separate fpo domain? (was Re: making the website better)

Máirín Duffy duffy at fedoraproject.org
Fri Feb 8 18:32:41 UTC 2008


Jeffrey Tadlock wrote:
> On Feb 8, 2008 12:42 PM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Here's the problem we want to solve... too much information to dissiminate.
> 
> Yes, we have a lot of information to disseminate to largely different
> audiences.  I agree with that point.
> 
> Putting this information at different domain names though isn't the
> way to solve that problem.  It just makes finding the information that
> much more difficult if you aren't 100% sure of what you are looking
> for to start with.
> 
>> I don't think a single landing page is going to work.  You want a link
>> farm, we can have a link farm, but I don't think it makes any sense at
>> all to make the link farm the entry point for new people, nor is a
>> guided tour entry point a good thing for existing contributors.
> 
> Uh, link farm?  That paints a rather negative picture right out the
> door.  How many links would we need off of a main Fedora page?  Four?
> Six?  Even in Máirín's other email, six groups were brainstormed.  Six
> links does not make a link farm.  Some of it could probably be
> answered right on the main page.

For some historical background, the fpo site was such a link farm (or 
landing page, either one is bad I think) with six links on it. It didn't 
work well and the domain was eventually changed to point directly to the 
wiki. See:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050419015224/http://www.fedoraproject.org/

http://web.archive.org/web/20050826014104/http://fedoraproject.org/

> 
>> What current contributors need and what potential contributors need
>> are totally different and we need entry points which recognize that.
>> On top of that, if we are serious about 'messaging', then we need an
>> entry point which is dedicated nearly entirely to 'messaging.'
>> That's sort of how messaging works right... you have to be on message
>> consistently.
> 
> But you don't want to scatter your entry points across different
> domains.  Think of it this way.  I'm working a booth at a Linux
> conference and someone asks me where to go to get more info on
> contributing.  It is much easier to drive people towards a main
> fedoraproject.org page and say, click the link section for 'Getting
> Involved' than to say go to getinvolved.org and then have to tell the
> very next person who is looking for online support to go to
> fedorasupport.org for help.  If I can direct people to one main site,
> they can easily see the info they are interested in and perhaps see
> something else that interests them as well.  Multiple domain names
> leads to confusion and in the end makes it *harder* to find the
> information you are interested in.

We're not suggesting having a separate domain for every single 
subsection of the site. I would suggest we have two, very similar to the 
Firefox website's model:

- getfedora.org (or usefedora.org, or whatever) - for newbie and 
would-be convert users, to learn about wtf is fedora and how to get it, 
in a fairly hand-holding matter. also with advocacy resources like 
buttons and banners and shiz, and links to / integration with 
user-centric sites such as fedoraunity, fedora forum, and fedora news.

- fedoraproject.org - for getting things done, just the basic facts on 
what is fedora and how to get it, a much richer set of links to 
resources such as planet and our mailing lists and IRC info and fedora 
hosted projects and ISOs and mirrors and all that. Very focused towards 
current contributors and developers.

A third site I think we could have is what J5 is working on - my fedora 
- along the veins of fedoraproject.org, but when you log in for example 
and you are a package maintainer it gives you feeds and information 
related to the very packages you maintain, so it's more personal than 
the fpo site.
> 
> Take a look at Ubuntu's page.  It is clean and simple, but provides a
> large amount of information or at the very least a quick path to get
> the information you want.  They talk about themselves on the main
> page, easily visible links to getting Ubuntu, getting support, getting
> involved and developing.  And they have a news feed and links to their
> editions (a.k.a. our spins).  And plenty of room to make an
> announcement in the top banner.  And all you have to remember is
> www.ubuntu.com - not multiple domain names to find the information you
> want.

ubuntu has:

ubuntuforums.org
fridge.ubuntu.com
shop.canonical.com
wiki.ubuntu.com
a separate domain for almost every 'spin' - kubuntu.org, edubuntu.org, etc.

What ubuntu is doing is that ubuntu.com is geared towards users and 
non-contributors (and customers) and it links out towards developer and 
contributor resources. I am a developer i have to dig pretty deep on 
their site to get to stuff that interests me.

We could do that for fedoraproject.org, but the concern as stated 
elsewhere in this thread that the 'project' might confuse / scare off 
this type of target user. Thus the suggestion to use a domain like 
usefedora.org and to reserve fedoraproject.org for the 
contributor/developer community.
> 
>> I'm not afraid of dividing traffic, I'm afraid of shallow traffic...
>> people who hit an entry point and lose interest quickly because the
>> page has the wrong information and get bored... or too much
>> information and they get lost.
> 
> So we split the domain names, now I am new Linux user and when looking
> for Fedora stumble on to fedoradevelopers.org.  Oops, this looks hard,
> I guess I will try some other flavor.  The risk of wrong information
> is probably greater when splitting the domain names, versus funneling
> traffic to a main fedoraproject.org page that is thought out and
> presents a launching point to the information they really seek quickly
> and effectively.

I think you are slightly exaggerating what we are suggesting here.

~m




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