We have with this project something that most other Apache projects don't have and which the legacy OOo project never had. We have two independent websites.
We have the legacy www.openoffice.org website, which served as an end-user portal for OpenOffice as well as a website for project participants. And we have the http://incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg/, which on graduation probably becomes something shorter, like http://openoffice.apache.org. For most Apache projects their website also serves both purposes: a site for users as well as project participants. So, we have both of these websites, and a lot of redundancy caused by it. This obviously has a downside. It makes it hard to update, since a lot of information is in both places. And it confuses users since the websites are out of sync on some important topics. It also prevents us from really optimizing the experience for each audience. I suspect that long-term this dual-website with overlapping content is not a maintainable model. What can we do? I hope I am not committing heresy if I say that most users of OpenOffice care as little about Apache as drinker of a Pepsi cares about the Board of Directors of PepsiCo Corporation. The average user (and we're talking about millions of them) cares about downloading, installing, using, learning about and generally being productive with OpenOffice. It is a tool they use to do their work. Their work is what matters to them, not our work. But of course we also have a growing number of users, contributors and committers who want to get more involved with the project. OpenOffice is interesting to them. They identify with it. They want to learn more than just the basics. They are intrigued by open source. They want to help. They want to get more involved. The trick I think, is to have websites that speak to each of these audiences, as well as an easy/obvious way to navigate between them, while at the same time avoiding unnecessary cross talk and redundancy. For example, could we have something like this: 1) www.openoffice.org is the website for the OpenOffice product. It is the end user site, focused on their interactions with the product. So download, help, extensions, support. It is not how they interact with the project. It serves the narrow focus on the product. 2) incubator.apache.org/openofficeorg (eventually openoffice.apache.org) on the other hand is where the project members work and where the public (includiing users) interacts with the project. Not the product, but the project. This dual website is quite commonly used for managing large and important brands. For example, the consumer, when interfacting with the brand Pepsi and Pepsi products goes to: http://www.pepsi.com But the person who wants to learn more about the company goes to another URL: http://www.pepsico.com/ Navigating between then is possible via a link on the page footer. But generally each site is optimized for its target audience.
