Talk:Main Page:Proposed
From the ALSA wiki
Saul 22:16, 30 December 2005 (EST): Sounds like we are in general agreement, I like your of the different areas of interest (especially the first two: user info and app development info). I will put some further comments on the Community portal and some of my understanding of Categories on the Help:editing page (although I may be misunderstanding you about this).
markc 21:38, 30 December 2005 (EST): There will always be a trade off between simplicity and trying to provide "everything" the user may want or need. There are at least two competing scenarios; one for users that visit the site for the very first time and may also be linux novices, and two, regular visitors who might also be experienced Linux/audio developers. Getting the balance right between these two extremes is tricky. Another division is information about the ALSA package itself, as in drivers, library and utilities/tools (perhaps more or less a one to one relationship to the distributed components), and, anything related to using ALSA in conjunction with JACK and various audio applications. So in keeping with your thoughts about the MP being as short as possible I think the only way to do this is to specifically have a non-index (as in not like the old site) broken into (roughly) the four areas I just outlined and with minimal links that then go to deeper level pages that are the actual index pages, which then go off to the actual info.
- minimal intro
- minimal index (the [hide] area)
- for newbies
- for developers (or regular visitors)
- alsa itself (drivers, lib, tools)
- related material (JACK etc)
- resources (a link to a page of external links)
I'm not sure exactly what order 3, 4, 5, and 6 should be but they could feature a prominent link that goes to a sub-page that then is a comprehensive index of links, with minimal descriptions and little to no actual sections of text (that's on the next deeper level).
I think the very top of the MP only needs to point to ALSA:About and the official ALSA site and most of the explanation about this site and how to use it could be on the about page (about ALSA itself, this being an unofficial site and explaining what a wiki is and to how to use it). A link to ALSA:About also appears at the bottom of every page so I'm not sure it's worth using too much space on the MP to explain some basics that a regular user does not need.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by the "does this wiki have a name"... and I am also unclear about categories such as ALSA:* nor how best to utilize them.
Saul 14:32, 30 December 2005 (EST): I am trying to think of the best way to organize the different sections on this page. This is not an easy task and no matter what method is chosen, there are going to be some disadvantages. Here are some of the issues that I consider important:
- The Main Page should be short, no more than two screens of data.
- A reader should, upon visiting the MP, be informed where he is.
- There should be enough info provided for him to be "sent" to the right section of the wiki.
Based on this, I am thinking that the best approach for the MP is one from a reader's point of view; i.e., not so much an index of the wiki contents, but a "I am interested in X, where do I go?" type of presentation.
| Side note: Does this wiki have a name? It would be convenient if it did. I would propose "ALSAwiki" if that is available. |
New Front Page Proposal
markc 15:26, 20 February 2007 (EST): Here is another cut at a new and simpler front page that offers links to sub-section index pages which then links to the real pages. I'm not sure if the categories are a good idea (comments?) and the description of each sub-section could be further refined. I'm pretty happy with the brevity of the introduction paragraph. Any suggestions welcome.
- Ingomueller.net 21:31, 20 February 2007 (EST): As said before: I like it! Appart of the link to the category, I'd add links to the most popular/usefull pages of the category (Example: [1], only shorter). That would 'advanced' users allow to go to their favorite pages faster, at least for the popular ones. BTW: you probably read this but I'd like to mention it again. That's how the main categories can be linked to from the menu bar.
