Website redesign 2009 requirements

This page will be used to condense all the requirements gathered on the FAB list for the redesign of the default download and spins websites, Website redesign 2009. Those threads are located here:

• https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2009-July/msg00088.html
• https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-advisory-board/2009-August/msg00020.html

Default download

Requirements

• Provide One Big Button for the default Desktop spin
• Provide a clear route to the new Spins hub
• Provide clearer instructions and links to support options

Board's original audience definitions follow, as requested by Design team.

• Page is designed for:
  • Primary:
    • People who are somewhat computer savvy, but may be new to Fedora and/or Linux and FOSS in general
    • People who are not sure what they need to do in order to try Fedora
    • People who may not understand how to create and use Live media
  • Secondary:
    • People who don't know where to find anything other than the default offering (i.e., is there something else available?)
• Page is not designed for:
  • People who are currently and comfortably using Fedora
  • People who have pre-specified needs for the Fedora they download
  • People who know where to find non-default offerings, and want to pick from an a la carte-style or other expanded sort of list

Additional information developed from FAB:

• Every page should have some indication of community ownership and attracting user to get involved if possible
• Concentrate on what the user wants to do

Spins

The spins "hub," a central page from which all Spins are visible, must be available no later than the get-fedora page relaunch. In other words, no get-fedora relaunch until Spins is relaunched too. All Spin owners will later have an attractive and functional landing page that can be customized with their own content.

Requirements

• Equal billing for all Spins
• Component pages for each Spin that the Spin SIGs can customize and populate as desired
• Clear route to default download (get-fedora) page for people who get confused or can't decide

Board's original audience definitions follow, as requested by Design team.

• This page is designed for people with specific goals:
  • PRIMARY:
    • People who have seen a specific spin in action or on display, and want a copy of that spin specifically
    • People who want to see everything Fedora has to offer
    • People who are looking for a specific team effort in which they can get involved
  • SECONDARY:
    • People who are looking for a specific tool for a specific job
    • People who want information about what a spin is, and how they can create one using common tools.
• This page is also designed for people with certain characteristics:
  • People who have specific needs
  • People who have enough technical knowledge to discern e.g. their computer's architecture
  • People who feel comfortable deciding for themselves what to download

Specific domains

We can establish subdomains that link directly, to serve:

• People who have specific needs beyond simply a functional desktop, such as specialized tools or a particular environment

Tasks

Top 10 Tasks www.fedoraproject.org Users Should Be Able to Do

2. Get access to support oriented towards NEW users.

• Ask #fedora folks what people ask about the most
• Wiki
  • Needs to be more oriented to those who have not used Linux before, as opposed to converts from other Linux distros (YES!)
  • Remove the need of the wiki for basic information and set it in fp.o (I'd like to see how the new wiki works organizationally too)
    • Some common stuff (like the common bugs page) are well-suited for a wiki, though
      • Actually, I might take this back. Things like commonbugs would be nice as static pages - less pain for infra too :-)
    • docs.fp.o is working on a user guide and an admin guide, find out what state that is in, and it's home other installation options, net-install, nfs...maybe mention the boot.iso and rescue CD
    • I *wish* we could theme docs.fp.o easily. *sigh*
• How to Upgrade Fedora
• How to Update Fedora
• How to Use the default Fedora Media (how to burn ISO, how Live Media works)

3. What Is Fedora / What the project is all about. (YES!) +1

• This is well explained by the blurb on the front page now. imho
  • +1 short and sweet (although I wouldn't mind more of /wiki/Overview showing up in the description)
    • +1, it does need to be slightly longer. as mizmo said right below this line :D
• we could go into more detail though... e.g. we could cite articles aboout Fedora - Fedora in the news +1
• Screenshot tour? VERY YES :)
  • the current Moin powered screenshot tours don't work to well in my opinion. i think we should write something from scratch after we switch from Moin
• "For The Press" section
  • archive of press releases
  • media contacts (pfrields, kara) with contact info
  • interviews?
  • Press packet! all the things a newbie reporter type needs to know <= moving this up
    • stickers ftw!!!! +1 +!

4. Join Fedora (that's always important :-))

• list of sigs => align to skill set
  • maybe details page for every sig to talk about what they do, how they communicate, when/where they meet
  • Does this go into wiki organization? It might not be easy to manage in the static pages.
    • maybe... could there be a way the people in each sig could maintain the info easily and the website somehow grabs a dump of that data on a regular basis?
      • True, we could probably get wide categories listed, at least. That too, but a tiny bit less flexible (or I guess it'll always end up linking into the wiki). We need clear divide about where the functionality of the wiki starts (this has always been annoying)
      • Subcategories exist in MediaWiki, not sure if that's relavant to that
  • The wiki kinda needs somewhat reorganized anyway, there's a lot of stuff in the wrong place, imho, plus the switch to MW can make organization for the better (spaces in article names)

5. What kinds of things can you DO with Fedora

• spins
• applications in fedora
• download other versions of Fedora < are these just spins or arches too ?
• Download individual RPM packages (instructions on how to use yum without network)

