223043 - (bzorg-redo) The Bugzilla website needs an overhaul

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Bugzilla :: bugzilla.org, defect)

Description

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

This has been on the back-burner for a long time (I have extremely unfinished
prototype pages in a local directory here that are almost a year old), but given
the focus-shift of Mozilla, and their upcoming site overhaul, we should really
get moving on this so we don't taint mozilla.org's image. ;)  For as much as we
act like an independent entity, we are still a mozilla.org product, and they
even grace us with a link to our website right on their main page as of a couple
months ago.

We need to redo the bugzilla.org website along the same design philosophy... 
i.e. the main page should make it very easy for people to find out what Bugzilla
is, where to get it, and where to go for more resources.

Design goals:

We need distinct areas of the site for:
 * Marketing Info - stuff for folks who are considering using Bugzilla
 * Administrators - stuff for folks who get to admin a Bugzilla installation
 * Developers - stuff for people who are contributing to the project
 * perhaps a section for Bugzilla end-users?

The main page should have more marketing info and less news.

I *don't* have time to do this myself.  Some ways you can help:
 * provide design input
 * provide designs (HTML mockups, etc)

Once we have a general idea of where we're going we can probably file bugs for
individual tasks and turn this into a metabug.

I would prefer the primary discussion on this to remain on the
[e-mail] mailing list until we know where we're going.

Comment 1

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

Mike Morgan has offered a really good-looking mockup of a home page here:
http://oregonstate.edu/~morgamic/bugzilla/

Comment 2

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

-> mike

Comment 3

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

I'm working on the wrapper, fitting the template into the makefile, etc. 
Unfortunately work is calling this week, so I haven't been able to spend as much
time as I've wanted and/or expected.  

I've had cvs access for the beta html branch for about a week now.  That works
fine -- figured out the complex science of using a fax machine.

Talked to Dave and Dawn earlier last week about how the script works and that
was helpful.  I'll get to a large chunk of time after I meet some deadlines this
week, updates soon.  Sorry it's taking so long.

Comment 4

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

update
------
Last weekend I went through and cleaned up all wrapped files.  All doctype,
header/navbar,  and footer information is gone from content documents replaced
with %%DOCTYPE%%, %%HEADER%%, and %%FOOTER%% respectively.

This weekend my goal is to write the script that replaces all of those marked
lines with the files located in the includes directory I created, and then
figure out how to tie that into the mozilla site builder script.

Some script questions I have:
    Are we going to have our own site builder script?
    Should we tie into what Mozilla runs for their site?
    Who is my best resource as far as integration is concerned?

Comment 5

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

Okay, I've made a lot of changes.  Tonight I will put up what I have onto
website-beta for everyone to peck at.  Now is the time to take a look at
bugzilla.org and think about what changes you want to see in the current content.

Here is a preview:
http://valhalla.library.oregonstate.edu/newbugzilla/

Mainly there are some no-brainers.  My philosophies that will be applied:
- do not reference index.html ever, reference the directory
- if the subject is general enough, make a directory for it
- simplify naming
- reduce wordiness by 50%
- proper document heirarchy (h1-h2-h3)
- simple language!
- all relative links
- simple and stupid

I will post again when website-beta is breathing.  Until then, feel free to add
comments here.

Comment 6

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

- reduce wordiness by 50%

Yet more reduction needed on the front page, methinks :-) Probably best to throw
out the old text and start again from scratch.

Gerv

Comment 7

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

The beta site is up.  Now that the majority of the template files are in place,
I will begin rewriting portions of the content (particularly the verbose ones)
so that they are more web-readable -- without losing any meaning, of course.  ;)
 Easier said than done, but kind of fun -- work continues this weekend.  :)

The beta site lives at:
http://website-beta.bugzilla.org/

Comment 8

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

How's the status on links now, do they all work?  The new site looks really
nice, and it's my opinion that whether or not the content rewrites are done, it
is now a suitable replacement for the existing website.  If there's no
objections I'd like to go ahead and move it to the primary site to coincide with
the 2.18rc1 release (which will probably be later this week).

Comment 9

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

As far as I know, all the content has been moved and placed in friendlier places
that make more sense.

I didn't make it all the way through the link checking (there was quite a bit),
but I'll finish that up ASAP.

Is everything set for /docs/?

Comment 10

[Dave Miller [:justdave]]

docs works.  The search stuff doesn't.  That's something I'll have to fiddle
with when I get time, the search indexer is a cron job on the back end. (that's
bug 245579)

It's live, and everything looks pretty. :)

Lets close this and work on the individual problems as separate bugs.  Breaking
dependencies since those aren't actually done yet.