Hi Clayton, all, On Sat, Jan 10, 2009 at 12:49 AM, Clayton <[email protected]> wrote: > A lot of work has gone into the openoffice.org website to make it look a > LOT better and make it much more accessible to everyone... I'm wondering > now though, what about the OOoWiki? > > The Main Page on the OOoWiki is pretty much a long link farm page - a > large number of links which are obsolete or not really useful to 99% of > the people using the Wiki.
We should consider the kinds of users that visit the wiki (or the kinds of users we would like to be visiting the wiki more in the future), and compare that with the kinds of users that the wiki is currently targeting. For example, I find the project links at the top of the wiki very useful - they let people get where they want quickly - but only if they know OOo's project structure, and if they have a reasonably good idea of where they're going. Some people might not be after specific projects, but rather something more practical (cross-project, or project independent, such as getting help with OOo). The links further down the main page seem to be trying to address this, but not in a user-friendly way. First, they require scrolling down - not everyone will do this, especially if they get intimidated by the project links (user help is at the very bottom of the page!). Second, the links could do with some weeding and updating - e.g., List of Wishes is not really a project AFAIK, and it's not really a page that's being a lot. I would suggest the following: * Add new-user-friendly links at the top of the page - these would be targeted for those visitors to the wiki who don't have a clear idea of where they're going / where they need to go * Restructure the layout of the project links so they do not eat so much vertical space - e.g., by having a 2-column layout * Get rid of "Welcome to the OpenOffice.org wiki" heading... it's eating vertical space and it's not really necessary * Move Search into the header like the OOo website does. This makes better use of the header's vertical space, and makes the left hand menu smaller * Move the "In Other Languages" portlet on the left hand menu further up the list on the main page (where "Toolbox" currently is) to promote other languages in the wiki * In terms of length, the new main page should be about a third of the size of the current page * Use Galaxy icons on the homepage to give visual meaning to sections > This Wiki Talk page from a new OOo Community member is an indication of > the problem we are facing with the Wiki and the website... > http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_talk:Cbrownusa where he > points out that it is confusing, and he has no idea where to go or which > link to click in the website maze. > > Has anyone given any thought to a major rework of the Wiki Main Page? > Can we simplify it? Can we make it clearer where to go as a developer, > and where to go as a user? Can we use some graphics, illutrations, > icons etc to help direct people? > > Does anyone have any ideas? Proposals? Is anyoen willing to take this > and start re-working the Main Page? To get/keep the discussion going, I've made a quick proposal at: http://www.patentpending.co.nz/openoffice/wiki/Main_Page_New.htm which incorporates the suggestions made above. Feel free to comment / tear it apart / make suggestions, etc. Regards, Ivan. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
