This approach seems reasonable to me.
I think a good litmus test for whether it makes sense to have two sites is whether you have distinct audiences. If you don’t then you’re just adding more clicks for people. I think there are distinct audiences:
Main site: 1) users seeking to download precompiled libraries in order to run a gnustep-based application 2) users looking to download GWorkspace or some other other app closely associated with the project 3) developers who are considering gnustep for their next project and want to learn if gnustep is a good fit
Dev site: 1) developers who are actively developing gnustep projects (or gnustep itself)
Separating the two sites allows you to provide a better UX to each audience by targeting their respective use cases.
Sent from my iPhone The way I see it is this... it's really quite simple:
1) The developer site allows developers to easily go to one place for all developer information 2) It allows the main site to concentrate on the project itself and it's current status, who uses it, who is involved, contacts, etc. a) The main site can concentrate on releases and such, provide downloads. 3) Can provide documentation along with clear examples in a place that people can reach simply by typing the URL without having to wonder where to find it.
Please note that NOT ONE of these reasons is because "big companies do it" the approach simply makes sense for a number of technical and PRACTICAL reasons.
Yours, GC
Hi Steven,
Steven wrote:
>
> Also as part of this exercise, I tried to "survey the current
> landscape", looking at similar projects, other open source efforts.
> This led me to
>
> developer.gnome.org <http://developer.gnome.org>
> developer.apple.com <http://developer.apple.com>
> developer.redhat.com <http://developer.redhat.com>
> developer.ibm.com <http://developer.ibm.com>
> developer.microsoft.com
> develop.kde.org
> gtk.org
a comment on this would be that I don't see these as similar projects,
but sites of multi-million dollar companies with very diversified
products or large project backed by big companies.
I’m not entirely sure why them being companies is relevant to whether this separation makes sense or not. Could you provide an argument that makes this clear?
You seem to have some visceral issue if something is done by a corporation somehow it’s automatically a bad thing. This is a fallacy and an insufficient basis on which to make a judgement.
Provide more than an emotional reason why this approach is a bad one. Please.
We are not such, nor we compare directly with "gtk", but somehow a mix
between gtk and gnome.
How are we not like both of these? We are a dev environment and so are they.
Just as an exercise I went to a couple of other projects.
Just as an “exercise” I will play along…. I was tempted to delete this entire section from my reply.
https://www.msys2.org : just a "dev" section, everything is quite
techincal and textual, as expected from such a project. However there
are many first top-level directories for organization. Interesting.
Somewhat relevant but not an analogous project to GNUstep. Msys2 is a layer that adds a posix layer to windows.
http://x.cygwin.com/ : different project from the above, but somehow
cousin. Again just a crude "devel" subdirectory. Not a very nice design,
but quite structured. Screenshots.
Cygwin is no longer maintained. Irrelevant.
https://xfce.org/ : no specific "developer" subdomain either. Very busy
look, I would not like something like that. Yet still easy at the
top-level: docs, wiki, archive...
Xfce is a window manager not a dev environment. So, irrelevant.
https://wxwidgets.org/ : no specific developer subdomain either.
Interesting layout although i don't like the "style sheet". I consider
the project similar to ours in many aspects and even the organization is
similar.
Wiki, forums, documentation, developer section.
So finally a project somewhat relevant… I see no reason to imitate them.
I don't like it looks but it has interesting points.
Taking the time to check these out gave me feed for thought.
Also, clicking around other suffer from similar issues we have. Check
for projects used list...a nd links are dead & obsolete or things like that.
A big difference is the homepage: it can be either a presentation of the
project (explanation, terms, screenshots...) or something which instead
acts more as a navigation guide with quick links to parts of the site
which may have also menu points or a longer navigation to get to it.
We have more the former style (a bit like xfce). In the past it was even
worse, with people continuing to add things, in the urge to "explain
everything at the first glance". We tried to combine both the urge "it
must be immediately write/show XXX" as "immediatley one click to YYY".
We need something more relaxed and balanced, in my opinion.
So you agree in the meeting only to later disagree on the list. Smdh
have a nice evening,
Riccardo
Indeed… have a good day.
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