Hi everyone I'm thinking about making a few changes to the FreeDOS website. But I don't want this to be "just another makeover" that makes things pretty. Instead, I'm looking for what you will find useful.
I'm thinking of a few things already: *1. Update the wiki* The wiki is arguably part of the FreeDOS website, and people go there if they can't find the information they are looking for on the rest of the site. It seems most people use the website to download FreeDOS, check the latest news, find links, and get general information. But if they are looking for a "how-to" or other documentation, they look to the wiki for that. As I mentioned in the get-together today, the wiki is out of date. The wiki started as docs we kept in the SourceForge site-wide wiki. When SF stopped running a site-wide wiki, they gave all projects an export of their data and instructions for how to set up their own MediaWiki. I don't know MediaWiki, but I was able to follow the instructions to set up the wiki we have now. The setup works, but it's really hard for me to do basic "admin" things like add new editors. So I need to update that. An updated wiki will make it easier to provide up-to-date documentation and "how-to" instructions. *2. Make it easy to share stuff* Sometimes it would be nice to share a news item with Twitter or other social media. I'm working on an update to the News system that will provide "share" buttons to share a news item on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I'd also like to include Reddit. As a bonus, this update also makes this easier to manage on the back-end. *3. Make the front page more welcoming* The front page is a quick "landing page" for people to learn about FreeDOS. It's not bad, but could be better. I'm planning to embed the latest FreeDOS video on the front, since the videos are about *things you can do with FreeDOS* or *showing off neat features in FreeDOS*, so I think the video will help. I'll also make the screenshots smaller so they don't take up so much of the screen. I also want to make it easier to start downloading FreeDOS right from the front page. I'm not sure yet how I'll do that, but I'm thinking about borrowing from the https://getfedora.org/ front page, where they have a small info box about each "spin" of the Fedora distro, and a "Download Now" button that brings you to a separate page where you actually download Fedora. What do you think? BTW, you can already access the front page as https://www.freedos.org/ or http://www.freedos.org/ or https://freedos.org/ or http://freedos.org/ Let me know what you think will make the website easier to use. I'll plan to tackle this in February or March, with plans to deploy in March or April. Jim
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