Revamping the news section of the website frontpage - design discussion

Development
1

Hi all,

As discussed as bit in this PR[1], I'd like to revamp the frontpage to
improve how we deliver news to the community - I hear a lot of feedback
along the lines of "it's hard to know what's happening".

I think there's a few things we can do about it, but since I've spent
non-trivial time on website PRs in the past which have not subsequently
been merged, I felt it would be a good idea to agree the rough changes
up-front.

Currently the news section of the site is at the bottom of 3 screens of
other information. As a source of news, that's poor - I can't recall the
last time I scrolled down to it. I'd like to see some version of that moved
higher up. My proposals are:

  1. Move the content of the frontpage after the "Latest Versions" (ie the
    white background area) to the Learn More link.
  2. Left-justify the blue-background area and add one or 2 screenshots
    alongside
  3. Put a latest news / events / blog posts section on the newly-vacated
    white background.

This would make us very similar to sites such as centos.org, ovirt.org,
apache.org, gluster.org and so on, who all make sure there's some form of
"Latest News" that catches the users' eye within the screen area of the
very first page load.

Attached is a rough mockup I did in Gimp using the "latest news" section
from ovirt.org. Clearly we can work on what content should be displayed -
it's the layout that I want to get right up front, since that's where the
work is. Putting the first few blog entries up front will also allow us to
remove the link from the top, since overcrowding has been mentioned as a
concern.

My second concern is about getting important info to people not loading the
frontpage, such as large events or important CVEs. This is less serious,
but we may as well consider it - according to the analytics, only 22% of
users have "/" as the landing page. However, the 2nd place is only 5% and
it quickly drops off from there, so the options seems to be (a) only the
frontpage, or (b) some kind of info on every page.

The PR at [1] is a suggested option for this, used to highlight things we
think people really shouldn't miss. It's intended for infrequent use, maybe
a few times a year. I don't think it's good to have it always-on - it will
lose its impact value then.

So, voices wanted! I have a short-term goal of promoting the birthday
events as much as I can (the lovely people who have donated their time and
venues to us deserve the best promotion we can give back), but I also want
to get the revamp right. I'd like to hear:

(a) does the proposed design work for you?
(b) if not, what would be your counter-proposal for highlighting
news/events etc?
(c) should we keep the top banner for occasional use?

Thanks!

[1] Add a News Teaser banner to the top of the site by GregSutcliffe · Pull Request #651 · theforeman/theforeman.org · GitHub

Greg

2016-06-30-151239_1264x908_scrot-2.jpg1264×908 4.55 KB

2

> Currently the news section of the site is at the bottom of 3 screens of
> other information. As a source of news, that's poor - I can't recall the
> last time I scrolled down to it. I'd like to see some version of that
> moved higher up. My proposals are:
>
> 1) Move the content of the frontpage after the "Latest Versions" (ie the
> white background area) to the Learn More link.
> 2) Left-justify the blue-background area and add one or 2 screenshots
> alongside
> 3) Put a latest news / events / blog posts section on the newly-vacated
> white background.

That's fine, but there's far too much information shown in the
screenshot. A handful of one to two line links should suffice so you can
see and visit multiple items, rather than the whole summary or
introduction from the latest item.

> My second concern is about getting important info to people not loading
> the frontpage, such as large events or important CVEs. This is less
> serious, but we may as well consider it - according to the analytics,
> only 22% of users have "/" as the landing page. However, the 2nd place
> is only 5% and it quickly drops off from there, so the options seems to
> be (a) only the frontpage, or (b) some kind of info on every page.

Only the frontpage is fine, especially if there are navigation links
anyway to get through to news, events and whatever else is present on
the site. Not everything needs to be on every page of the site.

