Hello everyone.
My name is Emil and I would like to redo Okular's website.

However, I'm not a good designer.
So if you guys come up with a design, I'll turn it into code and get it up and running.

I've already talked to Albert, Okular's maintainer and he is ok with it.

A couple of notes: Okular's current webpage is quite small. I personally I think we should try to keep it that way.
We don't have a ton of content there and we probably wont be able to keep a ton of content up-to-date anyway.

Also, it seems very "geeky" and developer-oriented.
I think the new website's audience should be users looking for a "pdf/epub/chm/ps" reader.

So, ideas? Mockups? Questions?

Just a comment: We should try to have a unique branding on KDE pages. Every app page should provide similar content and have the same look and feel. So IMHO you are looking for a KDE webspace design.
But I wonder why most of the kde.org app pages are placed inside and a few not (like Okular and Dolphin). Is there a good reason to have https://www.kde.org/applications/graphics/okular/ and http://okular.kde.org/?

Hi Heiko.

Our previous efforts to have a unique branding among KDE websites failed.
There are so many websites, using totally different technologies.

So Okular's website could act like a place that we experience a good design.
If its good and people are happy with it, I'm sure we will be able to reuse the styles for other websites.

But with our current manpower, I really suggest taking small bites at first.

Would it not be better to address the underlying issues first before designs are considered? I've stated this before but moving to something like wordpress multi-user would make everyone's life easier I would have thought, and any branding would be case of settling on an appropriate wordpress theme and modifying if necessary.

Please don't use dolphin's small (tiny really, only 4 pages) as an example of the status quo. It will soon be moving (only one of it's pages is different than what's on www.kde.org/applications/dolphin anyway) and becoming a redirect to either there or it's userbase page.

davidwright wrote:Would it not be better to address the underlying issues first before designs are considered? I've stated this before but moving to something like wordpress multi-user would make everyone's life easier I would have thought, and any branding would be case of settling on an appropriate wordpress theme and modifying if necessary.

We are definitely not going to use any CMS.
Not only I personally dislike them, Okular's maintainer wants us to keep things simple.

Actually, what I personally have in mind is something like Thunderbird's website.
And that needs no CMS.

So, plain html and php. And I guess they are good enough for our use case.

emilsedgh wrote:We are definitely not going to use any CMS.

I'm not sure I understand the decision personally. You are raising the barrier of entry unnecessarily high, and for no good reason. As it stands at the moment, for someone with a passing interest to correct even a small typo in the webpage is going to have to learn the whole procedure to do it (and that's assuming they don't have to learn html as well), and they're not going to bother. Why would they? Something that should take a logon and a couple of minutes is going to end up taking days for a newbie. It's an instant turn-off. I've been poking around here for a while and even I don't know where to start with this stuff.

Or maybe that's the point? I'm not sure. I've been down this road before with open source projects, and for all their whining about not having enough contributors, finding meaningful ways to contribute in some of them is actually extremely difficult, and that's without people shooting you down on every turn. People don't have hours to burn away, I certainly don't, and some of this stuff requires a significant investment in time, with no guarantee that the work you do will be accepted anyway.

I just find it saddening more than anything.

Anyway, rant over.

Hi David.
I understand what you mean.
But I think contributing to a plain html website is far more easier than a CMS.

Clone the repo, make the changes, commit and push. It is that easy.

Compare that to wordress: Contributor has to clone the repository, setup apache, php, mysql, import the schema, settings, etc, to just be able to make a change.

Of course a user who wants to contribute some content would find wordpress more convenient.
But Okular's website isn't really 'content-rich' and that wont probably change. There are not much changes that a user would make to Okular.kde.org

So, using Wordpress or a cms, in my opinion, would be an overkill.
Also, Okular's maintainer agreed this change, only if we do it plain html way, because making changes to it would be real easy. Comparing to wordpress or any other CMS.

