[Gimp-web] Moving of site proposal

[Raphaël Quinet]

On Thu, 18 Sep 2003 23:22:27 +0200, Niklas Mattisson <scizzo@gimp.org> wrote:
> My proposal is that we make the best out of the site this weekend and
> move the site on Sunday (September 21).
[...]
> Why on Sunday? Well because then we will have some last time to make
> changes that _has_ to be done before the move and it will give us the
> time to look at the site one last time before moving it.

Agreed.  I was going to propose the same date.  ;-)

> Raphaël you where talking about changes you have done and some other
> things you need to do before doing the release. Would you be able to
> make it to this Sunday or would it be to little time for you? If it is
> to little time then is there anyone that might be able to help you with
> this?

I have checked in some changes already (build system and page layout).
The next thing that I would like to commit is the set of updates to
the index pages of the platform-specific sections, but I haven't
finished that yet.  I am planning finish that on Saturday.

However, Yosh sent a mail to me, indicating that the changes that I
reverted (going back to tables instead of div+css) are now causing
some problems in Mozilla Firebird.  Unfortunately, he was not very
specific so I am waiting for more details so that I can try to fix
that problem.

Regarding the help, then yes, there are things that can be done to
help.  None of them are critical for the launch, but there are several
things that should not be too hard to do:

- Fix typos and other minor things that you think should be fixed.

- Re-write the top paragraph on the home page (welcome text).  It does
  not have to be perfect, but I think that the current text could be
  improved easily.  Several comments have already been made in bug
  #119210.  Anyone who is interested can post some suggestions in that
  bug report, or just commit the changes directly.

- Try to improve the /about/ section, especially introduction.html.
  The links to the platform-specific builds should probably be local
  links (to the platform-specific sections).

- Update the download page. (bug #119562)  Ideally, we should automate
  the whole process like in the "old" site, which updates the links
  and the text of the page automatically depending on the current
  version numbers.  But for the short term, we should just commit an
  updated version of the page with hardcoded links and version numbers.

- Add visible FIXME comments in the pages that are still under
  construction (such as the /source/ page).  They will serve a dual
  purpose: inform the visitors about the fact that some pages are not
  really ready yet (even if this is obvious to us) and maybe encourage
  some spontaneous contributions.

- Improve the platform-specific sections: /unix/, /windows/,
  /macintosh/ and /os2/.  I have re-structured these pages a bit and I
  will commit the changes on Saturday, but I would be happy if anybody
  could improve them afterwards.  Relevant bugs include bug #119537,
  bug #119539, bug #119246 and bug #119538.

- Remove all e-mail addresses from all pages, unless the owner of that
  address has confirmed that it is OK for it to be on a page that can
  be harvested for spam.  This applies to the mailto: links and to the
  text displayed in the pages (spam robots collect both).  All
  tutorials have to be updated: the copyright message should be
  removed from the footer of the pages so that the standard footer can
  be used (credits should be moved to the top of the page if not done
  already).  I will try to do that on Saturday, but I wouldn't mind if
  somebody else would beat me to it.

- Remove or comment out the links that are known to be broken or that
  lead to pages that will have to be replaced in the near future (and
  for which the URLs may change).  Some broken links are listed in bug
  #118755.  Some pages that will have to be re-structured include the
  ChangeLogs (see also bug #119487) and the splash screen gallery.

- Update the /team.html page.

Regarding the improvements to the text of the home page and about
pages, there are some interesting suggestions from Branko and
Rockwalrus in bug #94028.  This bug report was about the old site, but
some sentences could be recycled.

There are several other things that should be done, but they require
more work or may involve some script hacking, so they should probably
be kept for later:

- Prepare a list of pages and images that should be redirected from
  their old location (on the old site) to their new location. It may
  be necessary to create a new page explaining what has moved.  I will
  try to take care of that, but suggestions are welcome.  The details
  can be found in bug #116523.

- Update the list of mirrors.  Since January, I made 12 updates to the
  list of mirrors on the old site and Sven made one update.  Some
  mirrors have been added, some have changed their path, some others
  have been removed.  These updates should be copied to the new list.

- Update the news by copying the existing news from the old site
  (including the commit dates from the old CVS - this is very
  important!).

- Improve the links to the bug reports.  The links listed on the old
  site (http://www.gimp.org/devel_ver.html) offer many convenient
  shortcuts that are not present in the new page
  (http://mmmaybe.gimp.org/bugs/).  They should be generated by
  combining some prefixes with version-dependent suffixes.

- Fix all other bug reports...  ;-)

So... errr... if anybody on this list has too much spare time and does
not know what to do in the next few days, feel free to pick up some
tasks in the list above.  :-)  For the tasks that have a corresponding
bug report, I recommend that you use Bugzilla and mention that you
have solved the problem or that you are working on it.  This will
avoid any duplication of efforts.

> I know that Sunday is not long time before doing the move but I get the
> feeling that if we do not move it soon we will never move it.

The move should have happened a long time ago and we still have three
days to prepare everything, so Sunday is certainly not too early, IMHO.

-Raphaël