··· On 30/06/16 15:29, Greg Sutcliffe wrote:

–
Dominic Cleal
dominic@cleal.org

3

> This would make us very similar to sites such as centos.org, ovirt.org,
> apache.org, gluster.org and so on, who all make sure there's some form of
> "Latest News" that catches the users' eye within the screen area of the
> very first page load.
>
> Attached is a rough mockup I did in Gimp using the "latest news" section
> from ovirt.org. Clearly we can work on what content should be displayed -
> it's the layout that I want to get right up front, since that's where the
> work is. Putting the first few blog entries up front will also allow us to
> remove the link from the top, since overcrowding has been mentioned as a
> concern.

Sorry, I think losing the whitespace (blue) we have, at the cost of
moving the most important parts of the frontpage (description, 'get started'
and 'learn more') isn't worth it. Also moving these things to the left looks worse
IMO and make them seem less important.

>
> My second concern is about getting important info to people not loading the
> frontpage, such as large events or important CVEs. This is less serious,
> but we may as well consider it - according to the analytics, only 22% of
> users have "/" as the landing page. However, the 2nd place is only 5% and
> it quickly drops off from there, so the options seems to be (a) only the
> frontpage, or (b) some kind of info on every page.
>
> The PR at [1] is a suggested option for this, used to highlight things we
> think people really shouldn't miss. It's intended for infrequent use, maybe
> a few times a year. I don't think it's good to have it always-on - it will
> lose its impact value then.

Honestly I'd prefer that (just one line!) for things like that, the
yearly survey, releases, CVEs, critical events… I realize others will
disagree.

> So, voices wanted! I have a short-term goal of promoting the birthday
> events as much as I can (the lovely people who have donated their time and
> venues to us deserve the best promotion we can give back), but I also want
> to get the revamp right. I'd like to hear:
>
> (a) does the proposed design work for you?

No, sorry

> (b) if not, what would be your counter-proposal for highlighting
> news/events etc?

Top banner (1 line at most) on top of every page? I think
it'll be rather difficult, or impossible (not to mention slow) to keep
everyone happy with this. If you can some designer to make your proposal
of last news on the frontpage look good without making the main elements
more important, I guess that'd work.

https://github.com/theforeman/foreman/pull/3400 would also work great
and no one has to change the frontpage in that case :slight_smile:

> © should we keep the top banner for occasional use?

Yes. It'd be a pain to measure but there are certain actions we need
from the community (testing RCs, filling the survey, upgrading, going to
events…) that I think we'd get more input on if we had that in there.

··· On 06/30, Greg Sutcliffe wrote:

Thanks!

[1] https://github.com/theforeman/theforeman.org/pull/651

Greg

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4

I think the home page we have atm contains way too much information
(three screens or even more?). Some of it is duplicated/too
similar/should be grouped together (why do we have “introduction”,
“quckstart”, and “get started”? Should we have both “documentation”
and “learn more” links?. Do we need a dedicated “videos" link at the
top?). I don’t the videos currently located on the home page should be
there either.

I think it would be useful to show important announcements (releases,
CVE's, etc) and upcoming events on the home page, if only a limited
number.

Having said all that, I don’t know how long it will take to figure out
our home page content and layout, so an intermediate solution is
probably warranted. Perhaps that one line that Daniel suggested?

>
> (a) does the proposed design work for you?

parts of it, but not the whole thing.

> (b) if not, what would be your counter-proposal for highlighting news/events
> etc?

I think it should take a minimal amount of space (as I think that the
home page should fit on one screen)

> © should we keep the top banner for occasional use?

If we have a home page that fits on one screen the information about
events/announcements spot will always be visible, which would make
such a banner redundant.

Cheers,
-d

5

Hi,

> (a) does the proposed design work for you?

Partly. I'm all in for reducing the current clutter on the index page
and having some news/events side block there, it should be prominent as
in "is in the screen area when somebody is surfing to that page", but
I'm unsure if it's good to give it so much space.

