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

[Dmitry Y. <fir...@ya...>]

Pavel,

> 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.

Exactly. I'm not pretending that my concept is better, it's just some 
alternative to consider. I think that the "factual" pages have to be 
reached from everywhere while the "behavioural" ones make sense mostly 
to those opening the home page.

> 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!

I agree this requires special attention. I just hoped it could be kinda 
"solved" by the properly sectioned structure and layout (i.e. avoid 
having everything on a single page).

> 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.

This sounds appropriate to me.

>> 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?

Only partially. The "Get Started" section would also contain links to 
the downloads, documentation and probably support (at least newsgroups).

Something like this:

Get Started: About, Downloads, Documentation, Support
Get Updated: Downloads, Documentation, Development, News
Get Involved: Foundation|Sponsorship, Development, Documentation

It doesn't mean these aggregated pages should contain all the references 
from the every mention section, only most important of them (and with 
user-friendly textual explanations like "Pay special attention to" or 
"Follow this section").

I've been thinking about behavioural pages as "smart collections" that 
don't have their own documents but only links to elsewhere. In this 
case, the About menu is still required as a container which its own 
documents.


Dmitry