Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[mavrothal]

You are right about the page design. We must decide on guidelines and there is where a webpage designer is handy.
We do not need to rediscover the wheel and we can look at other distros for guidance. But my personal preference is for a clean style, redirecting to inside pages as needed. Something that would allow for a gradual fleshing up.
But we need some more things that will fit puppy's wild style. For example could have a rolling window with forum posts (maybe from specific sections-derivatives, bugs etc).
I'm not sure how a private development site can help. In github we can also have a development branch of the site pointing to the standard github link (not puppylinux.com) and when happy we can merge with the "official" puppylinux branch.

The real problem I think is that no one appears to be willing take a lead or even follow such an effort. Is an unglamorous work, particularly as it is not about "your very own product", but only partially at best.
And as you said maintaining this site will be even harder but that's where git is handy as anyone can contribute (say the person that builds a new pupplet or pet)

[disciple]

[Rattlehead]

I think it would be a good idea to start by setting a declaration of purpose for the website. Out of it, the functionalities required will emerge; and cumbersome tasks, if any, will be easier to face when the person in charge knows what the desired end result is. Starting from listing features, in the hope that a sense will emerge in the whole is push rather than pull, imo.

[solo]

In my opinion, what works best is to take people by the hand and lead them to the right place.

The first thing to do is to explain what Puppy Linux is, or what it stands for.

And then you try to answer the most frequently asked question by newbies on this forum.

Which Puppy is most suitable for my computer?

You ask visitors what kind of computer they have (type, age, model, RAM), and depending on that, they will be guided towards a download section containing a selection of Puppies most suitable for their needs.

Each of these Puppies has their own list of features, and each of them has their own download and installation instructions, because there's simply too much variety between them to make that general.

[greengeek]

[Rattlehead]

I could give a hand with HTML and CSS (although they make my brain hurt). However I have to warn:

* I'm "visually impaired" (cannot design something visual for my life, not even match two colors harmoniously)

* I don't know how to use GitHub and frankly, learning it is a bit out of my league right now... (I tried twice in the past and again, it made my brain hurt.)

Again thinking about the purpose, I wonder, do people still search Linux distros via search engine? Or maybe having an official web site is just a formality for any distro worth its salt, but all is needed is a basic hub to direct users to all the rest of the content available? Someone mentioned above including some dynamic widget that shows the forum... What could be its use? If a user comes looking for basic information on PL, what kind of information from the forum is relevant to show?

Just a few questions that pop up in my head after reading the previous comments.

[mavrothal]

Since people want to keep this thread active for all the wrong purposes let's at least remember what this thread is it about

If you are a web developer or just know how to make nice web pages or just want to (hands-on) learn how to make them AND you like/use puppy, please help to generate an appealing and informative public Puppylinux face.

BTW, this is how www.puppylinux.com looks today

[jamesbond]

@mavrothal - how is the wiki maintained these days? Are they up to date?

My idea is templating - somebody could design a good templates with CSS/HTML (or even keep the existing one if everyone agrees that they're happy with it).

Then other people who aren't so good with HTML but can also help to update the content; using an automated "text-to-html" - either online (like what you do in the wiki), or offline (lots of tools like that: asciidoc, pandoc, grutatext, markdown, text2tags etc). Resulting HTML is published to the public website.

Advantages:
---
1. People only need to edit text (with very simple, commonly markups, e.g. asterisk as *bold*, _underline_ as underlining, square brackets as [links] etc - this obviously differs according to the tool chosen, but they are still relatively simple and common-sense enough).
2. The actual source text is readable on its own.
3. Reviewing changes on github entails reviewing content changes, not changes due to random HTML tags moved by the HTML editor.
4. It's better than even a real CMS because:
a) no need to worry about security vulnerabilities of Joomla/Drupal and Wordpress
b) no need to install PHP mysql etc
c) no need to setup access controls etc - github already provides it.

But this is already done with the wiki, so I'm interested how this turns out - how well is the wiki maintained these days?

EDIT: add Drupal.

[starhawk]

I can do graphics but I can't code HTML for crap. If I can be of use on the images side of things, let me know. I don't mind drawing up some concept sites, either, after doing some research -- but I would need a WYSIWYG editor (something like Dreamweaver or... gee, does anyone remember Frontpage?) to make it work since I can't hand-code the pages myself.

[Rattlehead]

[Rattlehead]

[starhawk]

Wouldn't know, but probably not. I can't stand seamonkey

[moeppyfan]

Hi,

When I open my browser, the default jump-off page (file:///usr/share/doc/home.htm), the bottom link:

[mavrothal]

[L18L]