6. What's new/happening in fedora, right now (community? news?)

• planet Fedora
  • planet fedora divided up by language plus across all languages
    • +10000000001
  • planet fedora divided up by SIG/team (e.g. planet fedora: art team)
    • would this require special tagging stuff? might not work with all bloggers
      • nope, just a planet config file, the team lead could maintain it or it could key off of the account system (i see, +1)
• giant RSS feed aggregate like planet fedora for bodhi, koji, etc
• bodhi updates? rate the package? security updates? package builds?
• fedoranews? +1 and Events
• meetings (#fedora-meeting)
  • irc? you mean meeting logs? yep!!! and scheduled meetings / upcoming meetings (that should be left to the wiki as its content that will change every week and depends on each team)
    • if we use media wiki we could get an RSS feed of updates to a 'meeting minutes' wiki page if we so chose to set it up like that? righto (is that really important for an end user, why not use just the wiki?)
• new artwork feed :)
• Events +1
• News articles about Fedora? Red Hat magazine articles?(same as fedoranews?)
  • no this would be more, "Fedora in the news" like if an article comes out in mainstream media like linux journal or cnet or something like that
• Digg?

7.Support Fedora

• bugzilla - file/report a bug!
• support fedora free media?
• become a mirror
  • isn't joining a form of support ? got it...
    • it is, but there are a lot of ways to support fedora that don't involve the commitment of joining. it's easy for a big company with $$ to donate equipment for example (well i think so lol)
    • I don't think we'd turn that down. ;)
  • also what about the press! press release section? +1 maybe that shold be under about fedora yeah

8. Download other Fedora forms

• KDE spin
• Full DVD ISO
• alternative arches (x86_64, ppc?)
• older releases (fc1, fc2, etc)
• download/get the source

9. Fedora bling

• website banners
• tshirt designs and iron-on instructions
• stickers and printing instructions
• forum sig bars / im avatars
• posters

10. Developer's Corner:

• How to develop in Fedora / How to build packages / etc << where does this go ? << somewhat deep under join-fedora? Wiki or not? (I want to see how mediawiki is compared to moin)
  • it goes in Join Fedora
  • J5 is working on a myFedora project for developers... i think that could be its own thing
    • it'll have stuff like you login using your fedora account and it gives you updates from koji and bohdi on all the packages you own, and feedback you've gotten from your builds in bohdi, bugs assigned to you, etc

DISCUSSION

What kinds of things can you DO with Fedora

• Links to particular SIGs (Astronomy, Robotics, etc) I think this should be covered on the "whats fedora" section +1
• How about some of the user stories Stickster has been collecting? Fedora powered robots!!! :) +1
  • it would be really really awesome to have case studies with pictures of fedora in action like the people using it and the robots running it :)
  • Maybe a sort of news feed for this kind of thing. like red hat magazine, but strictly fedora? (talk to marketing, l10n :-/)
• ah, what you can do with fedora leads to other spins ?

Download other versions of Fedora

• Simple 'older versions' box under current version?
• What was that archives.fedoraproject.org discussion in infrastructure? Was that for archaic versions?
• Disclaimer: X is no longer supported
• KDE live, install media (CD/DVD), etc.

Download individual RPM packages (only place I can do this is rpmfind.net)

 (we had templates for repoview before, need to find/remake those?)

• (is this top-10 able though? is this something new users care about?)

   - if you were like me when you were starting with Fedora and you had no
     Internet to your box, and you're downloading packages and necessary stuff
     all by hand, then yes. ;)
     - but you should never download and install them by hand! you should use yum. we do NOT want new users running into RPM dependency hell (make sense?) +1
     - you don't need internet to use yum
       - i did not know this. i didn't find docs on that! :-/ (perhaps read about opyum?)
       - maybe we need docs focused towards non-connected users as well. although, ahem, those docs would be online wouldn't they :(
         - +1, how about installing an RPM package by default that contained those docs? +1
         but yeh you can point yum at a directory of RPMs and run createrepo on it. i've used yum on a bus with no internet using a bunch of packages dumped to a usb key
     
     and docbookdocs can be rendered into all sorts of formats
     

What's new/happening in fedora, right now (<= this is a top ten suggestion right?) yep

=============================

- RSS feeds (?) - news.fp.o? Talk to them too. I wonder if they could figure out a cool way to handle l10n!

Support Fedora

==

- download Fedora forum and instant messenger avatars / sigbars - download Fedora web banners / buttons - download Fedora posters - nicely organized Fedora bling - T-shirt designs - link to fedora store? we need a fedora store first. /me waits on Store SIG - instructions on how to request the logo to create your own Fedora bling - Sponsor Fedora (like infrastructure sponsors - ask Mike about this, I guess) - get installation media for events? (should that be on the ambassadors wiki section?) (only ambassadors can ask for media?)

 - anyone can ask for media, i think. have it outside the ambassadors wiki
 - Also related to the store SIG/website, which needs to happen :-)

- does this mean monetary support, or is that necessary because of Red Hat?

 - probably not i am not sure though
 - i know that the Free Media... thing asks for donations
  - They usually run out within the first day of the month, though
  - There's a person in #fedora that gives free media out too.  I just wonder why he doesn't do it through Free Media :-(
    - (rebel without a cause)