Well I think the new site is definitely a step in the right direction. The old site is definitely "utilitarian" and is quite functional, but not "sexy". And I think the whole point is to (hopefully) have a good first impression of the language and community by "impressing" (if you will) new users with a cool website.
So, while I agree that the beta site does have a definite "nineties corporate" feel to it, I think it is better than the old site and would like to throw some kudos to whoever spent the time on it. I'm sure it wasn't a small job. At any rate, opinions will always differ. You are always going to get the people who want a cool flash-based animated site with 3D stereo surround sound, and the other end of the spectrum where you will be flamed if you do anything more than hand-code the html, on Unix machines only, using Vim or Emacs, ensuring it has a gray or neutral beige background, *and* uses the default font giving that classic 1981 "university professor who refuses to use anything except Netscape Navigator" feel. I use Eclipse a lot in my day-job and there are debates like this all the time whenever a change is made in the UI, but usually sanity (and quite nice-looking software, BTW) are the result. FWIW - they have just re-done the L&F of their website as well. I must admit I like it (eclipse.org), but others do not - I'm sure we'll hear from them shortly - ;-). To each his own. I think it would definitely be cool to use a Python-based web app for the site. Plone is alright, but has a definite Plone approach that can be hard to shoe-horn your stuff into (although I think these guys have done an *awesome* job on their site: http://www.schooltool.org/). Zope is flexible but a beast to learn. And, well...there are just so many others. ;o) I'm still looking, myself... Markus. Tim Parkin wrote: > Leeuw van der, Tim wrote: > >> I think that in general, I don't like the fact that links to >> high-profile users are featured so prominently. That row of pictures >> there looks good to me 'as such' but linking there to 'success stories' >> feels, dunno, perhaps a bit cheesy to me. (That might be just my dutch >> upbringing) >> I would certainly want to see such links somewhere on the front page, >> just not so prominently. >> >> > Possibly so... however in my experience, selling python to people is > made a lot easier by being able to say 'look these guys are using it'. > This may not help sell it to programmers, but as a businessman trying to > sell my programming services, it's exceptionally important. > >>> btw do you have a problem with using nasa or astrazeneca as example >>> >>> >> high >> >> >>> profile users? >>> >>> >> As I said, I don't like them. We're not a commercial company trying to >> promote itself to potential buyers. But that's too a large degree a >> matter of taste. >> >> > Well I'd have to disagree with yout on one point.. 'We' may not > be a commercial company (when you talk about python as a singular unit) > but as python developers, we should be in the process of trying to > 'sell' python wherever we can. Because we aren't a commercial company, > our only 'sales' channels are the website and the developers/consultants > that use python. (I'm talking about selling in the terms of 'promoting' > or trying to persuade someone that using python is a good thing). > >> I do actually think, though, that if the Python website *is* going to >> feature such big names with such prominence, some sort of approval from >> these organizations should be requested? That they don't mind being used >> a a Python reference story? >> >> > The approval is already there (see pythonology success stories). > >> About what could be there... Link to the even calender, or >> recent/upcoming event.. That is one to stay, I think. >> I think it would be good to have a link there too development >> environments that can be used for Python: editors, debuggers, IDEs / IDE >> extenstions, etc >> >> >> > It's difficult to summarise this in a single image. The XP image was > intended as a 'catch all' for the development environment. A different > image and title would probably achieve better results but coming up with > one or two words to sumarise that list is quite difficult. > >> A third item could perhaps be a link to the Python Package Index -- >> another thing that Python developers are likely to need. >> >> >> > The home page isn't intended to target existing python users.. and the > home page photos are mostly targetted at the sort of people that respond > well to photos. It's a dilemma that the home page has to serve two > masters, however if we have a 'developer home page' which can be > dedicated to development issues, news, planetpython links, package > libraries etc, we would have a single page that developers could bookmark. > > The only alternative was to create a separate 'marketing python' website > but it would just get ignored, especially by the people we really need > to see the 'marketing' content. > >> These things are, of course, rather developer-centered (well, >> Python-user centered...) >> Being a software developer that uses Python, I wouldn't really know what >> else to put there ;-) >> But many people might have other things they wish to put in the centre >> of atte >> > Yep, > > Thats probably why a dedicated page for developers would make more sense. > > Tim > > p.s. thanks for the comments btw.. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list