Frontpage redesign

From openSUSE

Background

The frontpage of http://en.opensuse.org has in excess of 6 million page views. See popular pages list and alexa.com for exact numbers. Participants in the discussions on this topic agree that current design should be improved. Please see the discussion on mail list.

Ideas

Please use discussion page for comments, this here is periodically updated digest.

• Add a prominent link to the Guiding Principles for openSUSE.
• Fewer entry points (menu items). The aim is to have better and faster access to the articles, in other words more relevant articles listed in lesser clicks. (Started)
• Special attention needs to be given to the menus on the left side frame. Make it a shorter list so that all links fit on one screen, without scrolling.
• More appealing graphic design (illustrations, background images, Google like thematic illustrations). (Started)
• Few styles that visitor can choose from (CSS). (Started)
• Improve News section (Done)
• Higher visibility of openSUSE in other languages, having a list at the bottom of the page, like Wikipedia. (Partially done)
• More external examples that show different graphic and layout designs.
• Screenshots.
• Add a large, relevant, friendly banner at the top of the page. Case in point: GNOME.org

Proposed Designs

The aim is to create the best frontpage possible.

Take a look on the list of present ideas and enhancements whishlist then be free to create a new design, redesign current page or design components that can be used by other designers and add a link to the present ideas.

Related

• Proposals
• The Present Status Breakdown
• Enhancements whishlist

External Links

• The alexa.com traffic data for opensuse.org
• Web pages that are Mediawiki based as examples what can be done:
  • Mono Project Short words that describe essence of menu items make this page very readable.
  • Hula Project
  • Beagle Project
  • Mozilla Wiki
  • LinuxQuestions
  • Wikinews International Portal shows that fancy graphic is not precondition for working portal.

Help

Take somebody you know and never has been to www.opensuse.org before. Tell him to find help/support on that site. Stop the time until the user finds the links to help/support. My guess: it takes ages to even get to the page where one could find it because the frontpage does not even mention support/help and wiki is not a synonym for those words.

Take the same person and stop the time until he finds help/support on www.ubuntu.com.

Compare both sites' performance.

Tell that person that one has to click on wiki, stop the time until the person finds help/support on the following page. My guess: it takes ages because help is only mentioned once and as a tiny, tiny link and that link does not even link to helo/support but to download-help.

Sorry to be that sarcastic, but one could think that opensuse.org maintainers do not expect a lot of users to come to this site looking for help.

My suggestion, put a big fat icon on the frontpage and the following that displays a question-mark and a link below it that states: help/support. Rabauke 15:43, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Do no harm

The front page provides one very important item; a link to the list of Package Repositories. I strongly advise that this remain on the front page in a reasonably prominent location, surviving whatever changes occur as a result of redesigns. If the rest of the front page vanished leaving only that link, the site would still work fine for a large fraction of your users. Allenc28 17:18, 7 May 2008 (UTC)