[ZWeb] Re: IA for zope.org

Paul Everitt paul@zope.com
Wed, 03 Apr 2002 06:26:34 -0500


Michael--

I can appreciate your comments.  Rushing in and doing something without 
any planning certainly gives an immediate sense of progress. 
Unfortunately that was the process that led to the current mess on 
www.zope.org.

Note we are responding to actual feedback from a user survey Seb 
conducted.  That is, we are listening to what people actually told us 
they want, rather than what we think they want.

Most of the respondants said the look of www.zope.org wasn't the biggest 
problem.  Rather, the disorganization was the biggest problem.  Since we 
want to listen to what our "customers" tell us, we have made this a high 
priority.

Still, the next deliverable we produce will be an HTML mockup that 
includes the new design, along with the results of the discussion on 
organization.

If you're not interested in the discussion on organization, simply tune 
it out and wait until we have the discussion on design, when we'll begin 
rolling out iterative mockups.

Also, note that Olivier took the time to put together sample designs and 
get feedback through votes.  He didn't do it as live HTML, as that would 
have been a substantial increase in time spent (translation: he wouldn't 
have volunteered to do it).  Getting feedback the way he did means that 
he has far less work to do in getting the same results.

--Paul

Michael L. Dean wrote:
> I have been following the thread about the look of zope.org, and I am left
> somewhat unfulfilled because for me it is look and feel.   Developers
> usually take a planned and top down approach and are usually uncomfortable
> with conforming to how the rest of the planet does things and improves
> things -- which is through a definitely iterative and random walk sort of
> approach.  I nixed a major development group for a recent project because
> they produced a written document which limited changes to three iterations,
> which in my book is sheer nonsense.  Why don't you take the three looks,
> plug in the content in all, call them 1.zope.org, 2.zope.org and 3.zope.org
> and randomly show them when hits occur.  Let people fool around inside, get
> a chance to live with a design more than just for the brief beauty queen
> parade -- in other words, do it and stop chattering about doing it.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Paul Everitt" <paul@zope.com>
> To: "Casey Duncan" <c.duncan@nlada.org>
> Cc: "Lennart Regebro" <lennart@regebro.nu>; <zope-web@zope.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, April 02, 2002 4:56 AM
> Subject: Re: [ZWeb] Re: IA for zope.org
> 
> 
> 
>>Regarding Lennart's note and Casey's response...
>>
>>Lennart proposed a new.zope.org IA with audience across the top and
>>resource type down the left.  In general I agree, but I have a couple of
>>issues on it.
>>
>>1) Foremost, I think the audience menu will not be the one people prefer
>>to see on every page.  Does this mean the resource type menu will be on
>>all subordinate pages in the site?  If so, a number of people that want
>>no columns on content pages will be irritated.  If not, then the most
>>used links will require a trip to the home page.
>>
>>2) The navigation menu at the top of the page, as proposed below, leaves
>>out some important items that I think are mandatory: home, search [____]
>>(go), and help.  (site map is optional).  If you add these items in,
>>then the top of the page starts getting crowded and distracting.
>>Opinions or sugestions?
>>
>>--Paul
>>
>>Casey Duncan wrote:
>>
>>>I like. I do see a definite distinction between Webmasters and
>>
> Developers. My
> 
>>>only concern with it is that it might cause initial confusion between
>>
> what it
> 
>>>and dev.zope.org is for. I'm not thinking of a better way to make this
>>>distinction other than stating the difference when someone clicks on
>>>Developers thinking they will find info on core dev there. Maybe "Zope
>>>Core Development" can be a link from there to dev.zope.org.
>>>
>>>I think this is a very good start though, and here are some potential
>>>additions:
>>>
>>>Under webmasters, a "Zope managment" link to relevant resources for
>>
> using the
> 
>>>ZMI, WebDAV and FTP might be useful...
>>>
>>>Under community I would add "Zope Sites" for community sites like
>>>ZopeZen/ZopeNewbies et al.
>>>
>>>Also under community, there should be a "Contribute" link with content
>>
> on
> 
>>>projects, initiatives and ideas that need resources. Perhaps these can
>>
> be
> 
>>>trackers, or some sort of "workgroup" functionality (later perhaps).
>>>
>>>Under Developers it would be nice to have an "Examples" category.
>>
> Obviously
> 
>>>we need content for this. I volunteer to make some.
>>>
>>>-Casey
>>>
>>>P.S. Lets try to make the search functionality *useful* too 8*)
>>>
>>>On Monday 04 March 2002 05:00 pm, Lennart Regebro allegedly wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>I wouldn't mind having two different paths to the content, one according
>>>
> to
> 
>>>>type, and one on the intended audience. It would require two separate
>>>>menus, and to make it clear that they are unrelated one should in that
>>>
> case
> 
>>>>be organized vertically and one horizontally. Something like this:
>>>>
>>>>-----------------
>>>>BIG
>>>>ZOPE       Newbies     Webmasters    Developers     Members    Search
>>>>LOGO
>>>>
>>>>News
>>>>Documentation
>>>>  How-To's
>>>>  Technical features
>>>>  The Zope Book
>>>>  Books in print
>>>>Download
>>>>  Newest Zope
>>>>  Latest beta
>>>>  Featured products
>>>>  Products
>>>>Community
>>>>  Members
>>>>  Mailing list
>>>>  Archives
>>>>------------------
>>>>
>>>>Under "Newbies" you would find things like:
>>>>Introduction/What is Zope
>>>>Getting started
>>>>
>>>>Under Webmasters:
>>>>DTML-Manual (ie direct link to the relevant parts of the Zope book, I
>>>>guess) ZPT-manuals (------"-------)
>>>>Most popular products
>>>>Frequently asked questions
>>>>Join the zope-list
>>>>
>>>>Under Developers:
>>>>Getting started with ZClasses
>>>>Setting up a good python development environment
>>>>ZClasses manual
>>>>Developers manual
>>>>Join the zope-list
>>>>
>>>>Under Members:
>>>>Join
>>>>Login
>>>>
>>>>Under Search:
>>>>Possibility to search only how-tos, only products and so on...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>I do see a difference between "webmasters" and "developers", ie between
>>>
> the
> 
>>>>people that create sites and the people that create products. Maybe this
>>>>difference doesn't really exist, but I do think that there is a huge
>>>>difference between these two things, and it would be quite possible to
>>>>split this.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>Zope-web maillist  -  Zope-web@zope.org
>>>http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-web
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Zope-web maillist  -  Zope-web@zope.org
>>http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-web
>>
> 
>