[Grok-dev] Grok site: changing "Learn" to "Documentation" in the main navigation

[Kevin Teague]

Sebastian Ware wrote:
> 
> The general idea was to have verbs in the shortcuts (big yellow box on  
> front page) and nouns in the "tag soup" which in the Plone  
> implentation has been substituted by section names.
> 
> The design idea: The shortcuts address what the visitor wants to  
> accomplish but aren't familiar with the content of the site. The "Grok  
> Navigator" is intended for those who now exactly what content they are  
> looking for. I can't find the design notes I wrote right now, but it  
> is all explained there, I think they were uploaded on the open plans  
> website/wiki, but I am not 100% sure.
> 
> I think it would be a good idea to read those notes so we don't  
> reinvent the wheel on this one. (Maybe some of the original ideas are  
> difficut to implement in Plone. I have understood that configuring a  
> Plone site isn't a walk in the park.)
> 

We are using the default Navigation portlet right now.

Pros:

 - Informs users about the structure of the content

 - Always reflects the current structure, e.g. a content producer doesn't
have to do anything extra to place content in an alternative navigation
scheme

Cons:

 - Sometimes the underlying structure doesn't fit well with how we want to
portray that content. A good example is the Grok Tutorial - this content has
the structure of a Reference Manual, but we don't want it to appear under a
section entitled "Rerence Manuals".

Implementing a Tag portlet is not that difficult. I don't think this would
be beneficial though. To me the cons outweigh the pros.

Pros:

 - Underlying site structure does not impede navigation

Cons:

 - Content producers must add meaninful tags to content for it to appear in
the navgiation. Every content producer will have carry their own
interpretation of what a Tag is and what the content should be tagged with.

 - Hides the underlying site structure

 - Displaying all tags for all content will grow to a very large list over
time

 - How do you highlight larger concepts over smaller ones? If you have a tag
cloud with font size based on the number of tags then tags such as How-To
will be much larger than Tutorial or Reference API.

 - Rant against Tags: http://www.dougma.com/archives/category/rant/

A third alternative is to have an alternative navigation structure, using a
product such as Collective MetaNav: http://plone.org/products/metanav

Pros:

 - Underlying site structure does not impede navigation

 - Explicit site structure can be updated to provide a better user
experience without moving content and breaks links, etc.

Cons:

 - Content producers need to perform an extra step to place content in an
explicit strucutre



Sebastian Ware wrote:
> 
> What happened to "Download"?
> 
> In the original design there was a "Download" shortcut which seems to  
> have been omitted. This stuff was intended to be covered there.
> 

I was trimming parts of the site that just linked to empty folders or
cutting  text that promised content that we haven't yet generated in
preparation for relaunching the site. As we fill out more of the content we
can restore these bits - I have an export of content before I began
wrangling with it, which I can provide.

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