[Pythonmac-SIG] Organizing the MacPython website

[Jack Jansen]

Folks,
I'm at a dead end as far as organizing the new MacPython website is 
concerned, and as I want to have this finished soon I need a couple of 
kicks in the right direction.

In order of importance, I don't know what has to be on the site, I 
don't know how to organize it, and I don't know what it should look 
like. Well, I have some ideas, but not enough. Shoot away.

First on the content. Here's what I think should be there (note that 
these probably don't all need to be on a page of their own):
- A quick (2 paragraph?) introduction to Python, pointing to 
www.python.org for more detail.
- An introduction to MacPython-OSX, explaining what extra goodies there 
are when compared to Python on other platforms.
- An explanation of the various Pythons for MacOSX (MacPython-OSX, 
/usr/bin/python, other unix distributions including 2.2.2 and fink, 
maybe more).
- A documentation section (mainly pointing to www.python.org)
- A community section (listing this mailing list, 
comp.lang.python{.help}, and again pointing to www.python.org).
- Developers info (listing alfa and beta releases, cvs access, and 
again www.python.org).
- A download page.
- An FAQ.
- A page with older MacPythons (MacPython-OS9 and older), plus 
platforms they run on.
- Information on Jython?
- Comparison of /usr/bin/python, MacPython-OSX, fink-python, Jython?
- Sections on special topics. We definitely need a section on GUI 
programming and applescripting, possibly later also on scientific 
computing and more (although for these we could again refer to common 
pages on www.python.org or so).

Anything I miss?

As to organization things are even muddier. The standard commercial 
breakdown of Products/Download/Support/Company doesn't work, I think, 
and I don't see a a simple modification that does. I also don't like 
the organization of 99% of the open source sites I visited, as they all 
seem to think that you come to the site already knowing what you need. 
And as we can see from the questions here a lot of people don't know 
what they need, possibly not even what they already have (hence I want 
the info on Apple's Python too).

I've done mental experiments with the www.python.org organization 
(logical organization, that is, as presented by the layout of the 
homepage), with sections at the top and subsections at the left side, 
where the sebsections of the home page are the "quick navigation"), but 
I can't get it to work either.

Design is probably the least important, but here I really have no clue. 
On the one hand sticking to www.python.org style would have the benefit 
of being recognizable to old Python hands, but when compared to other 
Macintosh pages it looks like something from the dark ages. The good 
news here, though, is that other people are thinking about 
www.python.org, so that may lead to something.

--
- Jack Jansen        <Jack.Jansen@oratrix.com>        
http://www.cwi.nl/~jack -
- If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma 
Goldman -