Julian Foad wrote:
> I've been thinking about how to make entry easy for both newcomers and
> regulars. Here's the resulting ideas.
>
>
> * On the main page:
>
> Let's tell the visitor...
>
> - what the project is (and what it is not).
>
> - what this web site is, and why I should want to be here: who it is
> aimed at, what I should expect to find here, and what I should look
> elsewhere for.
>
> - what each main section in the nav pane is about. As a first-time or
> infrequent visitor, I want an overview of the web site content so I can
> then use the nav menu to quickly find my way to the main sections that
> I've read about here, and not have to study the nav menu and guess
> exactly what each link means in order to decide where to go. In
> particular, each of the "Getting Subversion" and "Community" headings
> needs an overview before a first-time visitor is ready to follow a
> sub-heading link. I think each overview should be in a section on the
> main page, but it could alternatively be in a separate page. Either way,
> the heading should link to it.
There are a few ways to approach this:
The first is to leave the top-level menu items as non-links, and use the
home page to describe those sections so folks know what to click. The
benefit here is that a visitor to our homepage has access to the site layout
knowledge before even having to make a decision about which top-level menu
item to pick. The downside is that this only applies to folks that land on
the homepage itself.
The other option is to make those top-level menu items point to general
overview landing pages. But if that means maintaining redundant links in
the landing page to each of the sub-pages, that's annoying. It smacks a bit
of unnecessary verbosity (which is a sin of our previous site that I'd like
to repent of).
We could have a dedicated "Site Overview" page.
Finally, we could make use of title="" attributes (or some other
pause-then-popup mechanism) on our left-nav links as tooltips for navigation
hints.
I've not yet formed an opinion about what I like best.
> - Some status updates, such as the News section; I don't mind this
> being at the top, but it shouldn't be the only thing on the main page.
In the light of the length of the additions to the front page, should the
News section be it's own page? I kinda think so.
> So, something like (and I've put this in what I think is a good
> ordering):
I've not reviewed in full, but in general, I like where you're going with this.
--
C. Michael Pilato <cmpilato_at_collab.net>
CollabNet <> www.collab.net <> Distributed Development On Demand
Received on 2010-01-22 18:26:54 CET