New Python.org website ?

[Markus Wankus]

Well I think the new site is definitely a step in the right direction. 
The old site is definitely "utilitarian" and is quite functional, but 
not "sexy".  And I think the whole point is to (hopefully) have a good 
first impression of the language and community by "impressing" (if you 
will) new users with a cool website.

So, while I agree that the beta site does have a definite "nineties 
corporate" feel to it, I think it is better than the old site and would 
like to throw some kudos to whoever spent the time on it.  I'm sure it 
wasn't a small job.

At any rate, opinions will always differ.  You are always going to get 
the people who want a cool flash-based animated site with 3D stereo 
surround sound, and the other end of the spectrum where you will be 
flamed if you do anything more than hand-code the html, on Unix machines 
only, using Vim or Emacs, ensuring it has a gray or neutral beige 
background, *and* uses the default font giving that classic 1981 
"university professor who refuses to use anything except Netscape 
Navigator" feel.

I use Eclipse a lot in my day-job and there are debates like this all 
the time whenever a change is made in the UI, but usually sanity (and 
quite nice-looking software, BTW) are the result.  FWIW - they have just 
re-done the L&F of their website as well.  I must admit I like it 
(eclipse.org), but others do not - I'm sure we'll hear from them shortly 
- ;-).  To each his own.

I think it would definitely be cool to use a Python-based web app for 
the site.  Plone is alright, but has a definite Plone approach that can 
be hard to shoe-horn your stuff into (although I think these guys have 
done an *awesome* job on their site: http://www.schooltool.org/).  Zope 
is flexible but a beast to learn.  And, well...there are just so many 
others. ;o)  I'm still looking, myself...

Markus.


Tim Parkin wrote:
> Leeuw van der, Tim wrote:
> 
>> I think that in general, I don't like the fact that links to
>> high-profile users are featured so prominently. That row of pictures
>> there looks good to me 'as such' but linking there to 'success stories'
>> feels, dunno, perhaps a bit cheesy to me. (That might be just my dutch
>> upbringing)
>> I would certainly want to see such links somewhere on the front page,
>> just not so prominently.
>>  
>>
> Possibly so... however in my experience, selling python to people is
> made a lot easier by being able to say 'look these guys are using it'.
> This may not help sell it to programmers, but as a businessman trying to
> sell my programming services, it's exceptionally important.
> 
>>> btw do you have a problem with using nasa or astrazeneca as example
>>>    
>>>
>> high
>>  
>>
>>> profile users?
>>>    
>>>
>> As I said, I don't like them. We're not a commercial company trying to
>> promote itself to potential buyers. But that's too a large degree a
>> matter of taste.
>>  
>>
> Well I'd have to disagree with yout on one point.. 'We' may not
> be a commercial company (when you talk about python as a singular unit)
> but as python developers, we should be in the process of trying to
> 'sell' python wherever we can. Because we aren't a commercial company,
> our only 'sales' channels are the website and the developers/consultants
> that use python. (I'm talking about selling in the terms of 'promoting'
> or trying to persuade someone that using python is a good thing).
> 
>> I do actually think, though, that if the Python website *is* going to
>> feature such big names with such prominence, some sort of approval from
>> these organizations should be requested? That they don't mind being used
>> a a Python reference story?
>>  
>>
> The approval is already there (see pythonology success stories).
> 
>> About what could be there... Link to the even calender, or
>> recent/upcoming event.. That is one to stay, I think.
>> I think it would be good to have a link there too development
>> environments that can be used for Python: editors, debuggers, IDEs / IDE
>> extenstions, etc
>>
>>  
>>
> It's difficult to summarise this in a single image. The XP image was
> intended as a 'catch all' for the development environment. A different
> image and title would probably achieve better results but coming up with
> one or two words to sumarise that list is quite difficult.
> 
>> A third item could perhaps be a link to the Python Package Index --
>> another thing that Python developers are likely to need.
>>
>>  
>>
> The home page isn't intended to target existing python users.. and the
> home page photos are mostly targetted at the sort of people that respond
> well to photos. It's a dilemma that the home page has to serve two
> masters, however if we have a 'developer home page' which can be
> dedicated to development issues, news, planetpython links, package
> libraries etc, we would have a single page that developers could bookmark.
> 
> The only alternative was to create a separate 'marketing python' website
> but it would just get ignored, especially by the people we really need
> to see the 'marketing' content.
> 
>> These things are, of course, rather developer-centered (well,
>> Python-user centered...)
>> Being a software developer that uses Python, I wouldn't really know what
>> else to put there ;-)
>> But many people might have other things they wish to put in the centre
>> of atte
>>
> Yep,
> 
> Thats probably why a dedicated page for developers would make more sense.
> 
> Tim
> 
> p.s. thanks for the comments btw..