Another idea I do have in mind for some time is to extend menu items on
the top with hoverable dropdown menus that resemble the Foreman UI in
order to represent a hierarchical structure of the website, which would
yet to be determined to make some pages quickly accessible from a
reduced index page.

> © should we keep the top banner for occasional use?

I'm not in favor of a top banner like it's proposed in PR 651. If ever,
it should be only on the index page. However, the current news bar on
the bottom is also clearly misplaced and taking too much space for few
news.

··· On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 03:29:37PM +0100, Greg Sutcliffe wrote:

–
Michael Moll

6

> That's fine, but there's far too much information shown in the
> screenshot. A handful of one to two line links should suffice so you can
> see and visit multiple items, rather than the whole summary or
> introduction from the latest item.
>

I agree in general, that was just a cut'n'paste to show layout - I like the
news and events sections, but I'd go for the last 5-10 blog entries (title
only, I think).

Only the frontpage is fine, especially if there are navigation links
> anyway to get through to news, events and whatever else is present on
> the site. Not everything needs to be on every page of the site.
>

Out of curiosity, let me invert that then - do you think there is ever a
situation that
would warrant such a banner?

>
> Sorry, I think losing the whitespace (blue) we have, at the cost of
> moving the most important parts of the frontpage (description, 'get
> started'
> and 'learn more') isn't worth it. Also moving these things to the left
> looks worse
> IMO and make them seem less important.
>

Top banner (1 line at most) on top of every page? I think
> it'll be rather difficult, or impossible (not to mention slow) to keep
> everyone happy with this. If you can some designer to make your proposal
> of last news on the frontpage look good without making the main elements
> more important, I guess that'd work.
>

I'm a little unclear, sorry - are you saying that you're ok with moving
everything
on the white background to the /introduction page, it's just the
re-organisation
of the blue-background area that you have an issue with?

I do think I current frontpage needs something doing - if we haven't sold
people
enough for them to click on "Learn More" in the first screen, they probably
won't scroll down either.

> Honestly I'd prefer that (just one line!) for things like that, the
> yearly survey, releases, CVEs, critical events… I realize others will
> disagree.
>

Difficult discussion yeah - more voices please! :slight_smile:

I do think we need to be careful about how we use that, if it's too
frequent it
will really annoy everyone, or (worse) completely lose it's impact.

https://github.com/theforeman/foreman/pull/3400 would also work great
> and no one has to change the frontpage in that case :slight_smile:
>

Only for people who already have a Foreman install and have enabled
the widget. New users and users on secure sites still need to know :slight_smile:

It'd be a pain to measure but there are certain actions we need
> from the community (testing RCs, filling the survey, upgrading, going to
> events…) that I think we'd get more input on if we had that in there.
>

Again, I do think we have to ration the use of such a banner - but such
metrics would be interesting to know if we could get them, I agree.

So 3 people, 3 different views. We're going to need more input here guys :slight_smile:

Greg

··· On 30 June 2016 at 15:42, Dominic Cleal wrote: On 1 July 2016 at 11:33, Daniel Lobato Garcia wrote:
7

There's lots of different opinions here - good, but takes time to work
through. For the birthday events, I'm running short on time, so I'm going
to send a new PR which is hopefully more broadly acceptable (an entry on
the front page and also in the news footer) while we work through the
longer-term revamp.

https://github.com/theforeman/theforeman.org/pull/656 if people want to
comment on that, otherwise lets keep wider discussion here :wink:

8

No, I can't think of any instances where the news item is that important
that it should be placed so prominently.

··· On 01/07/16 13:28, Greg Sutcliffe wrote: > On 30 June 2016 at 15:42, Dominic Cleal > wrote: > Only the frontpage is fine, especially if there are navigation links > anyway to get through to news, events and whatever else is present on > the site. Not everything needs to be on every page of the site. > > > Out of curiosity, let me invert that then - do you think there is ever a > situation that > would warrant such a banner?

–
Dominic Cleal
dominic@cleal.org