This is a post I made in the forums with some slight alterations -

I am in agreement with Daniel. This design is not up to scratch and is a bad reflection on the drupal community. It looked bad enough when I looked at it on a 1366x768 res laptop but after viewing it on a 1600x1200 monitor I think it is atrocious from a design perspective.

I also agree with him that it wasn't so easy to contribute help on the redesign because I didn't even know it was happening apart from one post here in the forums just over a month ago - http://drupal.org/node/880420.

Something like this, the redesign of the drupal.org site, should have had a permanent link on the drupal frontpage to ensure maximum contributions from members here instead of no-one knowing about it. I basically knew nothing about what was actually happening with the graphical redesign effort of drupal.org until I saw this thread a week or two ago. And as I am a big drupal fan I feel obliged to point out the problems I see with it, no-matter how late in the game it is. I appreciate that people put alot of work into this redesign but I am still going to call a spade a spade as Daniel and some others have already done.

I am only going to deal with the frontpage as that is by far the most important page when it comes to design. The homepage looks exactly like how you would expect a web page designed by developers to look. Functional but lacking any flair or style. It looks completely amateurish and will not inspire confidence in new users or commercial clients. Here's my problems with it -

  1. To start, the entire front page is just a mess. Where is the user supposed to look first? This is basic web design stuff. There are so many different things just stuffed unto the page seemingly without any thought as to why they should be there. There is a gigantic search box with radiobuttons underneath it...radiobuttons??? on the front page?? There is some 'Drupalcon Chigaco' image popping up and closing every 3 or 4 seconds and obscuring other content in the process. Like, wtf?? There are three panels that contain completely different content and do not match up with each stylistically at all. There is a map of the world on the bottom of the page??!? Beside the map of the world there are some tabs that have absolutely nothing to do with the map they are positioned beside.
  2. Massive search box: What's the point of this? A search facility is not nearly the most important thing on a site's homepage so why is it being given the most prominence? It is literally the first thing that catches your attention when you open the homepage. And there is no excuse for having radio buttons in the header of a homepage...at least put them in a dropdown under the search box like the way it's implemented on the other pages.
  3. The 'Why Choose Drupal' section (A): This should be far far bigger and it should be the first thing that catches the user's eye. You shouldn't have to 'look' around the page to find it, it should hit you square between the eyes.
  4. The 'Why Choose Drupal' section (B): It would also be useful if this section showed a graphic of drupal in action like an image of the admin section or of a piece of content that a user is about to click 'Publish' on for example. Serves the dual purpose of giving the user an actual picture of what the drupal software looks like while also giving the page a stronger graphical impact. This is standard web design stuff.
  5. The 'Why Choose Drupal' section (C): The text in this section is basically trying to get the same point across as the text under the 'Come for the sofware, stay for the community' tagline. These two sections are both trying to deliver the same info - 'what drupal is and why you should use it'. This text should not be separated into two completely different parts of the page. I think the text under the 'come for the software...section' is good and explains drupal well....this text should be far more prominent and because it is dark grey (#333333) text on a darkish blue background it is very easy to overlook it at the moment. I actually reckon it is the last thing the user will see, they will have to 'search' the page to find it. This is an absolute disaster from a web design PoV and I am finding hard to understand how basic stuff like this was so badly implemented.
  6. Develop with drupal: This is not needed on the front page. Front page is all about visual impact, not about technicalities such as how many cvs commits there were this week or the Issue list. The links in this section could go into a dropdown menu on the primary menu links called 'Develop'. It could look like 'Modules', 'Themes', 'Drupal API', 'Security Info', 'Issue List'.
  7. Map of the world: Get rid of the popup Drupalcon image, it is incredibly irritating. And I don't see the need for so much space to be given to a map of the world that serves no purpose other than to have a drupalcon image popping up on it. Keep the text about '667,393 people in 230 countries speaking 182 languages are using Drupal.' if you like as these stats will impress new users/clients but please remove the unnecessary map tacked onto the page. It looks like it has been put there just for the sake of having more stuff on the front page.
  8. That drupalcon popup: This is 2010 and drupal is supposed to be cutting edge software for building websites. Yet the new homepage has an image popping up and disappearing every few seconds.....I cannot remember the last time I saw an image popping up and disappearing on a web page....its just not done...and its not done because it looks terrible and irritates the user. That this abomination was left in (and put in in the first place) really should raise flags that homepage is fundamentally flawed.
  9. The two tabs 'Drupal Homepage' and 'Login/Register' are unnecessary and should be removed. It's overkill to be using tabs on the main page when there are only two items to be tabbed. Not to mind that you are not going to be tabbing back and forward between login/register and drupal homepage anyway, so it is defeating the basic purpose of tabs. Then there is the fact that there is no need for these tabs here anyway, one of them is for the homepage which can be navigated to in the standard fashion of clicking on the logo at the top of the page. The other is for login/register of which the standard method is to provide a 'create account' link and then either a link to login or else two textfields for password and username in a little block. The homepage will also visually look better without these two tabs.
  10. The 3 panels: The first panel contains 3 items, the second contains 1, the third contains 2. They are not matching up vertically, there is a load of space wastage under the 'Sites we made with Drupal' and 'Develop with drupal'. White space=good. Space wastage=bad. This is an obvious mark of a developer trying their hand at design.
  11. Why is there no Download Drupal link on the homepage? People don't look for 'Get started with xyz', they look for 'Download xyz'. Every other piece of software offers a 'Download XYZ' link or a Download tab on the homepage, why is the redesign going against convention again and instead offering an obtuse link 'Get started with drupal'? Not to mind that a very large % of people looking to download drupal will already have experience with it so they are not looking to 'get started' with it so that link text is plain wrong. I realise there is also a 'Download Drupal' link under the 'Develop with Drupal' section but as I have already pointed out, that section is completely out of place on the front page anyway, the Download Drupal link is almost 'invisible' among the million other links on the page, and also when people land on a front page they expect a big button saying 'Download xyz'...here they get a button saying 'Get started with xyz' which is ambiguous and doesn't necessarily mean they will be able to download drupal if they follow this link, it could be a link to documentation.

