Web page(s) redesign

[Igor]

I had a meeting today and all except last two posts, since not existing at the time, were checked. In general, I was more or less presentation our pain with existing ideas how to solve this and that. Wordpress stays since they are familiar and since the problem is not there. Data will go into temp database (from GitHub config files as it comes now) that any possible search/filtering is possible, used or not. UX redesign has top priority than graphics tuneup and then backstage improvements. Estimated due ... hardly this year. Rather slow and good.

 

Now waiting for the first prototype, then arguing further.

[Igor]

First draft. Comments and ideas over are welcome. UX related only at this stage.

[chwe]

I'm not sure if we need this carousel on the first page (R1 picture in the draft).  A small "news feed" should also do the job not? Downloadpage might be a little bit confusing (status & release). IMO only the 'Deprecated' flag is needed, on all other boards, you see from the release (testing, stable etc.) the status of your board.  A small 'getting started' guide on the first page is a good idea to avoid the major issues when starting with armbian.

[Tido]

The startpage looks nice, but I would keep the menu in the same order as the buttons, not as it is now:
Contribute Source Donate
Donate Contribute Source

I prefer the list view - I would set this as default. It is not so 'overloaded'.

The U I guess stands for Magnet-Link for BitTorrent.
The text that follows: Server, direct link

 

As Armbian is available as Server or Desktop ?
Does  'server'  refer you can chose BitTorrent or Server (HTTP) download?
In that case I would replace Server with HTTP to reduce confusion.

 

If there will be no CMS, will you have 2-4 templates so that others can support you in maintaining the site and keep up the standard layout?

[TonyMac32]

I have thrown myself out of the forums at least 6 times today by clicking on the "Armbian" banner image.  

[tkaiser]

7 minutes ago, TonyMac32 said:

I have thrown myself out of the forums at least 6 times today by clicking on the "Armbian" banner image

 

More than 6 times here and this is the final proof why all this babbling is 100% useless. Igor's decision yesterday to switch NanoPi M3 from .csc to .wip was enlightening.

[chwe]

It's not uncommon that 'Home' isn't visible on a websites navbar,  but the logo is linked to it (said someone who was on armbians main page more than 6 times today.. ).  As soon as you've a template page it's annoying to program exceptions... 

 

1 hour ago, tkaiser said:

Igor's decision yesterday to switch NanoPi M3 from .csc to .wip was enlightening.

IMO this should be discussed in another thread. Otherwise, we fill this one also with a lot of stuff which doesn't belong to the topic.

[Igor]

4 hours ago, chwe said:

this should be discussed

 

"discussion = the action or process of talking about something in order to reach a decision or to exchange ideas." and it this topic we have to reach it and direct how WWW should look like. The first draft is how they understand us, mostly my bubbling. It can be far from our consent. It can be completely wrong.

 

17 hours ago, chwe said:

I'm not sure if we need this carousel on the first page (R1 picture in the draft). 

I don't like it either but something must be there, perhaps some latest new or twits instead?

 

17 hours ago, chwe said:

IMO only the 'Deprecated' flag is needed, on all other boards

Fine for me, what others think?

 

17 hours ago, Tido said:

The startpage looks nice, but I would keep the menu in the same order as the buttons, not as it is now:

Don't really understand a point of this?

 

17 hours ago, Tido said:

I prefer the list view - I would set this as default. It is not so 'overloaded'.

Yes, better.

 

17 hours ago, Tido said:

If there will be no CMS

Wordpress is CMS.

 

18 hours ago, Tido said:

As Armbian is available as Server or Desktop ?
Does  'server'  refer you can chose BitTorrent or Server (HTTP) download?

Some boards have desktop some only server. I think there are those two "recommended downloads" with a torrent icon (well perhaps it doesn't look very well yet) following the direct link behind a name. Here are more options - text, icons or combination as it is now ... we want more torrent downloads and this way could be better in that direction. It was considered but it's hard to tell without seeing stats. I can only trust their UX experiences here.

