Request review of new FreeBSD web site

[• rodrigc]

Summary

CY at Norse Corporation took a pass at coming up with a newer FreeBSD web page.
To build and run this web page on a FreeBSD host, you must do the following:

• Must have git and python installed *

git clone https://github.com/splbio/freesbd www
cd www
 sh ./setup.sh
 ./runsite.sh

• Access the link via http://127.0.0.1/

You can view an already running version of this web site at this link:
http://www.freesbd.org (not the intentional misspelling)

Can the folks who work on the web site provide feedback on this new web page?

Thanks.

[• rodrigc]

Note, the patch against the existing Makefile is just a dummy change, that I needed in order to initiate this review,
which is not a patch against existing files.

[hrs]

Please be more specific about what kind of feedback is expected. Which is the goal of this proposal, a new design, a new directory structure and build infrastructure, or the both of them?

Although I remember that it was presented at MeetBSD and most of us agree that our web site should be revamped in terms of the both, these two have to be discussed separately. I personally think we need a designer who can take care of the former and the proposed design is better than the current one, but using a template engine for the whole pages is difficult to adopt because most of the existing documents are written in XML and templating is done in XSLT. So reviewing contents of the git repo is not simple.

If Claudia wants to join such a discussion, I welcome her and would like to have and continue the discussion among doc people on somewhere other than phabricator.

[mat]

I think the idea was that the design should match the one of the freebsd foundation website.

[alfred]

In D3934#81738, @mat wrote:

I think the idea was that the design should match the one of the freebsd foundation website.

The foundation site is pretty dated already. This is a step forward.

In D3934#81724, @hrs wrote:

Please be more specific about what kind of feedback is expected. Which is the goal of this proposal, a new design, a new directory structure and build infrastructure, or the both of them?

Although I remember that it was presented at MeetBSD and most of us agree that our web site should be revamped in terms of the both, these two have to be discussed separately. I personally think we need a designer who can take care of the former and the proposed design is better than the current one, but using a template engine for the whole pages is difficult to adopt because most of the existing documents are written in XML and templating is done in XSLT. So reviewing contents of the git repo is not simple.

If Claudia wants to join such a discussion, I welcome her and would like to have and continue the discussion among doc people on somewhere other than phabricator.

hrs, best feedback would be suggestions on a way forward so that I can engage with Claudia on it. She has already written something to convert the XML to templates so that shouldn't be a problem.

[eadler]

generic comment here: please consider uploading screenshots and other mocks to pholio: https://reviews.freebsd.org/pholio/
you can then link them to this review

[alfred]

Hey folks, CY specifically asked me to stop including her on this, she no longer wants to work on the site.

I'm up for an attempt to continue it on my own, however what I'm going to ask is that the people on this thread consider what they have to do in order to make it easy for this project to continue.

I really don't have a ton of time for reviews, mockups, long discussions, etc, etc. So the question is, how do we leverage the work here?

Also, if you can drop CY off any email chains that would be appreciated.

I'm going to ask that you drop me off emails/notifications related to the website as well until the project can figure out how to make this process simple.

[alfred]

Removing myself.

When the project has a plan to make this easy please drop me a line.

[hrs]

I already made my question clear but I did not get the answer yet. Please explain the goal. The proposed files in the git repo contain changes for both design and build infrastructure. Given that the goal is to replace the existing htdocs/ tree with it completely, the latter (build infrastructure) part cannot be imported because we are using XML extensively and we do not intend to change it. Although there may be pros and cons on both sides and some people agree that a python-based template engine is easy and useful, it is a separate discussion. What we need is a modern design in terms of appearance and user interface, not a new doc management infrastructure. The existing files in the htdocs/ directory are not garbage, and converting them into another format solves nothing.

So if both cannot be separated from each other, we cannot leverage her work. I believe the separation is technically possible because the design is implemented in CSS and JS, not in the template engine itself. And design revamp needs someone who works on it for a while. One of the mistakes we learned from the last design renovation was that just importing a new design (and a new framework for building) did not work if one who implemented it disappeared just after a simple import. If Claudia no longer wants to work on it and no one else can take care of her results, it is difficult to adopt it because of this.

Craig, what do you think about who will work on it? We need someone who is motivated and have time for discussion, not just for importing her results.

[alfred]

Maybe it's not to replace it completely, maybe it serves as a great landing page that then links to the existing site?

Basically we use this as "getfreebsd.freebsd.org" then have it link to the old site until we can port over the css?

I'm also a little taken aback by the concern over the build system, it's very standard templating engine that most sites these days use. If you have a few minutes please have a look at http://flask.pocoo.org/ it shows how flexible, yet simple the code is. I know we have a pretty strong python team. Can we ask some of them for help with this?

My fear is that most web developers are so far removed from "make" and "shell scripts" (most use some combination of javascript, ruby/python) that we are seriously limiting the talent pool we can leverage by forcing our old tech.

If we wanted to retain someone like CY then we would need to have a few people jump in and learn just a touch of modern web programming. This is really not that hard.

So my question to you Hiroki, is wondering if you have ideas to convert the xml to use the style sheets? Or maybe convert the xml into something that can be used by the framework provided? I believe that CY *might* have something, however I'm not sure where it is, I will try to find out.

[• rodrigc]

There are multiple components to what Claudia did:

1. a redesigned web page, making use of Bootstrap CSS and contemporary web design techniques. This web page is quite clean and nice to look at, looks good on mobile devices, etc. This web page streamlines content, and provides easy links for obtaining FreeBSD, and FreeBSD-derived software such as PC-BSD (desktop), FreeNAS (embedded/storage).
2. a template system that uses Python Flask and Jinja

Migrating to a new template system for the FreeBSD web pages would be pretty cool,
but it doesn't seem that there is anybody to work on that right now, and it is a fair amount of work.

Is the FreeBSD web team OK with salvaging what Claudia did in (1), and using that for the new FreeBSD home page?
The layout, content, and Bootstrap CSS could be imported into the doc repo, and integrated with the existing
build system and scripts for building the FreeBSD web site. It won't be the coolest thing by modern web standards,
but it would be some forward progress, and it will show the world that FreeBSD is open to accepting contributions
from web developers.

I'd hate to see Claudia's efforts go nowhere. I've met her before, and she is an amazing developer. She went through the effort
of building something and presenting it at MeetBSD. The least we as a project can do is to see how we can incorporate her submission.

There has been some recent discussions on the internal developers@ mailing list about being open to others, and diversity. This
is a case point in that.

[• rodrigc]

@alfred: who owns the http://freesbd.org domain? From the whois record, I couldn't figure out who owned it. Is it going to disappear soon?

[alfred]

She owns it, it will go away eventually.

[koobs]

Can attach screenshot?

[alfred]

In D3934#85411, @koobs wrote:

Can attach screenshot?

Attached!

[trhodes]

To follow up, I'm not sure we should link directly to PC-BSD and FreeNAS, but just add either pages on all appliance options and all desktop options or what have you.

That said, I like the design, but I think hrs has some valid points - we currently use the same build chain for our xml documentation and our xml web. Is there an easy way to convert this into xml and make it work with our build system now? I think that's the largest hump to pull over right now.

[gnn]

If someone wants this to happen it has to be taken up by the project NOW. The original author has moved on. Or, you know, we could just abandon good work on this for the Nth time.