Look at the modx or wordpress homepages to see how professional looking home pages should look in 2010. They are clear, stylish, easy to follow, memorable and very nicely laid out. Unfortunately none of these terms could be used to describe the look of the redesigned drupal home page.

It will be years before drupal.org gets updated again. The current redesign is already badly outdated and very amateur looking, I think it should be scrapped and restarted this time giving the community a proper chance to contribute input - by having a prominent link on drupal.org's homepage. Here's a suggestion -

  • Let users all put up initial basic designs/layouts and then have a poll after a few weeks to choose the top three of these to refine further.
  • Maybe even offer some kind of prize to entice as many user's as possible to enter. It would certainly be alot cheaper than hiring a web design agency anyway.
  • Then have another poll a few weeks later to see which one should be taken forward as the final design.
  • Have everyone then concentrate their efforts on this design.
  • By getting many initial designs to choose from and then picking the best of them, followed by another round of competition and refinement and picking the best of that bunch, and then having everyone come together to focus their efforts on this final design you will be highly likely to end up with something very very impressive and that will equal or surpass the WP and ModX designs.
  • As opposed to the current situation where no-one even knew there was a redesign in progress and where the redesign actually started on a site other than drupal.org which was running wordpress. This just looks to me like it was doomed from the beginning.

As many people have already said, they didn't even know the redesign was in progress until recently, myself included. It is better to take longer and actually get it right than to throw up a badly implemented redesign that will hurt drupal's credibility.

Seriously, going by first impressions, ie. homepages, drupal would be the last choice cms for any new users/clients. It doesn't inspire confidence in the software when the homepage looks so amateur.

Comments

ltwinner’s picture

ltwinner commented

Here is the original thread where many people raise their concerns about the homepage - http://drupal.org/node/908744#comment-3466336

And here are some professional looking homepages -
http://wordpress.org/
http://modxcms.com/
http://www.drupalgardens.com/
http://acquia.com/

Look at those and compare them with the redesigned drupal home page. Drupal should be aiming to equal or better these homepages. This is a very serious issue, with an excellent home page drupal will pull in a ton of new users and clients. With a sub-standard home page it will have the opposite effect.

