separate fpo domain? (was Re: making the website better)

[Jeffrey Tadlock]

On Feb 8, 2008 1:32 PM, Máirín Duffy <duffy at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> For some historical background, the fpo site was such a link farm (or
> landing page, either one is bad I think) with six links on it. It didn't
> work well and the domain was eventually changed to point directly to the
> wiki. See:
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/20050419015224/http://www.fedoraproject.org/
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/20050826014104/http://fedoraproject.org/

Yep, those are ugly.  That's not what I suggested, but I may not be
communicating my point very well.

There is nothing that says our main page has to be plain text links.
We can link to other sections of the project though from the main page
and make it look good.  We can cover the what is Fedora on the main
page.  We can use pleasant graphics somewhere about the page to get
you deeper in to the subject matter you seek.

> We're not suggesting having a separate domain for every single
> subsection of the site. I would suggest we have two, very similar to the
> Firefox website's model:
>
> - getfedora.org (or usefedora.org, or whatever)
>
> - fedoraproject.org -
>
> A third site I think we could have is what J5 is working on - my fedora
> - along the veins of fedoraproject.org,

I only disagree in splitting these off into different domain names.
Dedicated sections for the user community, developers and the
myfedora.fp.o all make sense.  It makes sure the information for each
group of people is relatively contained in one area.  Those sections
could be getfedora.fp.o or dev.fp.o or whatever - but it helps show
some form of hierarchy.  This is just my opinion of course.

> ubuntu has:
>
> ubuntuforums.org
> fridge.ubuntu.com
> shop.canonical.com
> wiki.ubuntu.com
> a separate domain for almost every 'spin' - kubuntu.org, edubuntu.org, etc.

I liked the overall way the Ubuntu page got you to different places
and that is what I was trying to show.  I have absolutely zero
artistic talent, so I couldn't sketch or make a mockup and had to rely
on a page I think does its job reasonably well.  :)

I don't see a problem with sub-domains as it still helps show we all
fall under one branch.  So translating the above URLs into an Fedora
hierarchy it would be:

forums.fp.o
news.fp.o
store.fp.o
wiki.fp.o
spins.fp.o

That to me shows some organization behind the group.  I am sure others
will disagree, everyone does have a different way of looking at
things.

> What ubuntu is doing is that ubuntu.com is geared towards users and
> non-contributors (and customers) and it links out towards developer and
> contributor resources. I am a developer i have to dig pretty deep on
> their site to get to stuff that interests me.

So, we fix that.  Fedora is tends to be a developer distro, we make
sure that first click off the main page takes you deep into the heart
of developer land and minimize the number of clicks - because that is
important to us.  Even better we call that first link dev.fp.o - so
now the developer either remembers that or bookmarks straight into the
section they really care about.

Meanwhile, for the users we keep a little more user centric content on
the main page.  Because unlike the developers they are probably
landing on our page in search of the questions you want to answer for
them.

> I think you are slightly exaggerating what we are suggesting here.

No more so than calling my ideas nothing more than a link farm.

I think your ideas are great for developing more specific sections of
the site.  A user specific area with the scary developer content not
in it would be useful for new users to Fedora or users trying to
choose a distro.  And vice versa, getting developers into an area that
is more suited for them and not 'learning about Fedora'.  I only
disagree on adding yet more domain names to the mix to accomplish
that.

--Jeffrey