Re: [Firebird-website] A few thoughts about (new) site structure,

[Pavel C. <pc...@ib...>]

Dmitry Yemanov napsal(a):
> 
> I've seen an idea to omit some sections from the top menu (in favor of 
> other links?), but I tend to disagree. In this case, sub-sections would 
> have no possibility to jump there directly, or it would require 
> different top menus for the home page and sub-sections. I'd rather 
> prefer to have the same top menu at the every level. But this is surely 
> discussable.

The idea was to have top menu with "behavioural" topics (get files, get
support, get involved etc.) instead "factual" topics (download,
documentation, development etc.). Of course, there would be also center
pages for some "factual" topics, but accessible via special sub-domain,
and individual "documents" would be primarily accessed directly in
particular context.

In fact, your proposal has the same issue, just from different angle :)
Your menu is topical, but home page also contains links to behavioural
sections (Get started, get updated etc.) that are in turn not directly
accessible once you leave the main page.

So, as you can see, it's a compromise either way, we can just choose
which one would fit our needs better.

The topical approach you suggest has one crucial issue for me: it forces
us to mix information of interests for different kind of site users into
humongous resource sections (especially the download and documentation
section is problematic). Just take a look at our current site for what
and how much information we would have to "sink" into these two sections!

However, I agree that topical menu is more clear (you'll find exactly
what's in topic's name), as behavioural navigation may not be completely
clear for everybody who never saw it before. Nevertheless the actual
navigation with topical menu could (and probably would) be more complex
and confusing once you start to drill down into sections.

> There was a good point that we need target on a few areas and use some 
> visual "welcome here" approach for the targeted audiences. I think we 
> have three categories to handle: newcomers, current users and potential 
> sponsors/contributors. So the home page should contain some clearly 
> visible special navigation for them. I've codenamed these items "get 
> started", "get updated" and "get involved". They should redirect to some 
> aggregated pages containing (directly or through the links) the 
> information that is of the primary interest of the appropriate audience 
> (to save them time iterating through the entire menu system).

We're on agreement here :)

> As a homework, I've created a few sketches (surely amateur) to 
> demonstrate the aforementioned ideas:
> 
> I'm not sure that IE would show the layout properly, so please use 
> Firefox or Opera. Sorry for that, I'm not a web designer ;-)
> 
> Level 0 (home page):
> http://www.firebirdsql.org/download/rabbits/dimitr/index.html
> 
> Level 1 (sub-section):
> http://www.firebirdsql.org/download/rabbits/dimitr/dev.html
> 
> Level 2 (document):
> http://www.firebirdsql.org/download/rabbits/dimitr/roadmap.html

I liked the structural concept, however there is that menu/section
divide thing :)

Anyway, the content would be basically structured in the same way
whatever menu/section scheme we would finally use, so I would like
propose to create the content in new structure and then assemble it in
both ways (it wouldn't be much additional work, they differ just in main
page and menu header) as two separated "test sites" and let people
decide which one works better for them.

> I'd also like to suggest pages that could reside in the About section:
> 
>    * What is Firebird / Intro
>    * Origin / History
>    * License
>    * Advantages / Key Points
>    * SQL compliance
>    * Fact Sheets / Success Stories
>    * Organization / Sub-Projects


Wouldn't the About us then become identical to Get started section?

best regards
Pavel Cisar