Site support

[Auke Jilderda]

On Friday, June 30, 2006 17:35, Jason Birch wrote:
> 
> I'd like the focus for the main page to be an OSGeo
> marketing/visibility focus, rather than a project support focus.
> Creating prominent infrastructure links will just confuse new OSGeo
> visitors.  

I disagree.  Take a look at any succesful site out there and you will
find a "support", "get help", or something along those lines on the
front page.

> We're maintaining a fairly high barrier to new projects (we don't want
> to end up like SF) and our users are technically competent, so we
> don't really need to emphasize the community features on the main
> page.

Well yes, putting up a reasonable barrier to entry to prevent pollution
is a good idea.  But a site support project is just part of the
supporting infrastructure and not part of the core set of projects on
the site.  It doesn't make sense to me to treat it as if it were part of
the core set of projects.

> Perhaps an email message sent out to the project's owners would be
> sufficient?

That helps but only at this point in time.  The site support needs to be
easy to find in 6 months from now as well, when lots of new people have
come on board and missed the initial announcement.

I still think a top level tab would be justified but a less intrusive
alternative could be to include a "site support" link in the footer?


Auke