[Advocacy] Re: webmaster help needed - call for volunteers

[Paul Bryson]

<cbkd9q$hq8$1 at sea.gmane.org>
Message-ID: <cbpf1n$7lj$1 at sea.gmane.org>

"Ralph Giles" wrote...
> [CC list trimmed to an appropriate list]
>
> On Sat, Jun 26, 2004 at 12:55:19PM -0500, Paul Bryson wrote:
>
> > Xiph.org suffers from this in the worst way.  Just look at the links at the
> > bottom of http://xiph.org
> >  about | press | donate
> >
> > Why do the pages for all of those look so different?
>
> I'm not sure what you're complaining about here. Press isn't working,
> because our mirrors aren't serving .shtml through the proper filter.

That is odd because I actually get a page for the press link.  Is it not the
page I am supposed to be seeing?  It looks like this:
http://img13.imageshack.us/my.php?loc=img13&image=xiphpress.png

> Other than the background gradient and the header icon, about and donate
> have identical design.

Those are what I was talking about.  The background should be the same unless
there is a reason not to be.  The header icon should....well it should be the
same proportions, but honestly I don't know why it is different.  It looks like
its a page for Vorbis, but its really just the Xiph 'donate' page.  Confusing.

Aside from this, none of the pages have the same layout as the homepage.  And
the donate page that has the fade background has it going the opposite
direction.

Props go out to the About and CVS pages as the only two to have the same
header/footer.

> > Whoever does start working on the website, please, please, please push for
some
> > continuity in the site layout.
>
> That said, we certainly do need to improve the content and layout of the
> website, and that's one of the long term goals.

Ironically, the Press page is the only one that validates as valid HTML.
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//www.xiph.org/about.html

> I was expecting you to
> complain about the completely difference site designs we have for
> xiph.org, icecast.org, speex.org, theora.org and vorbis.com.

I probably should have been more clear, but yes, those pages are included in
what I was saying.  Different logos and colors is cool.  Different layouts is
confusing.

Honestly, out of the layouts I would say that Vorbis and FLAC homepages are the
best.  The FLAC page is much lighter, but has issues with the padding on the
left side of the fonts.  The words for the navigation bar at the top are also a
lot easier to understand than the pictures used for the Vorbis page.  But the
colors used on the Flac page certainly leave something to be desired.

However, both are using tables to handle the pages layout instead of using HTML
to hold the content and CSS to arrange the content.  Should I make an example
page from Xiph.org using CSS?


Pamel

BTW, I've been using gmane.org to read/post, but your last message didn't show
up there.