Xfce.org main website [was Re: Xfce Goodies Project enhancements]

[Auke Kok]

FOgive me for intruding in the discussion, I think I have some 
experience with it and would like to share that with you all ;^)

Biju Chacko wrote:

>Francois Le Clainche wrote:
>  
>
>>Ok. Let's finally do something for xfce.org. I'm ready to work with
>>other people on a new main website.
>>
>>- drupal or mambo based, I don't care, as long as it can be easily
>>  updated by all developers
>>
>>- I think we should drop multi-language support
>>    
>>
>As long as it doesn't cost us anything, I'd say we should keep it. 
>Drupal, et al have good multilanguage support. If we keep multilangauge 
>support for only the relatively static parts of the website, it 
>shouldn't be too much of a maintainence hassle, I hope. You'd have more 
>experience than I on this.
>
>  
>
>>What's the state of directory.xfce.org? Shouldn't we integrate
>>directory/goodies/main website in a single entity? One website for all
>>the code available in the xfce svn repository?
>>    
>>
>
>I agree. The Xfce community is growing ... Xfce.org needs to be a 
>gateway to all the different sub-projects as well as the home page for 
>the Desktop Environment.
>
>  
>
>>What Auke did for lunar-linux.org is the example to follow.
>>Too many resources hides the information.
>>


yes and no, many things can be said about drupal, the old 
lunar-linux.org website, and even the way the current xfce website is 
setup.

If I may spot the biggest problems right now with xfce, then they would be:

1 - the documentation points to an outside webpage
2 - the xfcewiki is obsolete, it should be the documentation (which 
should be a wiki anyway) (and it's also offsite again)
3 - the directory site is not progressing
4 - the goodies website is also offsite mocha

however, the current site setup has a few large advantages

a - simple, secure and fast code
b - clear layout and navigation back to all other components through the 
top-bar


concluding, I would try to solve the problems first before tossing the 
baby out with the bathwater (a dutch expression - meaning you throw away 
something which can be brilliant before it has the chance of proving 
itself).


On top of that, I think that with some of the style-designers out there 
it's much more fun to tweak the xfce.org look design (it needs a 
freshening up IMO) and try to apply it to all components. The wiki 
should follow this design closely IMO, and we should move the wiki and 
the goodies pages onto mocha ASAP - we have the power and bandwidth for 
it, so use it. (can even do this for the forum if needed, although I 
prefer to keep that one offsite for security reasons for now).

Switching to drupal/mambo/something else can be done later at any stage, 
but will result in a loss of enthusiastic people working on the site I 
think - I don't think neither CMS's are well equipped for such a large 
setup as xfce needs.

Again - I don't see the need to do all this - keeping up style 
throughout xfce pages and making navigation clear works much better, and 
(like now) it allows you to delegate whole subsites to enthusiastic 
people (like the forum and wiki, relatively or even very succesfull 
maintained).

Auke