[pydotorg-www] project plan

[David Goodger]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 14:23, Steve Holden <steve at holdenweb.com> wrote:
> The current content maintenance mechanism constrains our site structure
> horribly at times. One task that I find gallingly, ridiculously
> complicated is simply finding out how to contact the PSF. Start at
>
>  http://python.org/psf/
>
> Clicking on "PSF Details & Contacting the PSF" takes you to
>
>  http://python.org/psf/#psf-details-contacting-the-psf
>
> where you then click on "Please see About the Python Software
> Foundation." to get to
>
>  http://python.org/psf/about/
>
> where you then have to identify and click on "How do I reach the PSF?"
> to get to
>
>  http://python.org/psf/about/#how-do-i-reach-the-psf
>
> where you finally see the information you want.

I just edited the "Please see About the Python Software Foundation"
link be more specific, to remove one step from that.

IMO it would be insane to put the PSF contact information everywhere
that it might be useful, because if we applied that logic to every bit
of useful info, every page would then be inundated with text.

We could add a "Contact the PSF" page, and add it to the Foundation
sub-menu, with links where appropriate. Then we're into the problem of
too many navigation menu items, etc. etc.

We could replace the link on http://python.org/psf/ with the actual
contact info, but then the sponsor list is pushed down even further.
What is the purpose of that page?

I don't have the answers to all of this, but I don't agree that it's
because of the technology. We have a set of static content pages and
navigation menus, which would be the same regardless of the back-end
content management system. There are some ways that I could see a
wiki-like through-the-web editing system as superior (us.pycon.org
uses one, it works well for quick edits and community contributions),
but an SVN checkout of text files comes in handy too (grepping, for
example). I think the technology issue is orthogonal to the content
organization issue. Switching to a live-editing system won't fix the
content organization issue.

I don't follow the rest of your argument, as the meanings of certain
pronouns are unclear:

> While as developers we
> are all too happy to talk about software "use cases", too often there
> seems to be an assumption that all web site users are the same. They
> aren't. As a web professional this screams "incompetence" to me,

"this" above

> and the
> site appears to be the way it is because there is no simple way to store
> that information once and re-use it wherever it is needed.

"that information"

> This is insane,

"This"

> and similar idiocies are doubtless repeated elsewhere.
> Anyone who says we can't do better than that has no future in web
> development ;-).

I think everyone agrees that we can do better. It's not clear that
focusing on the back-end tech will get us there though.

-- David Goodger

> To change things demands that we look critically at the
> site from the point of view of our various categories of user.
>
> I have done some research into the current information architecture, and
> have passed the results along to Rich, who is better placed than me to
> make use of it. There's a lot to do.
>
> regards
>  Steve
> --
> Steve Holden           +1 571 484 6266   +1 800 494 3119
> See PyCon Talks from Atlanta 2010  http://pycon.blip.tv/
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