RE: [Web Comm] Focus

Committees Marketing
1

This is what I had in mind for the project info pages:

https://www.osgeo.org/content/projects/mapbender.html

Feedback? (other than bawling me out for using <font> tags... )

I'll get the other flyers/fliers/flowers up sometime over the weekend, taking into account any feedback. As we develop the other pages, we'll interlink them (in a "Works with..." section, a "Case Studies section", etc...)

I'd really like to see something done about the domains and look/feel. Can we either:

- Not require that projects have a presence under the osgeo.org domain structure or

- Figure out how to delegate these subdomains to the individual projects so they can continue with their current infrastructure?

A lot of these projects have strong and distinctive web presences in place; I feel that requiring them to toe the line is unreasonable. OSGeo is here to promote these projects, not subjugate them. :wink:

Jason

________________________________

From: Jason Birch [mailto:Jason.Birch@nanaimo.ca]
Sent: Tue 2006-06-27 11:02 AM
To: dev@webcommittee.osgeo.org
Subject: [Web Comm] Focus

All,

Our main priority right now should be to change the focus of the main
page from news-based to use-based, implementing some of the ideas on the
Wiki site focus page.

In order to do this, we'll first need to add content that can be linked
to. My initial thought was to duplicate the content from the Where
flyers
https://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folde
rID=54&expandFolder=54&folderID=0
as individual project pages under
https://www.osgeo.org/source/browse/www/www/content/projects/

I also would like to take the "developer spotlight" pages that Daniel
was working on and move them from the News project into the main site
under
https://www.osgeo.org/source/browse/www/www/content/people/

To build some case studies, we'll need to draft an appeal to the main
list asking for people/organisations that are successfully using OSGeo
project-software in their processes. This will help both to promote
OSGeo and improve the visibility of their organisations.

The projects, community spotlights, and case studies should all be
interlinked to allow users to obtain the most value no matter which page
they enter the site from.

As well, things like the list of mailing lists and a list of
international/regional user groups should be linked from both the main
page and most of the user-targeted pages.

Once we start to get some of this content up, I would like to reorganise
the main page to allow new users to quickly find what they're looking
for.

Sector
- Government
- Education
- Business
- ... ?

User Type
- Manager
- User
- Developer
- ... ?

Projects
- direct links to our internal project pages, each of which lists the
official project page, links to mailing lists, etc.

News
- Snippets of major OSGeo and project news. I'd like to use the
news.osgeo.org project for general OSGeo and project news, and then
place major news items on the main WWW page with the Announcements
feature, pointing to the news project announcements.

If you want to start work on any of this, please let the list know.
Before we get too far, my first task is to clean out some old pre-osgeo
folders that are hanging around in the CVS.

Jason

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2

On 29-Jun-06, at 9:32 PM, Jason Birch wrote:

This is what I had in mind for the project info pages:

https://www.osgeo.org/content/projects/mapbender.html

Looks good...

I'd really like to see something done about the domains and look/feel. Can we either:

- Not require that projects have a presence under the osgeo.org domain structure or

- Figure out how to delegate these subdomains to the individual projects so they can continue with their current infrastructure?

A lot of these projects have strong and distinctive web presences in place; I feel that requiring them to toe the line is unreasonable. OSGeo is here to promote these projects, not subjugate them. :wink:

I think there are a couple levels this needs to be looked at:
- I think every project should have a summary page on the OSGeo site, at least one intro page. Then a lauching off point, from a common style of button/link, to wherever their main site happens to be. This means that, at least, at a high level there is a common look and feel for those getting a basic introduction to the projects. We could even have a "click here to view our next project" button for those who just want to browse all our projects.
-By maintaining at least a minimal presence on common OSGeo infrastructure, projects that are hosted on less reliable systems can weather the storm of disruptions a little bit by having at least an intro page.
- I think we need a common CSS that all projects can use and perhaps slightly modify. I'm thinking now at the level of fonts, colours and an OSGeo logo placement. This could make it easier for projects hosted on 'external' infrastructure to at least have some common look to them. With minimal effort or customisation.

Just some quick thoughts,
Tyler

3

Jason Birch wrote:

This is what I had in mind for the project info pages:
https://www.osgeo.org/content/projects/mapbender.html
Feedback? (other than bawling me out for using <font> tags... )

This is great.

@Gary: You see - this is what a project can get out of OSGeo. It (the project) does not have to hack their own HTML with static <font> tags but a professional team takes care of it. (Jason, i say this only because I am such a very funny person...)