Wolfflow’s picture

Wolfflow commented

I would add also

http://commons.acquia.com ,

just as an example even if in it's first very young project version of constructive, collaborative, social and public example.

kaakuu’s picture

kaakuu commented

+1

I fully agree.
Please also see Visual ...... appeal of redesigned site is completely "broken"

"Something like this, the redesign of the drupal.org site, should have had a permanent link on the drupal frontpage to ensure maximum contributions from members here instead of no-one knowing about it"

I agree.
This should be a separate issue and fixed immediately.

coltrane’s picture

coltrane
he/him
commented

This is a very serious issue, with an excellent home page drupal will pull in a ton of new users and clients. With a sub-standard home page it will have the opposite effect.

Sure, but you have no evidence that the redesign is sub-standard. You only have your thoughts and your emotional reactions. If the redesign was launched and a/b testing was running for anonymous visitors between the two designs we would have some hard data. We don't have that right now.

I appreciate you all feeling so strongly about this that you want to say something, thank you, but so far many more people are in favor of the redesign than against (that I've seen/heard). So if you want to convince me (and even other people), you're going to need strong and clear arguments. Pointing to wordpress.org and other sites and just *saying* that they look better is not good enough.

kaakuu’s picture

kaakuu commented

"so far many more people are in favor of the redesign than against (that I've seen/heard). "

That is contrary to what I've seen/heard. That is contrary to feedbacks at present in the forum as well as in these issues.

"So if you want to convince me (and even other people), you're going to need strong and clear arguments"

Arguments have been from the very beginning of the 11 iterations and throughout, at least by those who knew about it (though many did not as things were kept scattered and obscure). Strong and clear arguments have been also given recently in the forum and has been given/is being given currently in the issues. Arguments have been also given clearly, strongly, concisely and logically by ltwinner in this same issue in the opening post in the 11 points above which should not be brushed off as just emotional reactions If the head honchos refuse to listen or fails to see the obvious or denies to answer simple questions or has some other purpose or just ignore or just say "your argument is no argument" I wonder what else can be done.

Please do not confuse the fact that we are not liking the redesign structurally, we are discussing about its usability and most importantly its visual appeal.

petarb’s picture

petarb commented

As I designer I hate to critique other people's work, especially when so much effort has gone into it - but I think it's worth putting the following points here:

1) the page lacks visual focus.

2) there is no coherence in the style of the data and imagery presented.

3) it is very difficult to find out the key features of Drupal in a few seconds, say, unlike the MODx site (hate to make the comparison, but there it is)

4) Not sure why the 'search' is such a feature either. It is should NOT be the key feature of the homepage, you need to sell the benefits of Drupal first.

However, unlike the ltwinner I am slightly opposed to getting 'the whole community' involved. That way lies madness. Getting everyone's input never results in the best solution in my opinion - in design it usually produces mediocrity rather than brilliance.

But I DO think it's worth getting a second or even third design team to take a look at this. At the moment the design just doesn't seem to be working as well as many had hoped. Sometimes its not to do with the designers themselves, but the evolution of the process between them, the client, and various stakeholder's expectations.

I think 'disaster' is a very strong word. But I also think that something has gone wrong here, and it needs to be addressed.

damien tournoud’s picture

damien tournoud commented
Priority: Critical » Normal
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

The design by committee phase is over. This is the implementation phase.

You will be welcome to help improve the redesigned site once it is launched. In the meantime (and I'm saying that with all the kindness in the world), please either help the launch or shut up.

alex ua’s picture

alex ua commented

+1 to #7- care to help implement this kaakuu? There's plenty to do, and plenty of places where we could use extra eyes/writers. Care to give a hand to help make the content on the site as good as possible?

kaakuu’s picture

kaakuu commented

Alex - that is what I am helping. Please see all the issues I have posted on redesign. Care to answer those without bias? With a good looking and easy site, with a homepage that has loving looks you will have more people attracted & caring to help.

danielhonrade’s picture

danielhonrade commented

Well, if you think that the redesign is a disaster, what do you think of the current design? Design is an evolution, going from 1 step to another no matter how bad looking it is, one design cannot please everybody either. Let us just thank those who made an effort on this redesign.

