< Websites
[DRAFT DOCUMENT]
Background: Fedora Project has an official website with current shape without major changes since 2014 and as a Project and community around it have been growing with time, also we started or redefined a couple of Fedora areas finally we came to the conclusion it's a perfect time to refresh our main website. Key things are how we would like to design our new website as well as how to build it on technical solution which will make future maintenance easier for everybody. One of the problems we've been struggling with is where to direct people as the “home” of the project, which page should be the main one. The Get Fedora page is too focused on downloads only, the wiki is too chaotic, the docs site too much like walking into a big uncatalogued library, and taiga and pagure don’t present enough of a “landing”, especially for new folks. Additionally, when we did current website, we intentionally focused on the three Editions, which were meant to be an easy way to steer users to the right thing by use case. This plan was absolutely a success, as we can see significant Fedora growth after it was implemented. We had hoped for other Fedora Spins and Labs to thrive through separate promotion, but that really hasn’t worked out to everyone’s satisfaction. (And we decided in 2018 to do away with the Spins/Labs distinction, as people found it more confusing than helpful… but the sites still remain separate.)
Goals:
- We would like to have modern looking and easy approachable website for new as well as current users of Fedora with simple navigation and understandable structure especially for people who wants to became contributors. Contributors are key here to cover in new website.
- New design should ties all Fedora Linux editions, spins and versions together, serving as a home for our various Linux OS offerings and as a center for both users and contributors. It should make it easy to just “get Fedora”, but also easy to find out more about the project, our various teams, and how to get involved. And it should be exciting, inspiring, and welcoming.
Main assumptions:
- Design and content should cover stakeholders needs in line with Fedora Mission and strategy.
- Initiative will be run in iterative approach in order to adapt and implement potential changes in more flexible way. We don't want to have big bang approach.
Requirements:
- Easy to maintain and keep updated website. (It’d be nice for individual teams to own and maintain content related to what they work on.)
- New website should have localization capability, and with something which makes it easy for translators to keep up with changes to content.
- Current website is available under https://getfedora.org/ and https://fedoraproject.org/ only redirects to mentioned url. We would like to start using https://fedoraproject.org/ as main website address and decide if https://getfedora.org/ should be used as link to "Download" page or maybe we should start using other construction with sub-domains like https://get.fedora.org/ for better search engine results.
- Consider unifying many "Download" pages for editions and spins into one.
- Website should display correctly on popular web browsers on different devices like PC, tablets and smartphones.
- Technology chosen to deliver new website (backend and frontend) should be sustainable and easy to maintain for current and new developers that will join to the project. We should avoid deciding only based on personal preferences but having in mind bigger picture and future-proof approach.
- New website should properly promote our openness for new users and contributors - requirement related to content.
- Journey for new users on the website has to be easy and not confusing.
Timeline:
Ideally for Fedora Linux 35 launch in October 2021 however because of amount of work we are aiming for F36 Beta (mid-March 2022) as it sounds more realistic.
Timeline will be calculated and presented on bigger plan based on further planning.
Stakeholders:
- Key Stakeholders:
- Edition WGs:
- Workstation - Allan Day, aday@redhat.com
- Server - Peter Boy, pboy, pboy@uni-bremen.de
- IoT
- CoreOS - Timothée Ravier, siosm, siosm@fedoraproject.org
- Desktop Spin Teams:
- KDE - Onuralp Sezer, thunderbirdtr, thunderbirdtr@fedoraproject.org
- Cloud - David Duncan, davdunc, davdunc@gmail.com
- Xfce - Mukundan Ragavan, nonamedotc, nonamedotc@fedoraproject.org, nonamedotc@gmail.com (mostly e-mail communication)
- Cinnamon
- Silverblue
- Other Spin/Lab teams (Python, Design, Astronomy, etc.) - Ankur Sinha, ankursinha, ankursinha@fedoraproject.org
- ARM
- Alt Arch Teams (Aarch64, Power, S390x)
- Fedora Council
- Edition WGs:
- Other Stakeholders:
- Marie Nordin, mnordin@redhat.com
- Docs
- Ambassadors
- Marketing (sigh)
- Outreach Revamp
- Join Fedora - Ankur Sinha, ankursinha, ankursinha@fedoraproject.org
- Fedora Linux users
- Implementors:
- Design Team - Máirín Duffy, duffy@redhat.com
- Websites & Apps Team - Ramya Parimi, ramyaparimi, IRC nick: rparimi, rlp.parimi@gmail.com
- Infrastructure
Possible approaches to take into consideration during design phase:
- Keep use-case focused paths clear for first-time users, while also making all the options Fedora has to offer easily discoverable and available.
- Other suggestions?
Areas to explore:
- URLs construction and usage of sub-domains.
- Review and decide about potential "Download" pages consolidation:
- getfedora.org
- alt.fedoraproject.org
- torrents.fedoraproject.org
- arm.fedoraproject.org
- spins.fedoraproject.org
- labs.fedoraproject.org
- dl.fedoraproject.org
- Check localization solution we can implement into website.
- Do we want to promote on new website our cooperation with other projects or FOSS initiatives?
Short term strategy:
- Kick-off meeting with stakeholders.
- Plan preparation.
- Competitive research for Fedora website revamp - https://pagure.io/design/issue/771
Additional materials: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/its-time-to-update-the-main-fedora-website/30154 - first request and discussion about this initiative.