Dolphin is also updated there webpage now and there plan was:

1. https://www.kde.org/applications/system/dolphin/
for an overview

2. https://userbase.kde.org/Dolphin
for the application stuff.

One good advantage of using userbase for this is that it will get translated to many languages (and by end-users with little barrier to entry, like svn checkout, etc.)

the dolphin.kde.org page will redirect to userbase.kde.org/Dolphin

I think this is a good solution because it is easy to user, the style is the same for every kde application and you have an translation without CMS.

No matter what technology we use, Okular's webpage will be translatable as well.

emilsedgh wrote:Hi David.
I understand what you mean.
But I think contributing to a plain html website is far more easier than a CMS.

Clone the repo, make the changes, commit and push. It is that easy.

See, here is a difference between a developer and a "regular person": For you guys, this is indeed easy. For non-developers, even setting up Git is hard enough. Plus we'd all need developer accounts.

Compare that to wordress: Contributor has to clone the repository, setup apache, php, mysql, import the schema, settings, etc, to just be able to make a change.

Wait, we're not talking about contributing to Wordpress here. We're talking about setting up a Wordpress instance so that people can contribute content to the website without the need for Git. Wordpress was made for non-developers, Git wasn't. Creating an application site on Wordpress would be as easy as writing a blog post. You don't manage your blog using Git, do you?

Of course a user who wants to contribute some content would find wordpress more convenient.
But Okular's website isn't really 'content-rich' and that wont probably change. There are not much changes that a user would make to Okular.kde.org
So, using Wordpress or a cms, in my opinion, would be an overkill.

Of course setting up Wordpress only for the tiny Okular website would not make sense. What would make sense, though, would be setting up Wordpress (or another CMS if it works better ofr us) for kde.org and the application pages on it as a whole.

Currently, the application/project pages are basically independent websites, which does make zero sense from a branding perspective, especially not when they're under the kde.org domain. With a CMS, we'd only have to set up the layout once and individual application contributors would only have to fill in the content, resulting in a uniform presentation.

Also, Okular's maintainer agreed this change, only if we do it plain html way, because making changes to it would be real easy. Comparing to wordpress or any other CMS.

He wouldn't have to set up Wordpress. If we chose to do so, it would be a KDE-wide setup. For the Okular team, setting up their site wuld be as eaqsy as copy&pasting the current content into Wordpress.

Well, using wordpress or not is NOT my decision. Its a restriction set by Okular's maintainer.
Therefore, convincing me wont change a thing since its NOT my decision.

However, I personally agree with that.

I know that updating the content will not need a wordpress setup. But Okular's website is not, and will not be content-rich anyway and there will not be a lot of content-editing to happen. So the point of lowering the barrier for entry is kind of moot.

So, by moving to a CMS, we will break the workflow for current contributor to Okular's website and make their life harder.
But we will ease the process for newcomers to join. But this is not a place they could do much. Okular's website is not content-rich. I repeatedly say that.


So, dear visual design group, would you like to help us setup a new fancy webpage for Okular?

1. Okular has a page on userbase like all other applications that can be edited by anyone that registers for an account.
2. Okular.kde.org can be easily edited for typos by anyone by sending an e-mail to the e-mail address at the bottom of the page. Albert and others on that list could easily apply changes to the website's git repo and push.
3. okular.kde.org is meant to "advertise" what okular is, how to use it, etc. which will not likely change too often. It also could link to the userbase page where updates by anyone can easily happen (see point 1).

emilsedgh wrote:So, dear visual design group, would you like to help us setup a new fancy webpage for Okular?

Using a CMS was a suggestion, not a requirement.
What I do see as a requirement though is that we don't design a site specifically for Okular, but with all KDE applications in mind (and Okular's site only being the first reference implementation of it). Having different websites for all applications just does not make sense. At all.

Hi Colomar.
I agree.

I also agree with jpwhiting's comment. That's how I personally distinct userbase and websites.
Website: Promo
Userbase: User-Contributed wiki.