Calligra website (Re: "Marketing Message for Calligra")

[Jaroslaw Staniek]

On 22 December 2011 11:35, Cyrille Berger Skott <cberger at cberger.net> wrote:

> And now for the website.
>
> First of all, what it does not need is a new CMS, wordpress (which is not, and
> I repeat it is *not*, a blog tool, but a publishing platform) does suit our
> need. There is nothing that we have wanted to do, that we have not been able
> to do with wordpress. It is far from perfect, but I don't know any CMS that
> has not it own set of flaws (and to be honest, the only serious critic I got
> toward Wordpress was that it does not have real-time editing capability, but I
> am not aware of a CMS that support that, so the best way to work
> collaboratively on article remains to use notes.kde.org).
>
> I also seriously doubt the front page need an overhaul, yes a new layout for
> the bottom part is needed (and almost done as seen in
> http://www.calligra.org/homebeta/, and I am hopping to find time to work on
> that next week). Same for better use of the "banner" area. We need a better
> catch phrase than "The integrated work applications suite", to be honest, it
> was place holder for when I started the website last yer.. I do like the
> "Desktop", "Tablet", "Mobile" and "Engine" buttons, but first we need the pages
> to go with it. However...
>
> ...what is really bad is the content under the surface. And maybe the
> presentation. Most (all ?) our applications pages are really bad, none of them
> give the feeling of "I want to try this application". I have not given a lot
> of thought about it yet, and I would be very open to suggestion and people
> giving time to work on it ;) (something like iwork website could be an option
> http://www.apple.com/iwork/numbers/ , which is a combination of "catch-
> tile/paragraph/screenshot", which is close to what we do, but we miss the
> title and the layout is not as good).
>
> We also really need a good tour of the application, not something as
> complicated as the ubuntu one (http://www.ubuntu.com/tour/). But something
> very catchy, like a slideshow, with screenshots, and little text.
>
> And this makes me think that we need "editor(s)", people who know how to write
> content, and enjoy it. And who know how to take good screenshots.
>
> In summary what we need for the website:
>
> * better applications pages
> * a really good tour of the suite
> * editors
> * a new catch phrase
> * For the new layout we also need a good paragraph that explain what is
> calligra (and which is a good opportunity to show our strong points)

That's a good list.
For example. If you look at Kexi shots, I updated them to the newest
and more relevant.

Please consider what I wrote below NOT as a critics of anything you or
other Calligra contributors did:

I have to admit one thing: even it only I am editing given page (as I
did for Kexi) its totally totally a nightmare to insert photos, resize
them in wordpress.
To insert an image I need to click too many times and then changing
scale options requires re-uploading because the options are often
disabled for unknown reason.
Maybe new version will be better in this area but for now the workflow
is really worse than editing HTML files and committing to git.
Far worse than editing Mediawiki pages (which gives 100% of control
e.g. this is my old page still online http://kexi.pl/en). I had
variables via templates (single place to define current calligra
version!) and other advanced templates out of the box, working
breadcrumbs, sane URLs... I enjoy how it works for mediawiki-based
http://community.kde.org/Calligra - even if this is not a CMS and I do
not advertise it for calligra.org, I show you the basic features that
are missing. Now the software just distracts me.

In order to proceed with the iWork-like changes on the web pages at
least for one or two apps and the engine I need two main things: 1. a
feeling I do not waste time on re-entering/fixing HTML after it's
generated after inserting, 2. Full control at HTML/CSS level because I
need to create technically advanced but layouts that are visually
exactly as designed. Now I ended up with more overhead than with a
1999's static page.

Let's start with clear requirements (I explained my point of view) and
do not use some blogging engine because it was easy to set up (that
was done voluntary by Alexandra IIRC - thanks! - and was natural
initial step at that time). If we find contributor, she/he would
probably will want to have a say in the technology area.

-- 
regards / pozdrawiam, Jaroslaw Staniek
 http://www.linkedin.com/in/jstaniek
 Kexi & Calligra (kexi-project.org, identi.ca/kexi, calligra-suite.org)
 KDE Software Development Platform on MS Windows (windows.kde.org)