ttencate:

Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for.

FWIW, the current layout is actually based on previous analysis of Popular Pages a few years ago, so that we have O(1) access to key resources. -- Don

I think it would be best if the page were targeted towards newcomers, and not as a jump point for resources. Such a jump page is useful, but not as a homepage. Perhaps haskell.org/linkswould be a better place for such a thing. As an aside, in the current homepage, the Haskell description is outweighed by the link menu on the left. IMO the reader's eyes should move from the title, to the description, then either down or left. Currently my attention is split evenly between the link menu and the title/description, which results in confusion. On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:33 PM, Don Stewart wrote:

ttencate:

...

Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for.

FWIW, the current layout is actually based on previous analysis of Popular Pages a few years ago, so that we have O(1) access to key resources.

-- Don _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

-- "The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin

Hello Don, Thursday, July 9, 2009, 8:33:17 PM, you wrote:

FWIW, the current layout is actually based on previous analysis of Popular Pages a few years ago, so that we have O(1) access to key resources.

yes, and it means that page is optimized for regular Haskell users what is proposed, though, is to optimize it for newcomers so they will find their way to Haskell so first we need to decide what category of users homepage should be optimized for. who can set up poll? -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com

Hello Don, Thursday, July 9, 2009, 8:58:48 PM, you wrote:

Newbies: http://haskell.org

Everything regular users need at fingertips http://dashboard.haskell.org/

yes, my vision is that newbies will go to homepage, from google search or by typing "haskell.org". we cannot expect that they will search for some special newbie page while amateurs have more chances to know about their special page. actually, we probably need to provide link to "O(1) page" at homepage. btw, it's rather close to sitemap page provided at some sites -- Best regards, Bulat mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin@gmail.com

On 9 Jul 2009, at 18:32, Thomas ten Cate wrote:

Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for.

I'm not sure that that's useful. We can (assuming there are statistics) easily find out what the front page *is* used for. But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what it *should* be used for. In my mind, the front page is for nothing more than enticing people to use Haskell for long enough to look at a second page where all the useful stuff is if you are a haskell programmer. It should include no more than a description of what haskell is, why it's cool, a link to the documentation, a link to a Haskell Platform Dowload and a link to the earlier mentioned "second page". Bob

We could even have a "featured package" section... I like that idea! If there's a blog or something (the contents of which are automatically pulled into the wiki/site), then there could be a guest writer each month to write a short post about their favorite (or their own ;-) package on hackage.

This would certainly make the site seem more alive (as does that automatic hackage feed, but this would be written by a human). - Tom Lokhorst On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 9:04 AM, minh thu wrote:

2009/7/10 Thomas Davie :

...

On 9 Jul 2009, at 18:32, Thomas ten Cate wrote:

...

Are there any kind of hard statistics and analytics that we can base this discussion upon? There is always room for improvement, but stumbling around in the dark making blind guesses may not be the best way to go. Although I personally feel that Lenny's proposed page is an improvement, statistics could tell us what actual people actually use the site for.

I'm not sure that that's useful.  We can (assuming there are statistics) easily find out what the front page *is* used for.  But that doesn't necessarily mean that that's what it *should* be used for.  In my mind, the front page is for nothing more than enticing people to use Haskell for long enough to look at a second page where all the useful stuff is if you are a haskell programmer.  It should include no more than a description of what haskell is, why it's cool, a link to the documentation, a link to a Haskell Platform Dowload and a link to the earlier mentioned "second page".

Hi,

As said by others, I find that, beside the content you mention, the appearance of a wiki is "inviting", and the Events, Headlines and Recent package updates makes the haskell community looks active and welcoming (which it is).

In fact, although it would be even more overwhelming, the titles of the last posts on planet.haskell.org and the Haskell Weekly News could maybe appear...

We could even have a "featured package" section where someone give a nice introduction to a new or not well known package. (If it is too much but considered a good idea, a possibility would be to have just a little, although slightly outstanding link beside the package name in the Recent package updates section.)

Cheers, Thu _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

On Jul 10, 2009, at 6:14 PM, Thomas Davie wrote:

In my mind, the front page is for nothing more than enticing people to use Haskell for long enough to look at a second page where all the useful stuff is if you are a haskell programmer.

I would have thought that a web page should serve its most frequent visitors best. By all means have an enticing paragraph at the top, pointing to a second page, but why make life hard for regular Haskellers visiting their site?

I asked "why make life for regular Haskellers", and On Jul 17, 2009, at 4:56 AM, Thomas Davie replied:

Because regular haskellers are perfectly capable of bookmarking http://haskell.org/usefullstuff.html , while newbies will only get what google tells them -- the front page.

Sorry, but (1) I have a couple of hundred bookmarks; I may be a regular Haskeller, but it's better human interfacing for me to type www.haskell.org than to look things up in bookmarks. (2) Who says Google will only tell them the front page? PageRank means that Google will offer them first the page that is (to a first approximation) most linked to, and eventually that will be www.haskell.org/usefullstuff. (3) Right now, if you actually try it, Googling for "Haskell" gives you Haskell Introduction - HaskellWiki as the *second* link it offers. Are you really saying that there are lots of newbies who are smart enough to appreciate Haskell when they see it, but so excruciatingly dumb that they won't try "Haskell Introduction"? What might be a good thing would be if someone touched the introduction page from time to time. At the moment, it's about a year older than the main page, which makes it less inviting.