 

6 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

I have thrown myself out of the forums at least 6 times today

Now, a lot of things are wrong and even it's wrong we are used to those wrong actions. 
 

6 hours ago, tkaiser said:

More than 6 times here and this is the final proof why all this babbling is 100% useless.

I have no idea to what you are referring to? With re-design, we haven't got anywhere yet and if your bubbling was overheard by a person in charge of a design perhaps you need to point it out. He understands our pain the way it was designed and can easily be reshaped around at this point. If it doesn't go in the right direction, speak up. "Everything is completely wrong" and "I already told you something completely opposite" tells nothing.

Start to change this is not joyful for me and I would rather not deal with it but I have no other options. If you like to lead this web transformation, focus, sum ideas and communicate with the design team, welcome. I have other things to do.
 

4 hours ago, chwe said:

It's not uncommon that 'Home' isn't visible on a websites navbar,  but the logo is linked to it

We are redesigning page for newbies. We can handle it in any case.

[tkaiser]

2 hours ago, Igor said:

I have no idea to what you are referring to? With re-design, we haven't got anywhere yet

 

Who decided when for which reason to render this forum's most used UI element (the logo in left top corner to get back to 'Forums Index') to be broken? Why is it necessary to break functionality now and why isn't it possible if it's about breaking usability to do this as part of a re-design/relaunch process after usability concerns have been addressed?

[Igor]

Just now, tkaiser said:

Who decided when for which reason to render this forum's most used UI element (the logo in left top corner to get back to 'Forums Index') to be broken? Why is it necessary to break functionality now and why isn't it possible if it's about breaking usability to do this as part of a re-design/relaunch process after usability concerns have been addressed?

Navigation is wrong and my only thought was to do this either now or at relaunch. I put it back until then. ok?

[Tido]

1 hour ago, tkaiser said:

this forum's most used UI element

Because TK and Tony use this Logo to return, it becomes most used.

Are you also responsible for the gravity of the earth ?

[tkaiser]

1 hour ago, Igor said:

Navigation is wrong

 

17 minutes ago, Tido said:

Are you also responsible for the gravity of the earth

 

Well, nothing more to add.

 

@Igor: This sort of 'decisions' are the ones that makes contributing here useless. We babble about stuff and then you change something thinking it's not a big deal (see also count of boards Armbian tries to support and why). Anyway, it has become just a waste of time...

[Igor]

5 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

his sort of 'decisions' are the ones that makes contributing here useless.

 

Linux kernel development is anarchistic and our work is involved, dependant and related to this organizational type. Adding too strick wireframe and being harsh where is absolutely no need might be more damaging ... and a waste of time if you like that kind of word form. Scaring people not to come out with their ideas because somebody will bark at them how stupid they are might be also a waste of time. And damaging. Most people around the project are volunteers after all and demanding ultimate compliance won't work. Being a pro/cash has little effect on this either.

Talking and discussing every possible matter consumes human resources which, frankly we don't have in indefinite capacity. Nobody has. Somebody has to lead and coordinate this web redesign and until this is mostly on me, I will resolve minor disputes instantly or I will not deal with this in any way. This is not a military precision stuff! Why do we need to panic? It's plenty of time, this is not print media and mistakes can be fixed. 

 

And I will for sure do more mistakes in the future. Perhaps even repeat them, which I hope not.

If you think everything is waste of time, take a break from extreme specifics ... even this can be considered as a waste of time from a radical point of view.  

You have possible future boards in the dedicated section and there is a place for discussion if needed. There is no rush - take time. It's your right to write down that all boards sux and is pointless to deal with it. Should this change anything? Not necessarily and it should be this way.

 

Can we now stay on this topic?

 

[chwe]

5 hours ago, Igor said:

I don't like it either but something must be there, perhaps some latest new or twits instead?

