[dsdp-tm-dev] Proposed Website Changes

[Kevin J Doyle <kjdoyle@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

As Martin mentioned at the meeting this week I'd like to spruce up the
website a bit.

I'm going to compare the site to the Mylyn/RAP sites as I believe those
are the best looking project sites.
Mylyn: http://www.eclipse.org/mylyn/
RAP: http://www.eclipse.org/rap/

Here the proposed changes:

1.  Change the layout used to be like the Mylyn/RAP sites.
--> This layout gives us more room as the header is reduced for Eclipse,
which currently takes up a lot of space.

2.  The main page should be reworked.  Take a look at the Mylyn/RAP
sites.
--> We should have an image that can show off as much of the product
as possible.  May need to be the Remote Systems View, so people can
actually see what it is.  Clicking on the image could take you to
a full screenshot showing the whole perspective.
--> Have links to Getting Started, Downloads, and Demos
--> Demos (Screencasts) would be nice to have showing off the basics
and could add more demos over time showing more advanced features.  Like
how to properly setup an EFS project.
--> Provide a short description of
what TM is and a link to the About page for more information
--> Combine What's New and Events into News and display it in a table
like we have now for Events.
--> Removing the Quick Links and Getting Started div's.
--> Main idea is try to keep this
page as short as possible and grab people's attention.  If it doesn't
have a scrollbar on 1280x1024 resolution that would be ideal.

3.  Create a Bugs page.
--> Instead of having a link to all open bugs have a page dedicated
to Bug queries.
--> At the top have a link to open a bug and a link to the FAQ for what
to include in a bug report.
--> Below that have specific queries for All Bugs, Blocker/Critical/Major/Normal
bugs, Minor/Trivial, and one for Enhancements.  We can break this
up further into RSE/Terminal bugs.  This way users/extenders can see
we have a lot of minor/trivial/enhancement bugs. 

4. Navigation Bar Changes
--> Instead of using the default navigation bar I'd like to create a
custom one.  This way we can get rid of the dead Integrators link
=)
--> The way I see the Nav Bar is as follows.  This goes against
the current Eclipse project requirements though as the Information about
TM link is suppose to be the top item.  A Bug is open requesting to
change the project requirements, as the nav bar as it is now doesn't make
sense to me.  Bug #216474 ( https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=216474
).

Target Management -- Links to main page
    Information  --- Goes to the Information about TM page
that was introduced recently.   ( http://www.eclipse.org/projects/project_summary.php?projectid=dsdp.tm
)
    About  -- Bring back our old About page that the link
was removed to recently
    Team -- Bring back the team page link that was removed recently.
    Plan - Plan for the next release.
    Presentations - Links
to ppt and information about past/upcoming presentations.
    Demos - If we have the
time to create the demo's mentioned above having this link would be good.
    Wiki - A link to the main wiki page as it's no longer on
the Main page.  This makes it easier to move around and still get
to the wiki.
    Legal - A link to our tm-log.csv file.  This used to
be on the old nav bar, but with the recent changes was removed.  If
it's not required I don't think we need this one.
Users  
    Getting Started
    Downloads
    Bugs - Link to the new proposed Bug page.
    FAQ (wiki) - Link to our FAQ.  Displays wiki in the
link to show it will go to a wiki page.
    Newsgroup
Contributors
   Contributing (wiki) - A link to our FAQ about the part on Contributing.
   Mailing List
   CVS - A link to how to get the source from CVS.
   Development Tools
  
5.  Go through our About and Getting
Started pages cleaning them up.  For example on the Getting Started
Page we have:

"The basis of RSE is a former IBM product, for
which a slide
show is still available. Our plans beyond TM
2.0 are available from the Target Management Project
Plan and our Use
Cases Document, which covers all areas of interest
to us. "

That is more for the About page. 

6. Look into simplifying the download
page.  Maybe create a new page that lists the latest release build
and the latest milestone.  Have links to the update site, a direct
link to download the SDK, and a link for all downloads for that release/milestone,
which takes you to the current download page for a release/milestone. Then
at the top/bottom have a link to Archive builds, which takes you to where
our Downloads page currently takes you.  Not sure if this will really
simplify the process for download though.

Opinions, comments, concerns, or additional changes you think we should
make?

Thanks,
Kevin Doyle