And please, show your portfolio if you want to convince anybody, that speaks louder. In my experience, people who talk a lot, don't do a lot.

Cheers, :D

JayNL’s picture

JayNL commented

You will be welcome to help improve the redesigned site once it is launched. In the meantime (and I'm saying that with all the kindness in the world), please either help the launch or shut up.

It's not that they're not contributing to the redesign, they just don't put it where you code guru's want it, because (as I said earlier) you treat design as code here. And if certain comments are not placed in one queue or another, it probably gets neglected or the author is told to 'shut up'... And because of your code-brain, you can't handle emotional things like a redesign and the tons of choices to make during such a process. Please remember that the better code monster you are, the worse you are in judging proper design. You never wondered why your designer only wants you to create a big friggin' array of data, and no visual output whatsoever? It's because coders can't design, they can't judge about design and they can't improve design.

If you didn't want replies and opinions on the dreadful redesign, you shouldn't have posted this post at all. The moment you've posted it, you knew you were going to have truckloads of experienced designers taking a crap on the redesign because it has nothing, nothing appealing.

Who thought to leave out the DOWNLOAD button was a good idea? Or is it forgotten in the redesign process? Please people. Let a TRUE professional handle the design, otherwise your design gets as bad as the makes-me-wanna-kill-myself-after-pulling-my-hair-out burgerking-like slogan.

One more question though.. Who did the Se7en theme? I think Mark Boulton as well? Or at least a guy named Mark. It's perfect, awesome, usable, great, appealing, clean, easy to use and read and love. Too bad the website about D7 User Experience, is BUILT IN FRIGGING WORDPRESS! Why is there so much difference in the Se7en theme and the new drupal design?

What went wrong people!?

kaakuu’s picture

kaakuu commented

+1 for JayNL

@jayNL - the download button issue is here - you may please join here.

@danielhonrade - please use @etc, that helps as several people are speaking. And for reporting bugs it is not necessary to have portfolios that can be shown off.

Wolfflow’s picture

Wolfflow commented

+1 for JayNL
+1 for Kakuu

-100 for ? I'm leaving this intentionally to anonymous, I already have felt the power of "shut up's"

lisarex’s picture

lisarex commented

The home page will not be scrapped, but we are still working on it.

Individual, actionable issues with clear reasoning are welcome, but giant issues like this one can't be dealt with by the redesign team. We are busy implementing and don't have bandwidth to pull apart and address every thing you all are mentioning. Some are already in the issue queue (though not all in Redesign project).

laura s’s picture

laura s commented

The redesign discussion started over 3 years ago, and has been done openly with the community. See http://groups.drupal.org/drupalorg-redesign-plan-drupal-association?page=7 for starters and work your way forward. There was a time and place for calls to go back to the drawing board.

I will not say that I personally find the design to be ideal, but there are other aspects of it I think are fabulous. Design by committee is no way to build a website, which is why the DA went with a designer (after an open RFP process). Nevertheless, the *.drupal.org redesign was an iterative process based on a lot of user feedback, done openly with ongoing community feedback. Cries of "amateurish" are not helpful at any step of the process, but it does not apply here at al, imho. Are there gaps or things that could be done better? Sure. But let's not get locked into the waterfall mindset. Bikeshedding now is not going to help. No design is going to please everybody, and after a certain point you have to run with what you have, and then work off of actual usage statistics for informed, metrics-based decisions on what changes should be done, instead of spending more time spinning hypotheticals.

"Release early and release often."

ltwinner’s picture

ltwinner commented
Priority: Normal » Critical
Status: Closed (won't fix) » Needs review

Individual, actionable issues with clear reasoning are welcome, but giant issues like this one can't be dealt with by the redesign team. We are busy implementing and don't have bandwidth to pull apart and address every thing you all are mentioning. Some are already in the issue queue (though not all in Redesign project).

