
Yes, I'm fine with that. I'm not fine with "moving Velocity Engine docs
to top-level and pushing everything else aside". I think that we both do
want the same thing. The Hibernate site is BTW very similar to the
Struts site.
[...]
The rest of the comments are about pages that for me are either "spare
pages" or "stuff shuffling around". I agree with these comments but this
is just temporary stuff.
Thanks a lot for your input, I'm pretty sure that this will work out in
a way that we all can agree on. Please continue commenting and or
putting patches in. I don't want that to be an one-man show.
Best regards
Henning
--
Henning P. Schmiedehausen -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] | J2EE, Linux,
91054 Buckenhof, Germany -- +49 9131 506540 | Apache person
Open Source Consulting, Development, Design | Velocity - Turbine guy
"Save the cheerleader. Save the world."
--
Forio Business Simulations
Will Glass-Husain
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.forio.com
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