Sorry, I think I accidentally sent the previous email prematurely (hold the jokes)...

Also, including gimp-dev on this to get it to a broader audience.

Just a small status update on the new site.

I _think_ the new infrastructure is done. I haven't had to do any further tweaks to it so far, and it appears that the functionality we may be looking for is all there.

The old site structure is still intact, old URI's will still work everywhere that I can tell (except for pages that I haven't ported yet - but that's just grunt work at this point). New page creation and source dir mirroring all seem to work ok.

News posts get permalinks and are accessible from an aggregate page ( http://static.gimp.org/news/). We can also embed any number of news posts on other pages as needed (more on this later). They all get a permalink for direct linking:
http://static.gimp.org/news/2015/05/27/gimp-projects-official-statement-on-sourceforges-actions/, which is a nice change (we can also now have an aggregate by author and all sorts of neatness inherent in using Pelican to generate the site).

Translations Translations appear to be working fine at the moment, through my limited testing. The incorporation of the i18n_subsites plugin for Pelican now allows the site generator to create a complete subsite for different languages.
static.gimp.org/about/meta/
static.gimp.org/fr/about/meta/
static.gimp.org/de/about/meta/

What's nice is that if you have a page that hasn't been translated yet, links will still work fine, but showing the default lang (en) instead. This can be tested by visiting the French test page, and then navigating to any other page. You'll still be on the sub-site, but served default lang pages if no translation exists:
http://static.gimp.org/fr/about/meta/translations.html Then navigate to any other page. You'll see you are still on the subsite ( gimp.org/fr/...), but being served default lang pages (en).

The i18n_subsites plugin also supports full translation of the templates for the rest of the site (beyond just content). I haven't tested these all the way yet, but don't anticipate there should be a problem. I'll report back on this later.

The Front Page I have been tinkering with the layout of the front page. I still need input or verbiage describing some of the sections, and some opinions on a couple of things.

1. Should we include news items higher up on the page? I am not quite sure how best to incorporate news items on the main page. Possibly as a small list of headlines to latest posts? Only the most recent post + a link to the "News" archive page? Any thoughts on this?

2. I was thinking about highlighting the fact that GIMP is extensible through scripts and plug-ins. Any input on this that I can add to a section on the front page?

Downloads Page I'm a bit conflicted about this. I understand that we used to use jquery to try and guess the OS the visitor was on, and present them with a sub-section of the downloads page.

I am almost thinking that perhaps we can simply present users with clearly marked links at the top of the Downloads page to choose which OS they would like a download for? Any objections to going this route?

Markdown/rst/html/asciidoc Per Marco's comments, we can also use restructured text, plain html, or possibly asciidoc directly. I have to check on asciidoc support (Marco gave us a link earlier, but it seemed a bit convoluted). If it's a must-have, we can always put together an asciidoc pre-processor for Pelican to convert the files.

Release
So, I'm curious. Is there anything else anyone thinks we should square away before possibly switching over to the new site? Technically, it appears to me that we only need to:

A) finish the front page layout/style/text. B) finish porting old pages, like tutorials.

Does this sound about right? pat

Accidentally replied off-list, putting it back on-list here.

On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 9:29 AM Pat David wrote:

Hi Americo! Thank you for the kind words, it's been quite fun to work on!

+ "Interviews" -- with people the is using GIMP as professional tool + "Made with GIMP"
+ "Trend GIMP discussion"

+ "Videos and Animation 2D and 3D"

I love these ideas. I'm wondering if they wouldn't all fit better on a new page of some sort that can highlight results from the community. I have mostly been focusing on translating the old site first and foremost, and to enhance the site with pages as everyone agrees it might be fun to do. We may have to put a section on the front page ("Community" maybe?) that will link to a page of submitted, high quality content.

+ "Trend GIMP discussion" Is this something similar to the "News" items that we already have? Perhaps just expanded a bit with more regular "blog" type posts from the team or community in some way? Not sure what the thoughts around this are, as I get the feeling that blogging is not a common thing for most of the team (not to say that it couldn't happen).

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 3:25 PM Americo Gobbo wrote:

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 4:17 PM, Pat David wrote:

The Front Page
I have been tinkering with the layout of the front page. I still need input or verbiage describing some of the sections, and some opinions on a couple of things.

1. Should we include news items higher up on the page? I am not quite sure
how best to incorporate news items on the main page. Possibly as a small list of headlines to latest posts? Only the most recent post + a link to the "News" archive page? Any thoughts on this?

2. I was thinking about highlighting the fact that GIMP is extensible through scripts and plug-ins. Any input on this that I can add to a section on the front page?

The redesign proceeds very well, Patrick great work! I would like to suggest some sections to Front Page:

+ "Interviews" -- with people the is using GIMP as professional tool (photographers, painters, illustrators, designers, schools, cases, print-services, universities, etc.);

+ "Made with GIMP" -- a special guest to make a work to front page with GIMP. Would be very interesting to invite different areas to have a collection that could be used to promote GIMP on social networks, meetings, etc...;

+ "Trend GIMP discussion" or another name to post good articles of the community or the of own staff around the discussion of mailing list or of the difficult aspects of GIMP app, for example., CMYK, Money to developers

crowdfunding, GEGL, etc... ;-);

+ "Videos and Animation 2D and 3D" -- who is using GIMP to do video animation... for example, Gustavo Deveze is doing.

I think that just the previous news item with a link to the news page would be best. I really like the way the rest of the sections look. makes it look much more like a site an artist would like to go to.

Fantastic! I was going for something a little more modern and visually pleasing to folks that might not necessarily be programmers or deep into F/OSS.

