[Mailman-Developers] Website re-org?

[Barry Warsaw]

On Dec 05, 2015, at 01:10 AM, Terri Oda wrote:

>Abhilash did a lovely job on the new website, but while the layout has
>changed, a lot of the content hasn't.  And I'm not sure what we've got lines
>up very with what people want out of our website, so I'm thinking about
>re-organizing.

Big +1.

>2. Find out how to get and install the latest version of Mailman.
>
>Need improvement here.  Mailman 2.1 download links are good.  Mailman 3
>directs you to PyPI but then there's nothing explaining about how Mailman now
>is a suite and it's this bunch of packages.  Also nothing about how you can
>use mailman-bundler rather than trying to make the magic happen yourself.

We have something of a landing page, minimal as it is:

http://docs.mailman3.org/en/latest/

and its git repo:

https://gitlab.com/mailman/mailman-suite-doc

Certainly the content could be expanded on and improved, but I'm not sure
whether it makes sense to exit from the website to this readthedocs page or
pull the content into the website.  We probably don't need it in multiple
locations.

>3. Find out how to report a bug
>
>We kind of fail on this one, except if you want to report a security issue.
>Again, this is more complex than it might seem since there's a bunch of
>different components.

http://www.list.org/devs.html

Probably not the most discoverable, or readable though.

>4. Find the docs / get help with an issue.
>
>The good: they're linked right there in the top bar.  The bad: is someone
>looking at this going to know they want the docs for postorius vs hyperkitty?
>Will any of that make sense?  I think we might need a landing page here.

I sense a theme. :)

>5. Find out how to contribute.
>
>This is going to be especially gsoc students.  We've got some nice developer
>links and yeay, this is one of the pages that lists out all the parts of
>Mailman!  But we could really use a startup guide here.

For sure.

>7. Learn more about Mailman
>
>We've got some good resources: features, media, the code of conduct, etc.
>But probably we should group this all together so that it's easier for people
>to find the other important things they want without wading through all these
>links.
>
>I'd suggest we keep the top of page links as they are, since they're super
>useful to people who know what they're looking for already, and have the left
>side menu be more about the guides.
>
>But I think we should replace all the links down the left-hand side of the
>page with links that match up with those goals, so the menu would probably
>look something like:
>
>* About Mailman
>- combine all the about mailman stuff here, although we also want to leave the main page as is, so there may be a bit of duplication here.
>* Get Mailman
>- Links to source code and install guides, high level description of what to do.
>* Help and Documentation
>- landing page with a link to the docs, wiki and mailing lists, with instructions.  Maybe some search boxes?  Userguides go here too.
>* Report an issue / Contact Us
>- landing page with reminder about reporting security bugs, links to bug trackers, mailing lists, irc
>* How to Contribute
>- new contributors guide here, prefaced by the basic source/gitlab links
>
>Thoughts on better ways to set this up?  Other suggestions of things people
>often want out of our website?

A lot of that makes sense Terri, and thanks for thinking about this.

High level bits seem to me that we need a richer landing page for Mailman 3
that brings all the resources for that version together, and better left hand
menus.

Cheers,
-Barry