I'll get the other flyers/fliers/flowers up sometime over the weekend, taking into account any feedback. As we develop the other pages, we'll interlink them (in a "Works with..." section, a "Case Studies section", etc...)
I'd really like to see something done about the domains and look/feel. Can we either:
  - Not require that projects have a presence under the osgeo.org domain structure or
  - Figure out how to delegate these subdomains to the individual projects so they can continue with their current infrastructure?
A lot of these projects have strong and distinctive web presences in place; I feel that requiring them to toe the line is unreasonable. OSGeo is here to promote these projects, not subjugate them. :wink:
Jason

Are you suggesting to drop the mapbender.osgeo.org and only keep www.mapbender.org ("mapbender" always just as an example) and this new info page?

Regards, Arnulf.

________________________________

From: Jason Birch [mailto:Jason.Birch@nanaimo.ca]
Sent: Tue 2006-06-27 11:02 AM
To: dev@webcommittee.osgeo.org
Subject: [Web Comm] Focus

All,

Our main priority right now should be to change the focus of the main
page from news-based to use-based, implementing some of the ideas on the
Wiki site focus page.

In order to do this, we'll first need to add content that can be linked
to. My initial thought was to duplicate the content from the Where
flyers
https://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folde
rID=54&expandFolder=54&folderID=0
as individual project pages under
https://www.osgeo.org/source/browse/www/www/content/projects/

I also would like to take the "developer spotlight" pages that Daniel
was working on and move them from the News project into the main site
under
https://www.osgeo.org/source/browse/www/www/content/people/

To build some case studies, we'll need to draft an appeal to the main
list asking for people/organisations that are successfully using OSGeo
project-software in their processes. This will help both to promote
OSGeo and improve the visibility of their organisations.

The projects, community spotlights, and case studies should all be
interlinked to allow users to obtain the most value no matter which page
they enter the site from.

As well, things like the list of mailing lists and a list of
international/regional user groups should be linked from both the main
page and most of the user-targeted pages.

Once we start to get some of this content up, I would like to reorganise
the main page to allow new users to quickly find what they're looking
for.

Sector
- Government
- Education
- Business
- ... ?

User Type
- Manager
- User
- Developer
- ... ?

Projects
- direct links to our internal project pages, each of which lists the
official project page, links to mailing lists, etc.

News
- Snippets of major OSGeo and project news. I'd like to use the
news.osgeo.org project for general OSGeo and project news, and then
place major news items on the main WWW page with the Announcements
feature, pointing to the news project announcements.

If you want to start work on any of this, please let the list know.
Before we get too far, my first task is to clean out some old pre-osgeo
folders that are hanging around in the CVS.

Jason

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4

Arnulf, I warned you... :slight_smile:

In my best-case scenario, we would have two options:

- delegating the projectname.osgeo.org subdomains to the projects to use on their own servers, with a recommendation for some kind of consistent styling and branding. So, your current mapbender.org server would be accessible as mapbender.osgeo.org. I don't really envy you the task of skinning mediawiki though.

- having projects build their entire presense on projectname.osgeo.org, where the main styling is pretty much impossible to escape from

The more I think about this, the less tenable it seems though. Delegating the subdomain to another server would mean that accessing the osgeo.org resources (svn, mailing lists, etc) would be difficult, and existing projects will likely not want to move to a structure that doesn't supply anything like a CMS or wiki.

As much as the project "splash" pages at projectname.osgeo.org seem a bit kludgy, they may actually be the most flexible approach. Using these as the info pages might also work, but I would have concerns about enforcing a nonpartisan marketing message across these pages, especially for projects that have their entire presense hosted there, such as MapGuide.

I do see Gary's point about consistent styling across projects. Even if we can't host them all on the osgeo.org domain (it would actually be pretty easy if we had full control over the infrastructure) some kind of move towards a consistent styling would be a good idea.

I'd like to see a revision of the styling of the main osgeo.org site before that though. It needs more colour, and tie-in with the compass theme. I unfortunately have neither the access nor the talent to redesign the site.

Jason

________________________________

From: Arnulf Christl [@ccgis.de]
Sent: Fri 2006-06-30 6:58 AM
Subject: Re: [Web Comm] Focus

Jason Birch wrote:

This is what I had in mind for the project info pages:

https://www.osgeo.org/content/projects/mapbender.html

Feedback? (other than bawling me out for using <font> tags... )

This is great.

@Gary: You see - this is what a project can get out of OSGeo. It (the
project) does not have to hack their own HTML with static <font> tags
but a professional team takes care of it. (Jason, i say this only
because I am such a very funny person...)

I'd really like to see something done about the domains and look/feel. Can we either:

- Not require that projects have a presence under the osgeo.org domain structure or

- Figure out how to delegate these subdomains to the individual projects so they can continue with their current infrastructure?

Are you suggesting to drop the mapbender.osgeo.org and only keep
www.mapbender.org ("mapbender" always just as an example) and this new
info page?

Regards, Arnulf.