Hi Dana
On Sunday, 29 April 2012 at 1:45 AM, Dana Woodman wrote: > Very true Chris. I'd love to see the documents that were put together when > this was discussed last time, if they're still around. > I've included the design brief in my response to Ned. If you're looking for something else in particular, let me know and I'll see if I can find (or produce) something that is suitable. > > In regards to what needs improvement, there are some core issues as I see it. > > 1) the home page does a poor job of conveying what someone should do if they > want to try out Django. It also could do a much better job of making Django a > bit more "sexy". > 2) the documentation itself, while thorough, is a bit difficult to navigate, > especially for new users. I think this could be partially remedied by some > modifications to headers and color choices. > 3) the project could do a better job of selling itself, especially in regards > to showcasing why it is so great: automatic admin, large active community and > plugins, large sites and organizations using it, active development, lots of > built in security, etc... > 4) it just looks old and outdated, which is a problem in its own right. > > Should I just fork the project on Github and hack away or do I need to work > on subversion? > As of yesterday, we are a SVN-free organisation -- everything is on GitHub. However, djangoproject.com has been on GitHub for a while: https://github.com/django/djangoproject.com If you want to work on code directly, that's the place to start. > > In regards to organization of the documentation, I assume that is generated > via the docs within Django, correct? Would I have freedom to do content > organization/copy changes or would it just be a design change? I don't mean > changing the documentation, but more how other pages and sections are laid > out. Correct - the documentation is the contents of the /docs directory, as rendered by Sphinx. This means that the style of any individual page (e.g., fonts for headings, etc) is part of the Sphinx stylesheet, but the gross structure is determined by the file layout in the /docs directory (i.e., one page per file). There's really two tasks contained in what you have described here: 1) Restyling the docs to make them easier to read 2) Reorganizing the docs to make information easier to find. 1) is definitely the remit of this design project. (2) is a much bigger project. Unless you're going to keep it simple - e.g., a proposing better home page layout for the docs - it may be better to leave the structure of the docs as a separate issue. > I assume I'd also need to work on the code.djangoproject.org > (http://code.djangoproject.org) site as well? Are there other things that > would need to change? I'd really need the scope down so I know how and where > to start. There's also pages for the foundation; these aren't currently linked to from the homepage, so they're really well hidden. Right now, they're currently implemented as flat pages. However, as the brief indicates, we'd like to have a bunch of broader design guidelines so if we want to improve any existing section of the site, or if any other project comes along and we want to integrate them into djangoproject.com (e.g., Django People or Django Packages), we can give that project a style guide to work with. More importantly, one of my goals with this project is to broaden the base of "active design experts" that we have as a project. The core coding team has a relatively low bus factor -- if one of us stops committing, there are plenty of others who know the code and can maintain the project in our absence. However, our design bus factor is somewhere between 1 and 0 -- we've got Idan as our Benevolent Designer for Life, but he's a busy man; we really need to surround him with a bunch of talented designers, in the same way that we've got Jacob and Adrian, plus a bunch of talented developers. Yours, Russ Magee %-) > > This is no simple task so any direction or help would be greatly appreciated! > > Cheers > > On Apr 28, 2012, at 5:11 AM, Chris Pickett <chris.pick...@gmail.com > (mailto:chris.pick...@gmail.com)> wrote: > > > It seems to me that this might be one of those opportunities to just jump > > right in and get your hands dirty. I many ways I don't know if a redesign > > is going to happen without someone taking the initiative and getting it > > done, so it might as well be you! :) > > > > On Saturday, April 28, 2012 2:22:59 AM UTC-5, Dana Woodman wrote: > > > So now that Django is being moved to Git/Github (which is awesome!), > > > maybe it would be a good time to think about a revamped home page for the > > > project ala djangoproject.com (http://djangoproject.com)? > > > > > > Obviously this is no small undertaking and would be potentially > > > contentions as to what would be the proper path, but I feel (and I don't > > > think I'm alone) that djangoproject.com (http://djangoproject.com) could > > > use a bit of a facelift. > > > > > > I have some idea of my own as to how this could be accomplished and I'm > > > sure there are a ton of others out there with great ideas as well. Maybe > > > we could open up some discussion on this idea? > > > > > > Forgive me if this has been proposed before as I'm new to the group! > > > > > > Cheers, > > > Dana > > > > > > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > > "Django developers" group. > > To view this discussion on the web visit > > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/django-developers/-/sWZOWG-NqmgJ. > > To post to this group, send email to django-developers@googlegroups.com > > (mailto:django-developers@googlegroups.com). > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > > (mailto:django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com). > > For more options, visit this group at > > http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Django developers" group. > To post to this group, send email to django-developers@googlegroups.com > (mailto:django-developers@googlegroups.com). > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > (mailto:django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com). > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. 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