Observations on the official web site
Christopher Arndt
going through it, comparing it to other web framework sites and having
in mind that we are now post 1.0 release, along with suggestions for
improvement.
If I should enter them into trac (which component? Docs?), please let me
know!
Chris
General
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Observation: There is no news section or something similar. There is the
changelog page, but the link is not clearly labeled as such and a
history of other events and announcements (DVD, book, conferences, etc.)
would be nice to have too.
Suggestion: include a link in the Header labeled "News" and either point
it to Kevin's blog (http://www.blueskyonmars.com/category/turbogears/)
or a news page on the wiki (which the should include a prominent link to
the editor, where news items could be sent to)
Observation: there is no site map and it's hard to be sure whether
you've read all pages on the site, since they are not linked from a
central place.
Suggestion: auto-generate a flat link-list of all static pages on the
site and link it from the footer.
Header/Main Links
-----------------
Observation: I expected something like a tutorial behind "Learn",
instead it points to an "About" like page.
Suggestion: either call this link "Learn more" or "About"
Observation: The Django website has a "Community" link prominently in
the header, pointing to a planet-style blog aggregator. On the TG
website, the link to planet.turbogears.org is only in sidebar under a
mis-leading heading ("Get involved") and only on the front-page not on
sub-pages.
Suggestion: include a link labeled "Community" in the header that points
to planet.turbogears.org
Suggestion: Maybe include a link in the header labeled "Development"
that points to a page on the wiki with resources for developers of
TurboGears proper (SVN, IRC, trac, trunk ML).
Observation: the "CogBin" link does not work again after the move to
WebFaction. 404 Errors for the main links in the header shed a VERY bad
light on the project.
Suggestion: Drop in at least a static "Construction work in progress" page.
Sidebar
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Suggestion: the "Get involved" section should include links to the
Bugtracker, maybe the IRC channel and the page with developer resources
mentioned above.
Observation: "Book available now!" doesn't seem to point anwhere.
Suggestion: make it a link to Amazon (like in the main content area on
the front page) or the book homepage (http://www.turbogearsbook.com/)
Suggestion: Change the text in the 1.0 announcement labeled "and much
more" to read: "and much more. Read what else is new in the changelog"
and only link the word changelog to /about/changelog.html
Observation: there seems to be no factual reason to include the "Hosting
Options" section so prominently on every page. I supsect is a revenue
generating thing.
Suggestion: this section should be marked as advertisment or state
clearly that you help the project by choosing one/some of these options.
Observation: some pages have a "Comment on this page" link at the bottom
of the sidebar, which links to trac, but does not work, because
anonymous ticket submissions are disabled.
Suggestion: install a good spam filter for trac and allow anonymous
submissions or provide a guest account and give the password below the
link ("Log in with guest/XXXXXX")
Home page
---------
Observation: in the link "try it today..." at the bottom of the content
area it is not clear that "it" refers to TG not Python.
Suggestion: rename link to "Download and try out TurboGears today..."
Observation: it is not obvious at a casual glance that "TurboGears Under
The Hood" is a list of sites using TG.
Suggestion: Introduce subsections named "Success Stories" and
"Testimonials" or "Quotes" (that may have links to subpages with more
extensive lists)
/about/
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Observation: the last sentence of the first paragraph of text doesn't
make any sense. It seems to be truncated. What are those three goals?
Does this refer to the headings? Then the second heading "More than the
sum..." lacks a verb, i.e. should be "Be more than the sum ...".
Suggestion: Introduce a first level heading "Project goals" and put the
first three headings as second level headings after the first text
paragraph.
Suggestion: In the section "Play well with others", introduce third
level headings "Project philosophy" and "License" or better, make them
first level headings and rewrite the whole page.
Suggestion: have a TOC at the top of the page.
Observation: "1.0 in beta" has to be updated.
Suggestion: Rename the heading "1.0 in beta" to "Development status"
/download/
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Observation: the page starts of with some reference to Pyrex which is
rather irrelevant to the goal that a vistor to this site is trying to
achieve, which is "installing TurboGears". This is confusing.
Suggestion: Introduce a second level heading "Supported Python versions"
and a paragraph reading:
"TurboGears is based on the Python programming language. Currently it
requires either version 2.3.x [is that still true?] or 2.4.x [which are
the exact correct version numbers here?] of Python to be installed on
your system. Using Python version 2.4.x is strongly recommended. The new
*Python version 2.5 is not yet supported*. See the the progress status
of the support for Python 2.5 here [link to wiki]."
Suggestion: Introduce two new second level headings: "Quickstart
instructions" (before 2nd paragraph) and "Detailed installation
instructions". (after quickstart instructions)
Suggestion: Extend second paragraph with: "If you don't have Python
installed on your system (or are not sure about it), please refer to the
detailed installation instructions in the next section."
/download/filelist.html
-----------------------
Observation: there are several versions of each package listed on this
page, because this page is mainly ther to be parsed by easy_install.
This is confusing to people who are just looking to download RG.
Suggestion: Include a paragraph at the top of the page that reads:
"This is a list of packages needed by TurboGears ind different versions.
This page can be used by the easy_install script or to download a
particular package manually. If you are just want to install TurboGears,
please look at the installation instructions [link to /download].
Elvelind Grandin
I will look at it closer tonight and see if I can fix some of the
things you point out.
--
cheers
elvelind grandin
Jeff Hinrichs - DM&T
it easy to follow additions/edits and user contributed content.
-jeff
Karl Guertin
>
> An RSS feed for the Docs section would be a good thing. It would make
> it easy to follow additions/edits and user contributed content.
http://docs.turbogears.org/RecentChanges
It's not an RSS feed, but there are services that can convert page
changes into RSS feeds. At the moment, API docs are a higher
programming priority than RSS. ;]