Re: replace training blurb with upcoming pug meetings?

Simon Riggs wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 09:09 +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > On Tue, 2008-06-03 at 17:10 -0400, Chander Ganesan wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > > I think a single link to training in a spot of its very own
> > > > would provide a bit more visibility than being cluttered with
> > > > some text and a link. Perhaps we can have some list of the
> > > > number of events as well? Want training (22 events coming up!)?
> > >
> > >
> > > One option would be to remove events, news, training, and planet
> > > listings and instead have larger and nicer representation for
> > > direct links:
> > >
> > > Find a User group!
> > > Get Training!
> > > Latest News!
> > > Our community Blogs!
> > >
> > > Each of those would be direct links respectively. This would
> > > significantly reduce the noise on the page.
> >
> > Or we just remove the frontpage completely? ;-)
> >
> > IMHO this would significantly reduce the value of the information
> > there. If anything should be removed, it's IMHO the shortcuts and
> > "support us" sections. Second to that is training. All the others
> > are IMHO much more important than the usergroup listings (which
> > doesn't say that the usergroup listings aren't important, of
> > course).
>
> Hmmm. I think its hard to say which are the more popular links.
>
> Many people would never click on training, but if there was a training
> course they wanted they would go. But how would they ever know? Same
> with user groups. Many people wouldn't be interested, but open a user
> group in their local area and suddenly they care? But how would they
> ever know?
>
> So I suggest two things:
>
> * move the suggested topics to detail pages. Give prominence to what
> turns out to be most popular. Look at hits, don't speculate or argue.

Right. A look at things now show on google analytics for the frontpage:

Between 150 and 600 clicks on each news item, depending on how
interesting it was (0.1%-0.2% of clicks)
About 500 clicks on the news archive (0.2%)
About 50 clicks on each event (<0.1%)
About 500 clicks on the events archive (0.2%)
About 18,000 clicks on the planetpostgresql links (6.5%)

> * have a way of bubbling up information from details to front page. Do
> this fairly randomly, so the front page is fresh and exciting each
> time you visit.

That's kind of what we're doing now, no? News + planet + events?

It keeps the site updating. Just keeping static links to subsections
will make the page static and uninteresting.

> I think people are interested in new and interesting things, however
> we categorise them. Running the same course title monthly for a year
> is not news, but then neither is the 5th meeting this year of the
> Pugtown PUG. Nor is writing multiple blog entries on the same day.

Agreed, except actually multiple blog entries on the same day can
certainly be interesting, if they're about different and interesting
topics.

> We just need a way for proactive and/or innovative people to get
> attention for their activities, without being swamped by bulk
> marketing activities by the overzealous. Cool blogs, new courses, new
> PUGs etc are what people want to know about.
>
> Can we review again the reasons for keeping all on one page? Why not
> allow the screen to scroll down?

The screen already scrolls, because we increased the length of each
section. (Well, it depends on your screen resolution of course, but
in for example 1024x768 (not untypical since a lot of people don't
use maximized browser windows) it does).

I think it's fine to have the screen scroll, but it'd be good if we can
keep the headlines on the initially visible part so that people know to
scroll. (It does that now at 768 lines at least)

//Magnus