This aims to be a unified Ubuntu documentation site.
The "problem" is that there are many different sources of documentation for Ubuntu. And many of them are excellent. I believe there is no hope to unify them upstream. People are going to contribute in the way they want to and there is nothing wrong with that.
The site is a currently a proof-of-concept. It's a mix between a popularity contest and a library index. Kind of like a digg for Ubuntu documentation.
It uses no custom code, only a host of contributed modules. There are a lot of rough edges, including, but not limited to:
- Both sites and articles are node types. Each article is associated with a site. There is no way to enter a new site and a new article at the same time.
- Popularity is based on fivestar votes, but I want to include page hits as well.
- all-or-nothing access control.
- Five-minute hack on Bluemarine theme
Any comments or help is appreciated.
Comments
I like it. I guess you
I like it. I guess you understand that it will likely be a high maintenance site or else not all that useful.
You seem to have a pretty good grasp of how to organize information that is unorganizable. Obviously, there is a lot left to do, but I think you are on the right track.
I guess you are like me in that theming isn't your strong suit. Personally, I would make the logo a bit smaller. I think it takes up too much room. I don't like the yellow stars. Maybe a color change for the stars?
I don't care for the tagline, personally. The connotations that go with pimping and all that.... I do like the idea that you seem to be trying to get people to contribute and pull together to accomplish what would be an unmanageable task for even a small team.
I don't like the way the blue and brown in your color scheme go together (at least on my screen). It doesn't hurt my eyes, but it isn't perfect either. Maybe a blue that is a bit darker would help.
You might think about putting the tags that are in the right column front and central in the center column and moving the digg type list to the right column. Your site probably isn't one that most people will visit everyday to get the latest news and gossip. They are probably either looking for a specific piece of information that would take hours to track down on the ubuntuforum or else perhaps system admins would use it like web guys use the w3schools site - as a reference and to brush up on things that they already know. Newbies might use it to decide which programs to install and to figure things out.
I would probably drop the all-time-most popular thing or else bury it. I don't see it as relevant to your users.
Why don't you put up a screenshot of the day or maybe a gallery of screenshots perhaps both of desktops and programs?
This is a difficult site to do. So far, I don't know of anyone who has been able to do anything like it. Best of luck. I am an Ubuntu user and would love to see your site prosper.
Thanks for your comments,
Thanks for your comments, that's very helpful. I will try some of the things you suggest.
You are right that the "all-time-most-popular" is not very relevant. What is relevant is the content that is most popular now, so I think I will rename that to simple "most popular" and change the tracking interval to just the last few weeks.
I think I will try a different front page. Maybe just the tag cloud followed by the advanced search underneath.
I think the ubuntuforums already provide the function of putting up screenshots and holding galleries - I don't see a need to re-do that. Not unless I need to do something like that to attract people to form a community around the site.