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

[Jeffrey Tadlock]

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.

> 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.

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.

> 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.

--Jeffrey