[pydotorg-www] project plan

[Michael Foord]

On 21/04/2010 15:32, Stephan Deibel wrote:
> Martin v. Löwis wrote:
>>> I think a lot of geeks just don't like "marketing", not matter what the
>>> purpose.
>>
>> I don't think "not like" describes it correctly. Me, personally, I don't
>> care about that aspect of the site. I want python.org to be the place
>> were people download Python releases, report bugs, post information they
>> find useful, collaborate, and learn about events that take place.
>> Whether or not the site also "markets" Python is of little relevance to
>> me. Only if the marketing gets in the way of the other functions I start
>> not liking it.
>
> The most effective marketing is low-key word of mouth and other kinds of
> informal helpful referrals.  The kind of stuff that people wouldn't 
> even really
> think of as marketing.  This will mostly happen entirely outside of the
> website.
>
> The website should be accessible and helpful to people that receive such
> word of mouth and want to learn about and start using Python.  It should
> try doing that for a variety of audiences.

This is the main point. I think the website should be attractive to all 
and useful for a range of different purposes. In previous threads we 
identified various different users with different needs:

* Complete novices wanting information / tutorials
* Developers investigating Python (why should I use it - what is it good 
for?)
* Pointy haired bosses wanting information or reasons to feel safe using 
Python
* The Python community and developers needing documentation / downloads etc
* The core development team

And so on... Even if we don't believe in "marketing" if there are 
potential python developers / contributors who are *put off* (or simply 
don't find what they need) from the website then I'm sure we can all 
agree that this is a bad thing.

All the best,

Michael


>
> I don't think a site that tries to "sell" will work well, not even if you
> target corporate IT types (or whatever you want to call decision 
> makers at
> larger companies).
>
> I'd go so far as to say the current site tries to "sell" too much (in the
> right column on home page and About area).  I helped write and/or collect
> a lot of that stuff.  I'm not sure how useful it really is, or at 
> least quotes and
> success stories are not as useful as making Download and Getting Started
> info more obvious.  The stuff in About is a bit better in that it's 
> more factual
> but the presentation is still trying too hard to "sell" and I think 
> that's a problem.
>
> Here's an amusing failure to "sell":  Look at the "About Ruby's Growth"
> section on http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/about/ -- what it shows in the 
> graph
> since 2006 doesn't look like growth to me!  Of course someone set this 
> up and
> forgot about it and the graph just keeps auto-updating.
>
> - Stephan
>
>
>
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