Jeffrey Tadlock wrote:
On Feb 8, 2008 12:42 PM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Here's the problem we want to solve... too much information to dissiminate.
Yes, we have a lot of information to disseminate to largely different
audiences. I agree with that point.
Putting this information at different domain names though isn't the
way to solve that problem. It just makes finding the information that
much more difficult if you aren't 100% sure of what you are looking
for to start with.
I don't think a single landing page is going to work. You want a link
farm, we can have a link farm, but I don't think it makes any sense at
all to make the link farm the entry point for new people, nor is a
guided tour entry point a good thing for existing contributors.
Uh, link farm? That paints a rather negative picture right out the
door. How many links would we need off of a main Fedora page? Four?
Six? Even in Máirín's other email, six groups were brainstormed. Six
links does not make a link farm. Some of it could probably be
answered right on the main page.
For some historical background, the fpo site was such a link farm (or
landing page, either one is bad I think) with six links on it. It didn't
work well and the domain was eventually changed to point directly to the
wiki. See:
http://web.archive.org/web/20050419015224/http://www.fedoraproject.org/
http://web.archive.org/web/20050826014104/http://fedoraproject.org/
What current contributors need and what potential contributors need
are totally different and we need entry points which recognize that.
On top of that, if we are serious about 'messaging', then we need an
entry point which is dedicated nearly entirely to 'messaging.'
That's sort of how messaging works right... you have to be on message
consistently.
But you don't want to scatter your entry points across different
domains. Think of it this way. I'm working a booth at a Linux
conference and someone asks me where to go to get more info on
contributing. It is much easier to drive people towards a main
fedoraproject.org page and say, click the link section for 'Getting
Involved' than to say go to getinvolved.org and then have to tell the
very next person who is looking for online support to go to
fedorasupport.org for help. If I can direct people to one main site,
they can easily see the info they are interested in and perhaps see
something else that interests them as well. Multiple domain names
leads to confusion and in the end makes it *harder* to find the
information you are interested in.
We're not suggesting having a separate domain for every single
subsection of the site. I would suggest we have two, very similar to the
Firefox website's model:
- getfedora.org (or usefedora.org, or whatever) - for newbie and
would-be convert users, to learn about wtf is fedora and how to get it,
in a fairly hand-holding matter. also with advocacy resources like
buttons and banners and shiz, and links to / integration with
user-centric sites such as fedoraunity, fedora forum, and fedora news.
- fedoraproject.org - for getting things done, just the basic facts on
what is fedora and how to get it, a much richer set of links to
resources such as planet and our mailing lists and IRC info and fedora
hosted projects and ISOs and mirrors and all that. Very focused towards
current contributors and developers.
A third site I think we could have is what J5 is working on - my fedora
- along the veins of fedoraproject.org, but when you log in for example
and you are a package maintainer it gives you feeds and information
related to the very packages you maintain, so it's more personal than
the fpo site.
Take a look at Ubuntu's page. It is clean and simple, but provides a
large amount of information or at the very least a quick path to get
the information you want. They talk about themselves on the main
page, easily visible links to getting Ubuntu, getting support, getting
involved and developing. And they have a news feed and links to their
editions (a.k.a. our spins). And plenty of room to make an
announcement in the top banner. And all you have to remember is
www.ubuntu.com - not multiple domain names to find the information you
want.
ubuntu has:
ubuntuforums.org
fridge.ubuntu.com
shop.canonical.com
wiki.ubuntu.com
a separate domain for almost every 'spin' - kubuntu.org, edubuntu.org, etc.
What ubuntu is doing is that ubuntu.com is geared towards users and
non-contributors (and customers) and it links out towards developer and
contributor resources. I am a developer i have to dig pretty deep on
their site to get to stuff that interests me.
We could do that for fedoraproject.org, but the concern as stated
elsewhere in this thread that the 'project' might confuse / scare off
this type of target user. Thus the suggestion to use a domain like
usefedora.org and to reserve fedoraproject.org for the
contributor/developer community.
I'm not afraid of dividing traffic, I'm afraid of shallow traffic...
people who hit an entry point and lose interest quickly because the
page has the wrong information and get bored... or too much
information and they get lost.
So we split the domain names, now I am new Linux user and when looking
for Fedora stumble on to fedoradevelopers.org. Oops, this looks hard,
I guess I will try some other flavor. The risk of wrong information
is probably greater when splitting the domain names, versus funneling
traffic to a main fedoraproject.org page that is thought out and
presents a launching point to the information they really seek quickly
and effectively.
I think you are slightly exaggerating what we are suggesting here.
~m
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