Re: replace training blurb with upcoming pug meetings?

Magnus Hagander wrote: <blockquote cite="mid:20080604102047.6c95bbb0@mha-laptop.hagander.net" type="cite"><pre
wrap="">SimonRiggs wrote: </pre><blockquote type="cite"><pre wrap="">On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 09:09 +0200, Magnus Hagander
wrote:  </pre><blockquote type="cite"><pre wrap="">Joshua D. Drake wrote:     </pre><blockquote type="cite"><pre
wrap="">
On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 17:10 -0400, Chander Ganesan wrote:
       </pre><blockquote type="cite"><pre wrap="">I think a single link to training in a spot of its very own
would provide a bit more visibility than being cluttered with
some text and a link.  Perhaps we can have some list of the
number of events as well?  Want training (22 events coming up!)?         </pre></blockquote><pre wrap="">
One option would be to remove events, news, training, and planet
listings and instead have larger and nicer representation for
direct links:

Find a User group!
Get Training!
Latest News!
Our community Blogs!

Each of those would be direct links respectively. This would
significantly reduce the noise on the page.       </pre></blockquote><pre wrap="">Or we just remove the frontpage
completely?;-)
 

IMHO this would significantly reduce the value of the information
there. If anything should be removed, it's IMHO the shortcuts and
"support us" sections. Second to that is training. All the others
are IMHO much more important than the usergroup listings (which
doesn't say that the usergroup listings aren't important, of
course).     </pre></blockquote><pre wrap="">Hmmm. I think its hard to say which are the more popular links.

Many people would never click on training, but if there was a training
course they wanted they would go. But how would they ever know? Same
with user groups. Many people wouldn't be interested, but open a user
group in their local area and suddenly they care? But how would they
ever know?

So I suggest two things:

* move the suggested topics to detail pages. Give prominence to what
turns out to be most popular. Look at hits, don't speculate or argue.   </pre></blockquote><pre wrap="">
Right. A look at things now show on google analytics for the frontpage:

Between 150 and 600 clicks on each news item, depending on how
interesting it was (0.1%-0.2% of clicks)
About 500 clicks on the news archive (0.2%)
About 50 clicks on each event (<0.1%)
About 500 clicks on the events archive (0.2%)
About 18,000 clicks on the planetpostgresql links (6.5%)
 </pre></blockquote> Perhaps a bit of experimentation?  Make a small change to the site and see how that affects
things. Obviously, we want people to stay there longer and click on more "stuff".  It seems that since the blog links
areso popular they might be something to draw more attention to...same with the news archive.<br /><br /> I didn't
realizethere was an events archive?  Or is that the list of events that are coming up that isn't on the front page? 
Arethere any stats for the training archive?  How about before the changes were made to the page to remove the three
recentevents?  Having such information would give us a clue as to whether its better to move all events elsewhere, or
leavethem where they are.  It would also give us information about the expected usefulness of putting PUG events on the
mainpage versus just hosting a link to said events.<br /><br /> I would think we'd want to know:<br /><br /> Of people
wholooked at the event archive (< .1%) how many people clicked on an event (which would give us a guesstimate as to
howmany people actually click on events using the event archive).<br /> Pre training page change, how many people
clickedon front page training events, versus how many clicked on an event via the "training archive" page?<br /><br />
chander<br/><br /><blockquote cite="mid:20080604102047.6c95bbb0@mha-laptop.hagander.net" type="cite"><pre wrap="">
</pre><blockquotetype="cite"><pre wrap="">* have a way of bubbling up information from details to front page. Do
 
this fairly randomly, so the front page is fresh and exciting each
time you visit.   </pre></blockquote><pre wrap="">
That's kind of what we're doing now, no? News + planet + events?

It keeps the site updating. Just keeping static links to subsections
will make the page static and uninteresting.

 </pre><blockquote type="cite"><pre wrap="">I think people are interested in new and interesting things, however
we categorise them. Running the same course title monthly for a year
is not news, but then neither is the 5th meeting this year of the
Pugtown PUG. Nor is writing multiple blog entries on the same day.   </pre></blockquote><pre wrap="">
Agreed, except actually multiple blog entries on the same day can
certainly be interesting, if they're about different and interesting
topics.

 </pre><blockquote type="cite"><pre wrap="">We just need a way for proactive and/or innovative people to get
attention for their activities, without being swamped by bulk
marketing activities by the overzealous. Cool blogs, new courses, new
PUGs etc are what people want to know about.

Can we review again the reasons for keeping all on one page? Why not
allow the screen to scroll down?   </pre></blockquote><pre wrap="">
The screen already scrolls, because we increased the length of each
section. (Well, it depends on your screen resolution of course, but
in for example 1024x768 (not untypical since a lot of people don't
use maximized browser windows) it does).

I think it's fine to have the screen scroll, but it'd be good if we can
keep the headlines on the initially visible part so that people know to
scroll. (It does that now at 768 lines at least)

//Magnus
 </pre></blockquote><br /><br /><pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- 
Chander Ganesan
Open Technology Group, Inc.
One Copley Parkway, Suite 210
Morrisville, NC  27560
919-463-0999/877-258-8987
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.otg-nc.com">http://www.otg-nc.com</a></pre>