Landing Page Design Ideas and Proposals

[IdfbAn]

How about this?

Make a new MediaWiki-powered wiki (I know you've considered this before.) and make that the new website.

Have the website and wiki be one and the same.

[wiak]

Yes, wiki is an alternative. Only thing is we had trouble using wiki in the past. Problem is when many people are involved creating pages maintenance becomes a nightmare - people create a wiki page then vanish and soon the whole wiki is a mess of out-of-date info. Better to keep a tightly controlled landing page in my opinion and especially since it is just a pointer really to the very different individual distros involved on the forum. That's why you can't use some kind of intro about distro running in RAM or whatever - only some of them are intended for that and some are specifically for low-powered distros and others come in all sorts of shapes, types, sizes, and purposes. Definitions tend to be limiting, which is why you have to leave individual forum distro descriptions entirely up to the relevant distro development teams.

Of course, the KL dev team may well create a wiki especially for KL distros, Puppy Linux may create a wiki especially for Puppy, DebianDog for its set of distros - and more besides. Up to their creator(s) and dev teams. The forum distro types are for the most part all very different to each other, which gives choice and doesn't prevent collaboration on utility apps and so on at all.

Some who maybe have just been familiar with Puppy Linux might wonder why boot parameters are so very different for most of the other forum distros. Well that's because they weren't derived from Puppy Linux, which is why in-common descriptions of operation simply don't make sense. Only FatDog started out as a fatter Puppy. The first major distro that appeared other than that was DebianDog and it began life as a variant of Debian Live so that's where it's system operation including boot parameters originally came from; then Fredx181 its main develop for years now provided an alternative boot system based on that of Porteus Linux (albeit I believe highly modified for DebianDog purposes) so its system operation and boot parameters derive from that, and using Puppy boot parameters won't work at all with it, and until recently nor was there any compatibility in package management tho some Puppy systems have now integrated apt package management per Debian official (but obviously not the Slacko ones...).

[IdfbAn]

Problem is when many people are involved creating pages maintenance becomes a nightmare - people create a wiki page then vanish and soon the whole wiki is a mess of out-of-date info.

That's a valid concern, but it's a wiki, so other people can replace the out-of-date info. And also because it's a wiki, it's a lot easier to edit it than the current method of forking the website's GitHub repo and editing it.

Yes, you can talk about if people will even be willing to do that in the first place, but you can also say that about the entirety of Puppy Linux.

[wiak]

Problem is when many people are involved creating pages maintenance becomes a nightmare - people create a wiki page then vanish and soon the whole wiki is a mess of out-of-date info.

That's a valid concern, but it's a wiki, so other people can replace the out-of-date info. And also because it's a wiki, it's a lot easier to edit it than the current method of forking the website's GitHub repo and editing it.

Yes, you can talk about if people will even be willing to do that in the first place, but you can also say that about the entirety of Puppy Linux.

I agree that other people 'could' replace out-of-date info, but I'm describing the fact that Puppy Linux had a wiki for years (I contribute some pages to it too), but in practice it did become an out-of-date nightmare so ended up abandoned. Maybe it could be done better somehow, with someone appointed to monitor its pages closely - Puppy did have someone, but really there were hundreds if not thousands of stale pages in the end anyway - became out-of-control. But as I say, the different forum distros will want their own wikis anyway since they are so different beasts with their own dev teams. Same possible issues though. But that is another reason I don't see how any wiki has a place as the landing page - that is not going to be describing any distros since their dev teams need to be left to describe what their distros are about or how they become.

EDIT: In other words, the landing page is no more than that and needs to be kept very simple since it only acts as a pointer to the various forum distro sections of the forum. Any description of the individual forum distro types needs to be kept very short and simple since some distros produce all sorts of shapes and forms of distro (not just package managers and desktop environments and for both low powered and large resourced computers) - the individual distro dev teams may well not have time to update the landing page so any distro descriptions on it needs to be minimal if at all.

[wiak]

The main thing to keep in mind is that we are not discussing a landing page for distro Puppy Linux, we are discussing a landing page for this forum, which caters for five main very different types of distro (and KL/FirstRib-based distros, as an example, are very variant in shape, form, and purpose - like chameleons).

If you don't remember that, the landing page would end up in same confusing mess we had previously on this forum where people wondered, for example, why DebianDog didn't boot with Puppy Linux boot arguments.

So any multi distro descriptions would need that distros dev team approval - in fact they would have to write any such entries and keep them up to date: that may well be difficult to arrange since all devs are busy anyway and also have outside of forum lives. Best to keep landing page ultra simple therefore. (or avoid having one).

The distros on this forum tend to have very small dev teams. Anything needing very regular maintenance by our teams soon thus becomes a mess. And the underlying system operations and functionality can be complex and essential to understand. That is why experienced dev team members are generally required to produce any critical docs or explanations. Otherwise users get lots of misinformation that is very unhelpful and even detrimental.

Note, of course, that I'm speaking generally. What any individual forum distro team wants its users to do or write is entirely up to that distro's team. Lots of experience using any distro is obviously important for documentation writers of course, and the more such we have the better.