It is in no-ones interest for drupal to go live with a sub standard homepage that falls far short of the standard set by competing CMSs. So much work has gone into drupal that it more than deserves a top quality homepage. I don't understand how people can be willing to settle for anything less. 1000's of people have put in probably tens of thousands of hours on core, modules, themes, documentation and that should be reflected in the homepage. Clients & new users first encounter with drupal is with the homepage....if they opened four tabs for wordpress, modx, joomla and the new drupal homepage they would come away thinking 'I have to try out WP or modX'...even joomla's homepage is better than the new drupal one - it's ironic that in fact drupal is recognised among developers and regular users of all 4 CMS's as being the most powerful and capable. This new homepage is going to be the public face of drupal for probably the next 5+ years. I will be extremely disappointed if the homepage goes live in this state with it's numerous fundamental design flaws, it would be a terrible reflection on all the work that people have put into different area's of drupal.

The redesign discussion started over 3 years ago, and has been done openly with the community. See http://groups.drupal.org/drupalorg-redesign-plan-drupal-association?page=7 for starters and work your way forward.

The homepage being the public face of drupal is a critical issue. The vast majority of users didn't even know about this redesign process. As people pointed out in the forum thread, there were only one or two posts on the subject in the forum prior to august...how was the average user supposed to know about it? I've been on the drupal forums almost daily for the last 18 months and the first I heard of the redesign was from that forum post a month ago.

Design by committee is no way to build a website, which is why the DA went with a designer (after an open RFP process).

I don't understand how a professional designer could have produced this home page. There are numerous basic design flaws, there is no focus or flow to the page...where is the user supposed to look?

No design is going to please everybody, and after a certain point you have to run with what you have, and then work off of actual usage statistics for informed, metrics-based decisions on what changes should be done, instead of spending more time spinning hypotheticals.

I listed several unacceptable design flaws with the home page. Other people pointed out some of these flaws in the forum even before I did. These are not hypotheticals design flaws, these are factual design flaws. And they are not advanced design flaws that only a professional designer would pick up on, they are basic flaws that there is no excuse for in this day and age. Ill list some of them again, not going to go through them all -

  • Fact 1 - Massive search box being the most prominent item on the page and the first thing that the user 'sees'. What is the reasoning behind that? No question that this is a clear design flaw.
  • Fact 2 - Text explaining the product (text under 'come for the software, stay for the community') - this is the most important text on the page and should be the first thing to grab the user's attention apart from the homepage graphic (which is missing, another flaw). Yet on the new home page it is the last thing a user will see and they have to actively 'search' the page to read it as it does not stand out as much as the other text due to the poor contrast between the dark grey text color and the dark blue background. Making the introductory text as clear and prominent as possible is one of the basics of quality web design - it is plain obvious that this has been botched badly.
  • Fact 3 - No download link or tab. Every other single piece of software in existence has a download link on it's homepage. It is standard pratice. Years of using the intertnet have conditioned people to for a download link. If you have a piece of software for users to download you give them a download link. Another factual design flaw.
  • Fact 4 - Radio buttons in the header....I'll say it again...radio buttons in the header....only someone designing from a developers perspective would put radio buttons in the header. There is no excuse for this. It shows that whatever team or person designed the page was giving no consideration to making the page look striking/beautiful/stylish...which is what a designer should aim for.

    • Fair enough if you don't think design by committe/community would work. There are some top quality drupal.org related sites out there that follow standard design principles and look excellent....if you don't want to design by committee/community then at the very least get in the people who designed these sites to redo the drupal.org redesign.

    http://www.drupalgardens.com/
    http://acquia.com/
    http://www.drupal.com (seems to be down at the moment)

    In the meantime (and I'm saying that with all the kindness in the world), please either help the launch or shut up.

