Page contents

One of the things I'm struck with, both as a view of the page, and when
I've been working on redesigns is how much information is displayed on
this front page. This has been brought up by others as well.

On Saturday, November 15, 2003, at 02:01 AM, Euler Taveira de Oliveira
wrote:
> PS> What about the content ? We need to plan the links, boxes and etc.
> We don't need all items in the index. I made a previous content.
> Comments ?

I wonder if people don't get a little overwhelmed when they view the
site. I tried to address this a little in this design (published before
(correctly!) by Andreas, included here again for convenience)

http://200.46.204.98/postgresql_org/html/index3.htm

There's definitely from for improvement. For example, I think
downloading, versions, and mirrors are all very similar—you look for
mirrors for alternative places to download, you want to know what
versions are available for download—and could be grouped effectively
rather than having them in different places around the page.

I also tried to reduce the descriptive text. For example, some things
such as About and Contact appear to becoming quite standard on many
pages, and can replace longer descriptions such as "What is
PostgreSQL?" and "Contact the Webmasters". In the latter case, it
provides a chance to provide more contact information to direct someone
more specifically besides just a mailto.

There needs to be a balance between making things easily accessible to
visitors and (potentially) giving them too much to handle off the bat.
I'm not suggesting where that balance should be, but I'm interested to
know what others think about how much can be cut down, combined, or
eliminated, or expanded upon. (Longer descriptions of news? Fewer news
items on the front page?)

It looks like Euler Taveira de Oliveira has thought about some of these
things too, given the departures he's taken in his redesigns. I haven't
heard a lot about this, so perhaps people like the moves in this
direction.

Keeping in mind that I am a newcomer, I know I'm missing quite a bit of
history when it comes to the thoughts that were put into the current
design. There is an advantage to being a newcomer as well, as that's
what hopefully a lot of visitors are.

Comments?

Michael