IMO WordPress most famous element should be there.  A small 'blog'...  Not in terms of filling this with content every day more in terms of an annotation board. Something like: 

Quote

*Random SBC* is now WIP:

Armbian provides now initial support for *random SBC*. *random features* works etc. etc.  *random features* doesn't' work. 

1

 

This is easier to maintain than a carousel (trust me, I've tested bootstraps carousels for content). This could be a place where people see the progress of armbian (also actual tweets,  youtube videos etc.  could be linked there)

 

 

5 hours ago, Igor said:

we want more torrent downloads and this way could be better in that direction

 

Then we should go for a harsher approach: Limit download speed when not using torrent! See example:

Example (HC1 Image):	Downloadpage	Torrent
Time:			~18s		~43s

Why should someone download via torrent? DL is faster and 'less work'. Limit download speed to ~500KB/s so that an average download needs ~400/500s... 

 

6 hours ago, Igor said:

He understands our pain the way it was designed and can easily be reshaped around at this point. If it doesn't go in the right direction, speak up. "Everything is completely wrong" and "I already told you something completely opposite" tells nothing.

1

IMO it's good to have someone with an 'outer view' sees our page. I think a lot of people uses the logo to go to the forum top page - doesn't mean this is 'common sense'.  

Pro 'logo links to forum top-page:'

It's day two and before Igor changed it back I was 3-4 times on armbians main page...

 

Pro 'logo links to armbians top-page':

According to w3.org (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0):

Quote

Guideline 3.2 Predictable: Make Web pages appear and operate in predictable ways:

 

3.2.3 Consistent Navigation: Navigational mechanisms that are repeated on multiple Web pages within a set of Web pages occur in the same relative order each time they are repeated, unless a change is initiated by the user. (Level AA)

1

 

The explanation of 3.2.3 says:

Quote

Consistently positioned skip navigation controls

A "skip navigation" (or "skip to main content") link is included as the first link on every page in a Web site. The link allows users to quickly bypass heading information and navigational content and begin interacting with the main content of a page.

 

 

I'll hate myself when I end once again on armbians top-page but I think in this case, we should follow w3 recommendations how navigation should work.

[Tido]

4 hours ago, chwe said:

I think a lot of people uses the logo to go to the forum top page - doesn't mean this is 'common sense'. 

It says 'armbian'  why should it point to  forum.armbian ???  

Below the armbian logo is a 'Forum' button - shall this lead to armbian (just to be ironic)

I always click on the right side on my:  tido_news24h  which sits just below the searchbox. A so called 'activity stream'  personalized - because with the forumupgrade the 'new message' button was killed.

[chwe]

26 minutes ago, Tido said:

It says 'armbian'  why should it point to  forum.armbian ???  

I don't say it should... read the whole post:

4 hours ago, chwe said:

I think in this case, we should follow w3 recommendations how navigation should work.

which means logo links to armbian.com not forum.armbian.com to have a 'Consistent Navigation' through the whole armbian webpage (I thought this was clear enough. In terms it wasn't - now it should be). 

 

32 minutes ago, Tido said:

I always click on the right side on my:  tido_news24h  which sits just below the searchbox. A so called 'activity stream'  personalized - because with the forumupgrade the 'new message' button was killed.

You complain that @tkaiser 'customizes' the forum by using the logo to go to forum.armbian.com and one post later, you explain your customization to use the forum...  

A 'power-user' will customize each forum the way he needs it to find the content he's interested in ASAP. 
Fact is:

• *average user* doesn't know (mostly) how to subscribe to a topic
• doesn't spend a second to customize the forum for his needs.

But this is all off-topic. We've a 'Support over Forum' topic to improve 'forum experience'. It's about the whole Armbian Page, not the forum. The Forum-Page will need some 'customization' in the navigation bar anyway cause we have some elements which aren't used on any of the other pages. 