    Actually, I think it's time you 'woke up'. You are about to launch with a very poor design that somehow manages to make numerous basic design flaws and looks weak and amateur compared to its competitors. I'm helping the launch by pointing this out. The forum thread about the redesign sprint was posted on Sept 11th and there have been lots of people complaining about the redesign, maybe it would be more productive to try listening to these complaints insted of telling people to shut up.

silverwing’s picture

silverwing commented
Priority: Critical » Normal
Status: Needs review » Closed (won't fix)

From comment #14 above

Individual, actionable issues with clear reasoning are welcome, but giant issues like this one can't be dealt with by the redesign team

Many of these complaints I may agree with, but posts like this wont get things done.

kaakuu’s picture

kaakuu commented

+1 for #16 and ltwinner

#14 - @lisarex
"don't have bandwidth" - ?? Is bandwidth the obstacle to a change now? Let it be known on the front page, have a chip-in fund. Please. People will be happy to contribute.

#15
From 2 or 3 years ago the majority has been against this design (visual appeal) . It was assured that things/looks can be changed when things reach issues in drupal.org. What about that?

#17
What can get things done then? No one answered the simple question: which looks better - drupal acquia, drupalgardens, drupal.com or redesign? Forget what audience, what purpose each is for, just answer which looks way better?

Sorry to say this but is it "by design" that drupal.org now must look worse than Acquia and Drupalgardens and Drupal.com? If you find the question "___", please put up this qsn as front page sticky at least for 3 weeks.

Wolfflow’s picture

Wolfflow commented

@Laura, I really admire some of your products, you have an impressive and dynamic way to produce Web-design. I also appreciate your staidly and constant contribution to Drupal.

This may totally be off topic but where on drupal.org exist a dedicated globally informative section to inform continuously on the progress of a Redesign-Project Drupal.org users?

" ... work off of actual usage statistics for informed, ..."

And as I surely know that you and others super contributors to drupal.org development members have everything under a simple fingertip ready for consult, and that surely with right and from my side great admiration and respect, I do see that this is the first time some of us did have the opportunity to have access to http://redesign.drupal.org/ and see a general overview of a still half-way functional example of the new outlook of the future Drupal.org Redesign.

What is the point of spreading permanently a bungee of stereotypical comments reply to interested readers to your (maybe not you specifically!) great Redesign announcements?
We have understand it's over, we will live with it, even there is nothing at the moment "on line" now! In that specifically aspect you are right, this time the redesign of drupal.org got spread on a great amount of different links and groups and locations. It made me really crazy to cross all around and follow-up different sources where someone could by chance support with a modest suggestion. But this is really unimportant.

The most important think is that hopefully we can enjoy as soon as possible the great change and hopefully be able to use properly all the new planned staff that will easy consulting Drupal documentation, learn how to use properly contributed modules, contributed themes and give back in Forums, with patches, with new Theme etc. etc.

Wolfflow’s picture

Wolfflow commented

@ITwinner - really I can understand truly your frustration, believe me, I followed Drupal.org redesign officially underway as an observer, and supported with contributing with some screenshots, but already I was constrained to use other sites like http://www.flickr.com/ to post suggestions and feedback and it make me sad and I was guessing that a lot more different web location would be involved to share work, contribution and what so ever, so as many other drupal.org user I abandoned any intent to participate or join the efforts, that was to much for me.

In this meaning I suggest you to make a break and wait until the new Design will be online, maybe then we can contribute to better feedback and may encounter support coming from other user that care for the Drupal.org Front-page and more.

coltrane’s picture

coltrane
he/him
commented

@Wolfflow I unpublished your comments because they do not add any value to this issue. Please don't bring attempts at discrediting into this. Let's keep this focused. Thanks.

Wolfflow’s picture

Wolfflow commented

Oh I see knowing about more about one of the main Leader and initiator of the Drupal.org Redesign is out of Topic?
OK what ever I have registered this decision and your action.

damien tournoud’s picture

damien tournoud commented

JayNL, Wolfflow: I hope you realize that you are way out of line here. We just cannot tolerate personal attacks in here.

This thread has felt into bikesheding, personal attacks and baseless claims. It is now locked.