[mikewalsh]

Despite that @wiak and I often don't see eye on eye on a lot of things, I have to agree with him on this one.

The landing-page is to be for this forum.....and since the forum has now been re-structured to give more equal exposure to the five main OSs the community has on offer, it would be foolish to pretend it's anything other than that.

The landing-page is NOT specifically for Puppy Linux. Not any more. The community has evolved & expanded in multiple directions, and I believe it's only fair that the forum and everything associated with it should reflect this. We've been through all that stuff about the name.....how it makes more sense to keep it because of the 20+-yr reputation, the 'brand', and all the benefits the associated SEO ranking brings with it.....but for the landing-page itself, that is irrelevant. It should ONLY point to this forum, nowhere else - that was always its intention, after all - and link to the five main sections, along with one for those who just want to dive-in & browse through everything.

NOTHING ELSE. Keep it short, keep it simple.....both in content & links.

Please remember this guys, and try to take this as a guiding reminder for design submissions. I know y'all are super-enthusiastic about your designs & how each of you thinks it should be done, but.....we're wasting our time otherwise. If we're going to do it, then let's do it once, get it right, and do it PROPERLY.

I hate having to revisit things and keep modifying, changing, altering stuff. It gets old, FAST.

Thanks, y'all.

Mike.

[darksun]

Despite that @wiak and I often don't see eye on eye on a lot of things, I have to agree with him on this one.

The landing-page is to be for this forum.....
NOTHING ELSE. Keep it short, keep it simple.....both in content & links.

I hate having to revisit things and keep modifying, changing, altering stuff. It gets old, FAST.

@wiak @mikewalsh you agree on these part 1 - part 2 ideas, do not you? Because I believe it is important to see how many users do, so @rockedge can have something to base our land page.

[wiak]

Despite that @wiak and I often don't see eye on eye on a lot of things, I have to agree with him on this one.

The landing-page is to be for this forum.....
NOTHING ELSE. Keep it short, keep it simple.....both in content & links.

I hate having to revisit things and keep modifying, changing, altering stuff. It gets old, FAST.

@wiak @mikewalsh you agree on these part 1 - part 2 ideas, do not you? Because I believe it is important to see how many users do, so @rockedge can have something to base our land page.

Actually, no. You are describing traditional Puppy Linux in your design. Many of the other forum distros don't follow that description list at all. That's what I was emphasizing above.

[darksun]

Actually, no. You are describing traditional Puppy Linux in your design. Many of the other forum distros don't follow that description list at all. That's what I was emphasizing above.

Please read again what I linked you and wrote

Design, colors, fonts, its content itself is up to us.
This is my vision: a simple, straightforward, essential trampoline to our forum -> the one and only place where there are up to date information, download and other links, FAQs, and on.
This, again, in order to avoid multiple places with the same info, limit the risk of providing old/obsolete info, and most important to incentive (new) users to join the forum and participate, instead of merely download ISOs.

the content of my visioned landing page will be up to us, there are many better users then myself that can write the content of the landing page to make sure the operating systems present in this forum will be included in the landing page's introduction.

[wiak]

Well that bottom paragraph is fine, but the distro description in your link was of traditional Puppy Linux.

Perhaps you want dev teams to write description of their distro to include on landing page. Trouble is that, KL for example, can take any shape and form. Could say that, but better landing page simply provides links to official maintained KL documentation and particularly to its forum location I feel. Otherwise distro teams have to keep also maintaining landing page distro description details which is unlikely to happen. (???)

Well I suppose a very brief description could be produced. Won't be that Puppy description for KL though despite that a Puppy lookalike could be produced as a KL distro, but that's not main KL objective at all thus far. We rarely run KL in RAM (though can) and don't care much about install size usually. We don't generally produce for low powered computers, but can - in fact could also target old 32bit machines but haven't. Also we often use systemd (like upstream) or runit, but could use sysVinit but usually prefer not to. Not like Puppy.

The forum landing page should be kept really simple and not focus on one distro. Main docs for any distro would be written by distro team and stored elsewhere.

[williwaw]

It should ONLY point to this forum, nowhere else - that was always its intention, after all - and link to the five main sections, along with one for those who just want to dive-in & browse through everything.

NOTHING ELSE.

why can't each each project on the landing page contain a link to that projects home page? It would help people make the distinctions that have been needed in the past?

[wiak]

It should ONLY point to this forum, nowhere else - that was always its intention, after all - and link to the five main sections, along with one for those who just want to dive-in & browse through everything.

NOTHING ELSE.

why can't each each project on the landing page contain a link to that projects home page? It would help people make the distinctions that have been needed in the past?

It could, but I suggest better maybe to point to an 'About' post n the forum itself made for each distro by its own dev team. That way they would maintain control over it. No doubt they would use that to contain only a short correct and updated description of their distro including links to any home webpage(s) (once and when that exists), and any other online related documentation sites (such as a wiki for the distro if any).

[wiak]

It should ONLY point to this forum, nowhere else - that was always its intention, after all - and link to the five main sections, along with one for those who just want to dive-in & browse through everything.

