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At the moment, every KDE website seems to go a bit their own way: for example, news.kde.org and forum.kde.org have different heights for the top banner, different widths, the logo is on opposite side, the widths are different, the search box is in a different place etc. etc.

It would be nice to have one, standard "template" stylesheet for web developers to use, which could still let them change things like e.g. the image in the banner but would have other things pre-set like the KDE logo's placing. It would be REALLY nice if such a stylesheet was used by the likes of Amarok and KDEnlive! as well, so that even though each website is different, they still maintain a single, consistent feel.

I agree, and vote for it. It is time that we tackled this problem. However, to make any progress we need representatives from every KDE site to be involved.

The question is to agree on it... like always...
E.g. this one was made by me, the others (also the old kde.org layout was made by pinheiro and others). And i guess also between the users there is no consense on which one is better, forum or kde.news, or maybe even planet. or the old one...

I am personally fine with having at least a basic cooperate identity, in this case the new designs (planet, the dot, forum) all have some AIR parts in common.

Then the other problem: fixed or fluid width? I personally don't like fluid (though i am currently working on a forum version in fluid...), but other sites rely on that, see bugs.kde.org, it wouldn't work well with fixed.
So, then again there would be some inconstistency.

Just to throw some thoughts in. My vote is neutral.

Yeah, a basic structure is what I would go for. I consider bugs.kde.org something of a special case: it's more like a developer tool then an advertising media, or a community site.

Personally, I'd use a fluid width until a certain width (using min-width and body margins), but that method's debatable, since a certain very-popular-but-not-so-standards-compliant-browser doesn't like min-width/max-width much. *cough*

But it would be nice if the various website developers gathered together to give it a decent bit of consideration and discussion, like in their own IRC channel or something.

What about setting a contest for new KDE online identity?

Having people, who created AIR involved, I hope a new rally well designed patter could came in.

However there should be a force to change all sites at once, but using it on next redesign might work. Also most kde sites are based on open source platforms, so any user will be able to write a theme or patch exiting to make it work.

Once html for header part is ready, rest could be done very quickly.

Just to get it right, what is this idea about? About EVERY kde site? Or just the ones with user focus?

Till now there were only the dot, planet and forum mentioned (and bko as corner case).

I would think that some elements could be common to all, but not all elements. We should aim for sites to look like a member of the same family, IMO

I seem to be the de facto leader in the userbase wiki, so that's the angle I'd be looking at. I think we're a long way away from changing anything. There are lots of issues to talk about before we get there, but I do believe it's worth talking them through. Maybe a significant effort at a dedicated IRC channel one weekend might help.

@annew:

Agreed. I would also be interested to attend, as i already mailed kde-www to ask for a meeting.
(I guess my angle is clear... )

But the biggest thing missing are the people doing it (in case it comes to this point). Having ideas is nice, indeed, implementing them is different.

So, +1 for the meeting, but still neutral for this idea...

neverendingo wrote:Just to get it right, what is this idea about? About EVERY kde site? Or just the ones with user focus?

The ones with user-focus, I think. So, for example, not just kde.org, kdenews.org and forum.kde.org, but possibly amarok.kde.org, kdenlive.org, koffice.org and other, "child projects". Providing them with a previously agreed-on stylesheet (and possibly a wordpress style, for websites driven by that) would allow them to quickly and easily make their website consistent with other KDE project websites, but also attractive in their own right.

annew wrote:I would think that some elements could be common to all, but not all elements.

Indeed, that's what this idea is about: having a similar look and feel but giving the website developers the ability to alter certain elements, for example content width and overall layout might be previously agreed on but the image used for the banner at the top might be different, the colour scheme between the various websites may be different etc.

As an example, because of the Air image in the top banner and the presence of the KDE logo in the banner it is easy to tell that news.kde.org and forum.kde.org are related. If news.kde.org and forum.kde.org maintained the same basic layout of the header and footer areas but retained the colour schemes they currently have, it would strike the user in a far more obvious fashion that the two websites are linked, as well as any other website that used the template (it is hard, for example, to see instantly that kdenlive.org is a KDE project and thus related to KDE at all from a first glance. Amarok.kde.org suffers the same issue, as does koffice.org).


It did also occur to me that the problem with implementing this right now is that we didn't implement this a long, long time ago, and because of that everyone's using a different stylesheet with different naming conventions and different approaches. Implementing this right now would mean re-writing most-all the websites to fit snugly into one stylesheet.

