Forthcoming changes to website/homepage

[dougal2]

Hey all,

I've been thrown into action with regards to the new site home page, since it appears that the existing one was hacked. Currently I've put up a test-card page, but the new home page implementation is nearly done anyway.

The new home page provides links for:
- Home
- Overview
- Development
- Download
- Forum
- Gallery
and
- Contact

And these links will be used in the other parts of the site too (wiki/gallery/forum).

Pretty much all of these will link into the wiki (except forum and gallery), however there doesn't seem to be appropriate pages for Development and Contact.
Can whoever is responsible to wiki/copy writing please make pages for these?

Additionally, the home page itself needs a good piece of intro copy on it, what I have at the minute is really only placeholder content.

This needs to be done soon, as Lux currently lacks a front page. I may not be at the IRC meeting later today, but it should probably be discussed.

Doug.

[Abel]

It's great to see the website getting more integrated; also I find the colour scheme for the wiki very pleasant. However, I think the choice of categories and the navigation need some thought.

The number of main categories is now seven, which I think is a good number, but the number of pages we have is going to be a lot bigger. This means we have to find a way to navigate to pages that are not directly linked by one of the big buttons on the left. I can imagine three possible scenario's:

-some or all of the pages display a page that consists of links to various pages that fit in a category
-all links just link to single pages, except one that has a page similar to the wiki index
-all links link to single pages, while at the same time showing a secondary menu containing links to to various pages that fit in the category in the main bar on the left. The current wiki index page disappears.

I think the first two options are far from ideal; in the first one, you never get to a meaningful page right away, while in the second one, a secondary navigation menu is introduced that is competing with the main menu on the left. Hence (unless someone comes up with another way to solve this) I think we should use the third option and use expandable/collapsible menu's. Basically the start situation would be:

Code: Select all

introduction
gallery
download

Then, if someone clicks "introduction", the "introduction to luxrender" page shows on the right and the menu expands:

Code: Select all

introduction
   [b]-introduction to LuxRender[/b]
   -goals and philosophy
   -features
gallery
download

The page that is displayed on the right would always be indicated with a different colour, background or font. Once another main category is clicked, the previously selected category can collapse again.

I've attached a text document with a category organisation proposal, containing the following main categories: introduction, gallery, download, documentation, (material library), forum, development, contact.

[Radiance]

Hey,

I think we should put online what doug already has for now, as the website is currently broken,
and discuss proposals/organization afterwards and then update

Radiance

[dougal2]

Ok, the new home page and wiki theme are installed.

Please list any problems/complaints/praise here so that we can do somthing about them

Cheers.

[jim]

Please list any problems/complaints/praise here so that we can do somthing about them

Pretty obvious flaw - the "feature list" (6 bullet items) shows up twice on the home page.

[dougal2]

@jim
yeah, the actual content isn't final yet... some of the old words need to be pulled from the database, and re-written a little. All in good time

[Radiance]

Hey,

Great work doug

I remarked the 2nd paragraph on the front page in the HTML as it's was a copy of the first.

This is a good start,
I suggest maybe doug and abel can work together to further improve it, as it overlaps with documentation and wiki.
I suggest you 2 arrange between yourselves as how to do it as i'm flooded with the refactoring phase currently.

Good luck!,
Radiance

[Down Rodeo]

Looks very nice I think

[PhilBo]

Just to let you know that the front page is set to be just wider than 1024x768 so there is a slight need to scroll left to right. This is on IE7 on Vista. Otherwise, it's looking cool.