NOTHING ELSE.

why can't each each project on the landing page contain a link to that projects home page? It would help people make the distinctions that have been needed in the past?

It could, but I suggest better maybe to point to an 'About' post n the forum itself made for each distro by its own dev team. That way they would maintain control over it. No doubt they would use that to contain only a short correct and updated description of their distro including links to any home webpage(s) (once and when that exists), and any other online related documentation sites (such as a wiki for the distro if any).

There is an other reason I suggest it done this way where forum itself is used for the 'About' distro type description text:

Some forum distro types are actually designed to produce multiple distro flavours, which sometimes (particularly with KL/FR) are very different from each other.

The creator of an individual distro (e.g. Sofiya) may want to promote their distro via the likes of Distrowatch and build their own distro homepage and so on for that purpose. This can happen at any time, but is entirely optional and no time rush to produce accurate description is involved. Only a person very familiar with a distro can accurately write such descriptions.

Since any distro-type forum posted 'About' post is effectively directly accessible to forum dev team, it can easily be edited at any time to update individual distro homepage links and I would encourage any individual homesite to be prepared in a manner that contains the necessary components/format for the needs of distrowatch submission.

[wiak]

In summary @darksun, though I don't see what you suggested working as a landing page for this forum about five very different types of distro; and KL distros, for example, can be anything, even just simplest commandline and no package manager or just a simple host for running virtual machine guests or a full on distro like KLA KDE Plasma flavours.

I do think your suggestion would be a good basis for at least Puppy Linux distro revamped homepage. I particularly like your use of icons and Puppy itself could do with clearer homepage marketing like that. It really needs new developers though or there will be no distro to market; Puppy wasn't supposed to just be Debian based and Vanilla dpup actually isn't Puppy and doesn't provide a Slacko anyway. But your idea really does look like a good homepage - clear and not over complex.

I wish we could create similar style of front homepage for KL, but KL distros really are or can be very variable in terms of what they consist of and what each are for. That is a result of a very flexible build system that allows most any shape of distro to be assembled.

As for the landing page, I still don't understand the mechanism of how it works in terms of its initial url and so on. I need rockedge to explain and demonstrate this.

[Grey]

can be anything

Wiak, your strategy of repeating and reminding in almost every post that KL/FR can pretend to be anything to gain more advantageous positions on the forum in the future is understandable. Of course, this won't work because you're not drawing a line between the distro and the constructor. But at least come up with new types of advertising, or something

[wiak]

can be anything

Wiak, your strategy of repeating and reminding in almost every post that KL/FR can pretend to be anything to gain more advantageous positions on the forum in the future is understandable. Of course, this won't work because you're not drawing a line between the distro and the constructor. But at least come up with new types of advertising, or something

I have no intended strategy about KL distros, just stating what I see as a problem marketing it. I am not the constructor of most KL distros at all. Sofiya makes most of them, and rockedge comes up with several variants. Been a long time since I published any. Yes, I created the firstrib build system and KL team use it.

[wiak]

Also, I really don't want more advantageous positions of KL on the forum, but I am happy everything is now more balanced. Who knows, I might turn to Puppy Linux development one day instead. I doubt that, but really I'm interested in Linux generally and wouldn't mind if FirstRib wasn't featured in any way at all, but it is and I'm fine with that too. Once again though, why are you commenting about me personally? - my strategy and so. I'm just talking about distros and landing page issues. It is not a personal strategy and just an opinion about what I feel might work and what I think won't, and why.

[wiak]

Certainly, such comments like what you made put me off publishing, but I feel there is a growing list of things I need to do to help the KL team, so I am trying to do that too.

[Grey]

As for the landing page, I still don't understand the mechanism
but really I'm interested in Linux generally

I'm not a native speaker and therefore have no moral right to come up with advertising slogans and all that. I'm just giving lazy advice. Just like you, I'm trying to catch new trends

[Grey]

Once again though, why are you commenting about me personally? - my strategy and so.

We have a democracy here. Besides, you talk about changes the most. Why not find out about your strategy for the future

[wiak]

Once again though, why are you commenting about me personally? - my strategy and so.

We have a democracy here. Besides, you talk about changes the most. Why not find out about your strategy for the future

I don't have one except I hope eventually to contribute more code, but that is Edit: not coming very easily at the moment, so maintenance is uppermost in my mind.

[Grey]

I don't have one except I hope eventually to contribute more code, but that is Edit: not coming very easily at the moment, so maintenance is uppermost in my mind.

Okay. I'll drink tea to your health and honor and stop asking questions for now

[wiak]

Actually, I achieved all I wanted to achieve here, my comments about the landing page aren't intended to convey any strategy. The words you apparently don't like reading may dry up along with any further ideas I have, but really I have no further strategy. Happy with forum changes as they are. But really don't want to discuss further personality matters - whether you think that is democracy or not. Linux coding is the only interest I had in this forum, and I don't do much Linux now, but hope the KL team keep going with their work, which I enjoy following somewhat still. I do believe, for many reasons, that the forum is now a better place. I hope that is enough.