[mythtv] Official Thread: Mythtv.org Redesign

[Chris Petersen]

Jean-Philippe Steinmetz wrote:
> First is that the current mythtv.org design and all these proposed designs,
> while all good, are very corporate. I'm not entirely sure what kind of look
> everyone is going for but if its a cookie cutter corporate identity you're
> going for then you're definitely on the right track.

This is probably the main reason I don't like any of the oswd designs.

While I don't think that all of the submitted designs are "corporate", I
do agree that there is a heavy dose of bloggishness about them, which I
know isn't right for MythTV.

> Second is that mythtv.org needs a serious content overhaul.

No argument here.  I just want to get the general look-feel ideas pinned
down before we go trying to place different types of content around the
future site.

> My girlfriend,
> who is decently computer saavy as she is the product of two computer
> scientists but not a techie by yours or my standards, looked at the current
> website the other day and the one thing she said to me was "I couldn't
> figure out what exactly mythtv is... what is it?" This is a big problem.

She's not the first.  I've often had a hard time explaining to people
what a DVR is, let alone how MythTV relates to the concept.

> So here's what I would like to suggest as navigation for a new
> mythtv.org site.

While I agree with some of your breakdowns, there are certain keywords
that I personally find myself often using when poking around on open
source project websites, and being that MythTV is targed at people like
myself, I'm going to temporarily ignore the "you are not the user"
mantra I often try to live by.  In no particular order:

 * Bugs
 * Screenshots
 * Download

Your design does well with the download link, but at least some small
homage should be paid to bug reports and screenshots.  Personally, I
don't mind hiding screenshots on an "about" page and bugs under
"support", but the keywords should be there somewhere.

It also makes a fair amount of sense to keep both "bugs" and "wiki" as
high-level "topics" because they're completely different sites and will
need some kind of breadcrumb identification to show the user where
he/she has browsed to.  We can't alienate the existing tech-oriented
user base by hiding features that many of them find useful.  However, I
will agree that Pidgin has handled this pretty well by putting all of
the support links on their trac server.  We could do something similar
for MythTV.

-Chris

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