website: Revive donations page

[ziaee]

Summary

Restore donations links on the project website to the projects donations
page. These links were accidentally replaced in the foundation sponsored
website refresh with links to the foundations donations page.

The very first link on this page is to the Foundations donations, but
importantly, it explains where this money actually goes, which has many
common misconceptions, such as the cluster. There are also other links
on the page, such as hardware donations, which we actually need right
now for the aging cluster.

[philip]

I think this is a good idea. That donations page could probably use a refresh before changing the link though. I hope nobody is donating boxes of ISA cards. I don't think there's a tax-friendly way to donate to e.g. the running of the cluster.

[wosch]

Looks good, thanks!

[mark_freebsdfoundation.org]

That's not quite correct. The links were not accidentally replaced — the header and footer were picked up from the docs site, and the donate button has long been to the Foundation site. The only thing that's vanished with the new site over the old is the supplementary _hardware_ donations link.

So please do not change these links; if anything, add the hardware donations link somewhere. Here's a screenshot from the old site on archive.org…

[philip]

I don't think it matters when the button became a direct link to the FreeBSD Foundation.

Many donors mistakenly believe that the FreeBSD Foundation supports the Project's every need.

It's in the Project's best interest to solicit donations for necessities that the FreeBSD Foundation is unable or unwilling to support.

I support changing that link to a donations page. There can be a link to the Foundation on that page as well as other options.

It bears repeating that the FreeBSD Foundation is not the FreeBSD Project's exclusive sponsor.

[wosch]

FWIW, having two different donation URLs on our homepage is confusing for our users - this is a big UI/UX issue. The average user expects *one* landing page for donations to the FreeBSD project, as https://www.freebsd.org/donations/

It is fine with me that the FreeBSD Foundation is listed first for monetary donations at https://www.freebsd.org/donations/

Can we improve that page - sure, but this should be discussed in a separate PR or bug report.

[mark_freebsdfoundation.org]

In D59505#1365961, @wosch wrote:

FWIW, having two different donation URLs on our homepage is confusing for our users - this is a big UI/UX issue. The average user expects *one* landing page for donations to the FreeBSD project, as https://www.freebsd.org/donations/

It is fine with me that the FreeBSD Foundation is listed first for monetary donations at https://www.freebsd.org/donations/

Can we improve that page - sure, but this should be discussed in a separate PR or bug report.

That makes a lot of pragmatic sense @wosch — and yes, the donations page certainly needs some work on its copy. I'm happy to help with that in a next step of course.

Ideally I'd prefer the button at the top stays a clear, one step, CTA to the donate page, because otherwise we're just introducing more steps. The footer can link to the /donate page.

[adrian]

Having it reference freebsd.org/donations is in my opinion the right move. Let's do that.

[adrian]

(and if the docs site has the same thing - a link to the foundation versus freebsd.org/donations - then we should also fix that too in a separate commit.)