[IPython-dev] Website

[Brian Granger]

A few comments:

* We are not very far off from being at the point where we hire a
professional design firm to design a logo, color scheme and website
for us.
* I am very much in favor of us sticking with Sphinx for everything
for now because we will spend dozens of hours getting a hand coded
website to look as nice as Sphinx across all browsers.  Sure we could
do this, but I think it is not worth the effort at this point when a
full blow professional designed site is just around the corner.
* We can tweak the Sphinx css to "personalize" our design.
* I think the websites that are using Sphinx throughout (networkx,
matplotlib) have an extremely nice uniform look at the only sites that
beat these in terms of looks (sqlalchemy) are done professional
quality designed sites.
* We could have a different Sphinx website for the docs and the main
website with slightly different color themes to distinguish the two,
but I don't think that is necessary.

Cheers,

Brian

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 2:57 AM, Thomas Kluyver <takowl at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1 June 2011 21:32, Fernando Perez <fperez.net at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I *really* want the website content to be under version control, and
>> also to be written in reST instead of hand-coded html (except possibly
>> for a few visually key pages like the main page, if necessary).  If
>> it's in simple reST we're much more likely to actually keep it updated
>> than if we have to hand-edit html, which I find fairly unpleasant.
>
> I think in fact we're saying the same thing, but from two different angles.
> I'm not suggesting we write reams of content in straight HTML. Sphinx/RST is
> the right tool for the bulk of the stuff, augmented with a wiki for the more
> changeable stuff. But, as you say, a couple of key pages - certainly the
> landing page, and perhaps also the download page - need to be visually
> attractive.
>
> I think this is going to be easier to achieve by designing them in HTML than
> by trying to hammer Sphinx's output into the form we want. Sphinx can be
> themed, but the examples I've seen all still fit within a certain Sphinx
> model, which doesn't feel ideal for a homepage.
>
> I'll try building Komal's repository a bit later on.
>
> In terms of the landing page, have you had a look at the file I sent above?
> I'm by no means a designer, but that's how I envisage the basic shape of it
> - a little content, with the focus on a set of key links to downloads, docs,
> mailing lists, etc.
>
> Thomas
>



-- 
Brian E. Granger
Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo
bgranger at calpoly.edu and ellisonbg at gmail.com