I made some research, for everyone interested:

• Sites using the default layout (based on a custom framework, included from http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/www/media/ )
  
  • www.kde.org
  • events.kde.org
  • enterprise.kde.org
  • ev.kde.org
  • download.kde.org
  • edu.kde.org
  • konqueror.kde.org
  • kontact.org
  • kopete.kde.org
  • konsole.kde.org
  • games.kde.org
  • multimedia.kde.org
  • utils.kde.org
  • extragear.kde.org
  • l10n.kde.org
  • spread.kde.org
  • women.kde.org
  • techbase.kde.org ( looks like the above layout, but skin seems to be hosted under http://websvn.kde.org/trunk/www/patches/mediawiki/skins )
  • userbase.kde.org (same as for techbase)
• Sites using the even older layout (also based on the above framework)
  
  • docs.kde.org
• Sites using custom layouts, mainly located in svn
  
  • news.kde.org
  • planet.kde.org
  • forum.kde.org
  • http://www.kdedevelopers.org
  • amarok.kde.org
  • kaffeine.kde.org
  • www.k3b.org
  • koffice.org
  • digikam.org
  • kdewebdev.org
  • kate-editor.org
  • phonon.kde.org
  • oxygen-icons.org

This is not a full list, i just gave up for today... It gives a feeling that quite a bunch of sites COULD be updated just because they are using the same central layouting. Feel free to add up what is missing.

Madman wrote:
It did also occur to me that the problem with implementing this right now is that we didn't implement this a long, long time ago, and because of that everyone's using a different stylesheet with different naming conventions and different approaches. Implementing this right now would mean re-writing most-all the websites to fit snugly into one stylesheet.

Not exactly true. As you see above, a bunch of sites are using a central layouting system from svn. Why not the others? Simply because they are different systems. The similar sites above use all the same basic framework, whereas the x-bases and some other custom sites use a wiki system, the forum uses phpbb, and we also find some drupal sites in the list.
All of them have different templating engines. That makes it a bit hard to maintain. And most of the custom systems were added afterwards.

Aah, I see - it just didn't strike me as obvious that there was already a standard theme, seeing as I don't visit many of the sites above...

That also begs another question: with so many wikis about, people expect one wiki to look like the next, just dedicated to something else. Should this mantra be kept for KDE's wiki?

If xhtml code for layout is going to be 100% tabless, fluid and valid, upgrading any kde site will be easy as copy paste, since header div can be independent node of root element.

Small design changes, like width, cal be easy adopted by just changing only 1 or 2 lines of css, or changing logo is just to replace one path. Icons, i think, will be the same from oxygen theme, so no need to change spites and so on.



!!! Having same theme all across KDE would save bandwidth too. since all independent static content could be kept on static.kde.org in example, so user will have to download it only once for all sites.

Madman wrote:Aah, I see - it just didn't strike me as obvious that there was already a standard theme, seeing as I don't visit many of the sites above...

That also begs another question: with so many wikis about, people expect one wiki to look like the next, just dedicated to something else. Should this mantra be kept for KDE's wiki?

They are already looking the same. As you see in the list, all three are using the same central layout atm (i forgot community.kde.org), similar to the default one, but hosted elsewhere. Someone did the work to port it to the mediawiki templating engine. Only the entry point (wiki.kde.org) has a new shiny interface, but is only there to redirect to the other 3.

Lukas wrote:If xhtml code for layout is going to be 100% tabless, fluid and valid, upgrading any kde site will be easy as copy paste, since header div can be independent node of root element.

Small design changes, like width, cal be easy adopted by just changing only 1 or 2 lines of css, or changing logo is just to replace one path. Icons, i think, will be the same from oxygen theme, so no need to change spites and so on.

Well, it is not THAT easy... just think of different needs of every website. A forum needs different buttons than e.g. news.kde.org (think of the date buttons).
But mostly i agree.

!!! Having same theme all across KDE would save bandwidth too. since all independent static content could be kept on static.kde.org in example, so user will have to download it only once for all sites.

That raises another problem. I can't speak for mediawiki, but the forum software is not able to load templates from a different server. Not all kde sites are hosted on the same server. There are several kde servers.
Of course, hosting it on svn and putting a cron job up could solve this.