New page for puppylinux.com

[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]

I respectfully disagree with the private developing website idea. If you ran an open source software project like that it would be considered highly dysfunctional - even the microsoft people developing .NET have decided to stop "code bombing". Why would documentation be any different?

I did say "development play ground" - i.e as part of a collaborative construction process - not for the publically available published website!

I guess we have a philosophical disagreement. I think the easier it is for anyone to suggest changes and the more eyes on it the better, and there are always going to be a lot more eyes on the public website.
How "professional" does it need to look, anyway? Puppy isn't even professionally developed. And other distros like Arch have all their documentation in a wiki.

[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]

The real problem I think is that no one appears to be willing take a lead or even follow such an effort.

Maybe there is no-one here who has the required skill set. Willingness is no use without skills (at least in terms of making something pretty and also functional).

I do have one question though - would this website be focused on "woof" style puppies? (ie: "real" puppies). I think it is too much to ask that someone keep such a website up to date with regard to ALL of the puppy derivatives currently on offer. Surely the website would have to reflect a smaller subset of Puppies - ie only those that are 'standard' LTS puppies?

[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 http://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]

How is the wiki maintained these days? Are they up to date?

Fwiw, I once embarked in trying to streamline the wiki; it's a great resource, I sometimes head there first before checking the forum when I have a doubt. I don't know how well maintained is these days. I stopped my project because I found a series of hurdles that required a decision I was not the person to make; my intent was making the path for people to join and start contributing as friction-free as possible; the main proble that I remember is that the wiki does not offer a clear standard for classification, but several -in my view too many- options: tags, breadcrums, a system of categories... So when a lot of people start to peek in it can become messy. I like your templating suggestion because it seems a step in the direction of clarity.

Another idea to gain clarity about the current state of the site would be some of us running a "gorilla usability test": type "Puppy Linux" in your search engine of choice, find the official site, follow the complete process until you have a new Puppy installed in your machine, writing a few notes along the way about what could be improved, where do you think you would have been lost as a newbie... If several of us coincide in finding the same problems, we have gold of opportunity there...

[Rattlehead]

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.

Thank you for your offering; regarding an editor, wouldn't it be enough with Seamonkey's Composer (^4)? I find it sufficient for my needs, although like I said I'm far from being a supercoder...

[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:

Download Puppy. Or, if on dialup consider buying a CD.

Is: http://puppylinux.com/download/index.html

And on "Install" on Desktop, in the "Install applications" Tab, the button "Package Manager introduction webpage" is:

http://puppylinux.com/development/package-management.htm

Both these links now seem to be dead. There may be others.

Maybe it is a good idea to keep the old site available on puppylinux.com so the links will still work, with the index page only being the new site? Or somehow create a re-direction to http://barryk.org/puppylinux/*url* for non-existent pages that go to:

http://barryk.org/puppylinux/download/index.html
http://barryk.org/puppylinux/development/package-management.htm
etc.

All the other links on the "jump-off" page work except the www.puppylinux.com ones, from what I can see.

[mavrothal]

Hi,

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

Download Puppy. Or, if on dialup consider buying a CD.

Is: http://puppylinux.com/download/index.html

And on "Install" on Desktop, in the "Install applications" Tab, the button "Package Manager introduction webpage" is:

http://puppylinux.com/development/package-management.htm

Both these links now seem to be dead. There may be others.

Good catch.
The first should be easy to fix as downloads are now at the top of the puppylinux.com page. The rest though may need some more work.

Where are the people that want to help with the web page? Here is an opportunity.

[L18L]

Good catch.
The first should be easy to fix as downloads are now at the top of the puppylinux.com page. The rest though may need some more work.

Where are the people that want to help with the web page? Here is an opportunity.

Yes, good catch.
How to Redirect a Web Page.

But nothing is easy with Github Pages.
Redirecting should be easy for Githubers only:
https://help.github.com/articles/redire ... hub-pages/

---

Did Barry give just the domain name
or content also?

Does redirect make sense?

[mavrothal]

Good catch.
The first should be easy to fix as downloads are now at the top of the puppylinux.com page. The rest though may need some more work.

Where are the people that want to help with the web page? Here is an opportunity.

Yes, good catch.
How to Redirect a Web Page.

But nothing is easy with Github Pages.
Redirecting should be easy for Githubers only:
https://help.github.com/articles/redire ... hub-pages/

There is no reason to use gh-pages, but we do need to use some git repo to work on the page content. So if you (or anyone else) want to write it from scratch outside gh-pages, please do.

Did Barry give just the domain name
or content also?

Does redirect make sense?

I do not know about giving , but as long as the page is up (it is) you do not need permission to link/redirect to it, I would think (Google does it all the time )

[L18L]

There is no reason to use gh-pages, but we do need to use some git repo to work on the page content. So if you (or anyone else) want to write it from scratch outside gh-pages, please do.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL='http://barryk.org/puppylinux/developmen ... gement.htm'" />
</head>
<body></body>
</html>

which is a redirect.
And because 1st duty is avoiding 404 error pages:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL='http://barryk.org/puppylinux/download/'" />
</head>
<body></body>
</html>

There is some more work (find the other 404 pages and redirect them as done above).

This is more important than talking about design and graphics at the moment I think.
----
editSam Feb 20 13:57:52 CET 2016
@BarryK
Please change all www.puppylinux.com to barryk.org/puppylinux on
http://barryk.org/puppylinux/download/index.html
Thank you.

[mavrothal]

There is no reason to use gh-pages, but we do need to use some git repo to work on the page content. So if you (or anyone else) want to write it from scratch outside gh-pages, please do.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL='http://barryk.org/puppylinux/developmen ... gement.htm'" />
</head>
<body></body>
</html>

which is a redirect.

But this only affects new puppies and puts the relevant page out of reach.
What is needed till another package-management page is developed is to redirect http://puppylinux.com/development/packa ... gement.htm to http://barryk.org/puppylinux/developmen ... gement.htm

And because 1st duty is avoiding 404 error pages:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; URL='http://barryk.org/puppylinux/download/'" />
</head>
<body></body>
</html>

There is some more work (find the other 404 pages and redirect them as done above).

This is also problematic as the said page is outdated.
What is needed (till a proper download page is developed) is to to have http://puppylinux.com/download/index.html pointing to the top of the http://puppylinux.com site where the current downloads are.

In short we need someone to take the lead on the puppylinux.com site.
Till then we can keep discussing what other people should do

[L18L]

What is needed till another package-management page is developed is to redirect http://puppylinux.com/development/packa ... gement.htm to http://barryk.org/puppylinux/developmen ... gement.htm

Two of the needed redirects have been published by me here.

This has nothing to do with a redesign of puppylinux
but fixing 404 not founds is simplest state of the art in web design.
Feel free to upload them (I don't) to puppylinux.com which is on github.

[L18L]

...done

See screeny
or
http://extra-inter.net/puppy/puppylinux/

Actual content is just fake.
Needed: Concept, structure text images movies......