It would be great to advertise this specially since I don't think the current site mentions it. It might also be cool to see three or four of the most populer plugins like you did with the "Key Component in a Desktop Publishing Workflow" section. short description and maybe an image showing it off.

I agree, and I'll give a little thought to what would be good to showcase here (or to cycle through possibly).

Please, please, please do this. after seeing other sites do this I can't stand when a site shows me every single OS option out there.

Do you mean to do the auto-OS detection, or to not?

There are only two things I could suggest is that this site is not responsive and that is becoming a big thing right now. don't know how much more work it would be to do that but it would be nice.

The site is actually responsive. Try looking at it on a mobile screen, tablet, or simply resize your browser window. You'll see that the site and content will adapt to the screen size automatically (I'm particularly proud of the "High Quality Photo" section, where the text manages to wrap nicely around the photo subject). I haven't tested yet, but it should pass the Google mobile/responsive tests they are using to prioritize content in their searches now (another good reason for the redesign).

the second thing is (and I don't know if this is the second step after converting all pages to the new format) the site does not look like the old site. It is immediately noticeable that this site has a new style and it does not look like the GIMP branding.

This is intentional. I did borrow some colors from the old site, a couple of images, and Wilber of course, but otherwise I didn't see a benefit in following the old site too much. Other than Wilber and the occasional graphic, I didn't think there was a strong branding per se. With that being said, I will absolutely consider any elements that anyone thinks are important to branding, and find a way to get it integrated!

On Mon, Aug 31, 2015 at 8:40 PM Andrew Pullins wrote:

1. Should we include news items higher up on the page? I am not quite sure

how best to incorporate news items on the main page. Possibly as a small list of headlines to latest posts? Only the most recent post + a link to the "News" archive page? Any thoughts on this?

I think that just the previous news item with a link to the news page would be best. I really like the way the rest of the sections look. makes it look much more like a site an artist would like to go to.

2. I was thinking about highlighting the fact that GIMP is extensible

through scripts and plug-ins. Any input on this that I can add to a section on the front page?

It would be great to advertise this specially since I don't think the current site mentions it. It might also be cool to see three or four of the most populer plugins like you did with the "Key Component in a Desktop Publishing Workflow" section. short description and maybe an image showing it off.

Downloads Page

I'm a bit conflicted about this. I understand that we used to use jquery to try and guess the OS the visitor was on, and present them with a sub-section of the downloads page.

I am almost thinking that perhaps we can simply present users with clearly marked links at the top of the Downloads page to choose which OS they would
like a download for? Any objections to going this route?

Please, please, please do this. after seeing other sites do this I can't stand when a site shows me every single OS option out there. LibreOffice has a really nice download page
.
Not only does it give you a great big download button for your OS but it but it gives you the option to download it through torent, slect a differnt OS, change the version you are downloading, provides source code, change the language of the off line help, gives links to usefull info such as How do I install LibreOffice?
System requirements, and Extensions as well when you click the link it redirects you to a donation page. Don't know if you want to do that but it does remind people that GIMP is made by people taking their time and money to make GIMP.

There are only two things I could suggest is that this site is not responsive and that is becoming a big thing right now. don't know how much more work it would be to do that but it would be nice. the second thing is (and I don't know if this is the second step after converting all pages to the new format) the site does not look like the old site. It is immediately noticeable that this site has a new style and it does not look like the GIMP branding.

--
Jesus is my Lord and Savior. Praise be unto God for giving us a way to live with him.

Ok, some thoughts.

On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 12:49 PM Akkana Peck wrote:

I wasn't sure either, but it's worth noting that the libreoffice download page at
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/libreoffice-fresh/?version=5.0.1 (I'm not sure if that's the same page as the one Andrew likes -- different URL) doesn't need javascript or jquery for OS detection. Even with noscript, it correctly shows me a download button for Linux x86. Presumably it's doing server-side checking of the browser's User-Agent.

Personally, I'd be fine with Pat's suggestion of just having links at the top, but server-side user agent detection is a nice touch.

It seems everyone is a fan of this, so I'll spend some time finding an optimal way to do this. I'll start with styling the base page, and then progressively enhance it with OS detection.

On the Downloads page, the page content is responsive but the image at the top forces the page to 900px wide. Maybe that's what Andrew is talking about? The rest of the site is very responsive.

It's actually the MD5 hashes in the table that are causing the page to be wider. I'm going to modify that shortly to hopefully rectify it.

One other issue: the webfonts in the toolbar at the top look awful in either Firefox or Chromium on Debian unstable. Debian seems to have a problem in general with rendering webfonts -- I've seen it on other pages that use them. Screenshot: http://shallowsky.com/tmp/gimp-news-screenshot.jpg

Thanks again for catching this. We're working on it (as you know...) :)

On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 3:17 AM Samuel Ricks wrote:

I don't believe it would be possible to use server-side detection since we're using Pelican.

This is correct.

It could be easy to do some auto-OS detection though. I am a JS developer if you want my help doing that. Jquery makes it easier but I could try to code a solution by hand to avoid including it if that's important to the project.

I have implemented platform.js as an OS detection on the static downloads page: http://static.gimp.org/downloads/

In the first paragraph is some red text that is an attempt at auto detection. If you get a moment to test it against various OS and report back, that would be great (just trying to capture any edge cases at this point, it mostly appears to work great).

http://static.gimp.org/about/meta/to-do/#download-page-auto-detect-os

I've been busy these past few days, but intend to get back to work in the next week or so. I'll send an update soon to the lists.