[OpenLayers-Dev] website menu

[Tim Schaub]

Hey-

Following up on previous discussion about links on our website, I'd like 
to hear opinions on how things should be organized.

Our site is structured with two levels of menu.  On the homepage, things 
look like this:

1. Top Level
------------
a. Home (http://www.openlayers.org)
b. Gallery (http://gallery.openlayers.org)
c. Support & Development (http://trac.openlayers.org)

2. Second Level
---------------
a. Sponsorship (http://openlayers.org/sponsorship/)
b. Wiki (http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki)
c. Blog (http://openlayers.org/blog/)
d. FAQ (http://faq.openlayers.org/)
e. Download (http://trac.openlayers.org/wiki/HowToDownload)
f. Email Lists (http://openlayers.org/mailman/listinfo)

The second level menu from the gallery is gallery specific, and the 
second level menu on the Support & Dev item is trac specific.

Given this structure, you might say we want to drive people primarily to 
the homepage, gallery, and trac site.  Our secondary goal is to get 
people to read about sponsorship, read our wiki (redundant with trac), 
blog, FAQ, download information, and join a mailing list.

Based on a very non-scientific analysis of our website usage, it looks 
like people are primarily viewing our "documentation" (I quote this 
because it takes several forms, and in the end, everything is 
documentation).

My impression is that our examples are what a lot of people end up 
relying on to learn OpenLayers.  I also think we all agree that the 
growing prose documentation is a better starting place for most people.

I'd like to propose that we more prominently feature our documentation 
and examples in the menu structure.  I can imagine a menu structure that 
looked like the following:

1. Top Level
------------
a. Documentation
b. Demos
c. Download
d. Development

2. Second Level
---------------
a. About
b. Blog
c. Sponsorship

I admit, this is largely cribbed from http://jquery.com/.  I also think 
"About" is a bit silly, but I don't want to think about an alternative 
right now.  Basically, it's a placeholder for "other places we want to 
direct people."

The "Documentation" page could direct people to API docs, prose docs, 
and the FAQ.  In addition, this page should link to mailing lists and 
talk about IRC.

The "Demos" page could include links to the examples page and the gallery.

The "Download" page already exists.

The "Development" page would be our main trac page.

Ok, enough from me for now.  Thoughts?

Tim


-- 
Tim Schaub
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.