Great suggestions all Keep em coming!

Herko

For the Developers' Portal, I think it will be good to exist a page with lists and links of the base and most active core devs and mod devs web sites, apart of the other content. Not big descriptions, just list of the projects of each of the main dev teams/single contributors with links. Each of the more experienced and even many of the less experienced users here got his own such list, maybe just as bookmarks. But for every user, new or not so new, it would be very useful to find such a list here on xoops.org. Such a page could be even useful for the main XOOPS portal, a kind of connection to the devs portal. I think it's sth that is needed now.

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This is not only a good idea, its almost necessary. It gives users the chance to explore sites powered by XOOPS. While they may be going for the info. Witnessing the flexibility of the cms is not going to hurt.

Heres an idea. Why not let the users switch between a couple themes here.

Show them how flexible XOOPS is by offering extremes.

Granted there is no need to offer the option of hundreds of themes.

But what about, theme of the month.

How many developers would jump at the chance to be the xoops.org alternate theme? I believe that we would see a huge increase in the production of themes.

So you would keep the default theme, and give the user s achance to switch to that months winning theme.

Conditions... only free themes are eligible for entry.

Creating a free theme to promote your company is not necessarily a bad thing.

and im not being cheap.. i have bought my fair share of themes.

I just feel that it would work on a couple levels.

You could set a submission and voting deadline like you do for site of the month, and you would have new themes for the repo.

I think the content and documentation suggestions, as outlined at the beginning of this thread - is pretty cool.

Minor suggestion, keep content presentation as clear as possible. For example, on the current site's 1st page, the development section contains 4 links. For a new user, this, I think, not very useful information anyway. If there was one link to the devforge site, it will feel less of a clutter.. A similar thing, I think, is in relation to the XOOPS downloads. One link to the latest verion, is clear. We could have a link on the side for older versions, and again, information is kept simple and clear..

One content feature I think is missing for people, is something that contains visual elements. There's a fair bit of text on the page as a person comes in, and placing images can make it easier on the eye. One way this might be possible, is by placing images of themes contesting for theme of the month..(?)

Personally, I'd also like to see more use of the polls module, as a way to get group decisions...

Best wishes,

Aharon

I agree with Shine in the tutorial section needed. Right now the site is so extremely full of usefull information. People finding solutions to things everyday and all this "tutorial" type information should be gathered in one section with a module that permits to handle the information easily to find with defined categories, smartsection is ideal. Like do a cleanup of what there is now (a way big job - like when you don't clean up your closet in a year).

Basically to start off it would be good to follow these steps:
1. Doing an inventory of the content
2. Grouping the information

A sitemap needs to be started also where we all can start building it, according the needs of the thousand of users that visit XOOPS.

Here is a screenshot of an example of a structure from a book ("Professional CSS Cascading Stylesheets for Web Design").

Click here for large screenshot

It would be nice to end up with XOOPS own special structure.

I like alot the harmony of the three portals as Herko has communicated us.

I also agree that Surveys - Polls are very needed also right now and continuing their use in the future. So the leaders can gather the necesarry information from what XOOPS users expect and want of XOOPS. Find out what people like and dislike of the current portal to focus the concepts more and so the project can come to taking decisions easier.

I am not sure if it is a wise idea, but a chat module would be nice in the community portal, maybe that way the forum could be more light weight.

Also could World of XOOPS (WOX) : World of XOOPS Newsletter be kept alive? I love it's topics and the last one was quite a long time ago (2004/7/12). Maybe it would be nice to include once in a while a report of how the donations to XOOPS have helped to it's development, letting know the community the importance of contributing and how it is invested.

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This is a theme contest and a design issue, not a content issue. This option has been raised in the design thread too, so you're not alone in this

But, lets focus on the features we already have, and not what would be good for XOOPS if we had that.

Herko

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Sites powered by XOOPS is the Links section. Sites that offer XOOPS related services such as development, design etc. is the Business Directory I meantioned in the framework. It's good to share that info (or subsets of that info) across the three sites, I agree.

Herko

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I agree, I myself grouped that in the 'documentation' section. But I like the exanple you give from the CSS book: what about renaming the 'documentation' section to 'Learn XOOPS'? In this we can have documentation, tutorials, flash tutorials, things like that.

Quote:Ehm, isn't that what we're foing right now? I made an initial inventory, also based on the available information (and there is a LOT of dynamic information, and not so much uptodate static information). I'm asking the thousands of users to add their ideas (this thread) on what should be displayed, and we take it from there

Quote:That is the intention, as I explained in the general framework thread. Polls will be used, and will continue to be used. Theres two things I'd like to say about using polls tho:
- In order to get results that mean anything, polls need to present choices with consequences: do you want a or b or c or d? If you select one, you deselect the others. The consequences of this choice should be known. Polls like 'what version of XOOPS do you use? 2.0.7, 2.0.10, 2.0.13.2, 2.2.3 doesn't provide any real answer, it only tells us that people use different versions. We still need to provide support to all these versions. The real question is, why do you still use 2.0.7? So, polls are decent tools, if used right, and the results mean anything. Especially when making group decisions.
- What I want to prevent is the idea that using the polls and the group decision, the simple fact that we're all in this together and all responsible to make this happen is ignored. WHat I mean is that it is easy to choose this or that when the consequences of actually doing the work isn't on your shoulders. And we're a community, meaning everyone must chip in. It's not that the community at large decides what a small group of people will do. So polling is good, but what about the resources necessary to make this happen? Who will do the work? Polls tend to ignore that question, and essentially makes the community more transparant, but not more open. Wouldn't you rather do what you like to add, in stead of what the majority of those who vited want to be done? They could be the same, and that will doubly motivate you to do the work, but if they aren't the same, then why would you spend your free time on this? If everyone wants it, someone else will probably pick it up? The same goes for the 'staff', which we don't have.

All in all, I agree, abd wanted to give you two nuances on the use of polls. Surveys have a much more informational character, and make them good for analasys, and not for group decisions.

Quote:Chats are nice, but too volitile. I mean that the information isn't stored and easy to reuse. Plus, we already have the docs, FAQ and forums. Adding another layer for support will only make it more diffuse. We want people to try the docs and FAQ and search first, before asking their questions. We need to make sure that it is easy to do so.

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At the moment ALL donations are still available for investment. That's one of the areas I think a group decision is real valuable. What has been paid so far (the creation of the Foundation, the XOOPSDEM 2005 meeting, the new logo) has been paid with the adsense revenue. This because the community donations should go to the community.

About WOX: we're going to revive it, and are making (separate) plans for this. M0nty and davidl2 are preparing this. But that's for another thread

Herko

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I have looked at the downloads module and how to add something like a filter for core version compatibility. Right now, I am just wanting a stable version of wfdownloads 3.0 out, so I can make the changes to that version and apply it here.

I would also like module translations to be accessible on the module itself - so when you go to a module in the Repository, you can also download other translations from that page.