 

 

[zador.blood.stained]

10 minutes ago, chwe said:

which means logo links to armbian.com not forum.armbian.com to have a 'Consistent Navigation' through the whole armbian webpage (I thought this was clear enough. In terms it wasn't - now it should be). 

The thing is - forum.armbian.com is a separate site, not part of www.armbian.com. Logo on the forum should go to the forum index, not to www.armbian.com index. Same as dl.armbian.com logo goes to dl.armbian.com index, top left corner of docs.armbian.com links to docs.armbian.com index.

To compare: if you are using Google services - the "Google" logo in top left on docs.google.com, drive.google.com, play.google.com, mail.google.com, etc. doesn't link to www.google.com but to the respective service start/index page.

Edited December 8, 2017 by zador.blood.stained
Clarification

[Tido]

@chwe, my bad. I was expecting you see who I addressed, it wasn't you. If you read the whole thread you know who was addressed

Basically, I supported what you wrote/said.

With regard to:  tido_news24h  again to the person on the first line.

Spoiler

 

2 hours ago, chwe said:

3 hours ago, Tido said:

It says 'armbian'  why should it point to  forum.armbian ???  

I don't say it should... read the whole post:

7 hours ago, chwe said:

I think in this case, we should follow w3 recommendations how navigation should work.

which means logo links to armbian.com not forum.armbian.com to have a 'Consistent Navigation' through the whole armbian webpage (I thought this was clear enough. In terms it wasn't - now it should be). 

 

3 hours ago, Tido said:

I always click on the right side on my:  tido_news24h  which sits just below the searchbox. A so called 'activity stream'  personalized - because with the forumupgrade the 'new message' button was killed.

You complain that @tkaiser 'customizes' the forum by using the logo to go to forum.armbian.com and one post later, you explain your customization to use the forum...  

A 'power-user' will customize each forum the way he needs it to find the content he's interested in ASAP. 
Fact is:

• *average user* doesn't know (mostly) how to subscribe to a topic
• doesn't spend a second to customize the forum for his needs.

 

 

2 hours ago, zador.blood.stained said:

The thing is - forum.armbian.com is a separate site, not part of www.armbian.com.

Technically, you may be 110% right, but from the user point of view, who cares - the so called usability counts, not the underlying technique.

 

If you haven't  s e e n  i t  yet - Igor's focus is on usability and not what you are used to. I really honor this approach - and in the same way I got around with  tido_news24h  about the missing button 'latest posts'  I will adopt the new, streamlined layout of armbian.

So let us embrace this interesting change and look forward to a great experience when complete.

 

[tkaiser]

19 hours ago, Igor said:

Talking and discussing every possible matter consumes human resources which, frankly we don't have in indefinite capacity

 

Exactly and that's why it became useless to cobtribute here. Since we can talk all day long, try to reach a consensus and in the end you do whatever you want anyway.

What's the purpose of these 'web services' Armbian provides? What happens here and there?

1. dl.armbian.com and armbian.com/downloads: This is where people want to download software or maybe even do device differentiation to prepare a buy. They need good navigation there, something that can clearly be addressed by letting experts redesign these pages as it's currently planned
2. forum.armbian.com: could be a place to complain and asking for help about installation related stuff. But instead it's something different: the heart of Armbian's community, a place where people can learn a lot and even collectively develop new ideas/projects. We have here device reviews, we have technical tutorials, we have overview articles/threads to help users decide which device to choose (not hours but days of my life went into this kind of forum contents over the last 2 years -- for the sole reason to make this forum and community attractive for more users)
3. www.armbian.com: Nothing, it's an ugly and overloaded page hosting a brief project description with tons of links (majority not even easily accessible). If you visited this page once there's no reason to ever come back since there's nothing to see (it's this kind of web pages that are only viewed by their owners regularly and by no one else)

Trying now to throw people out of the forum explaining this would be a 'fix' since 'Navigation is wrong' is telling. Since there exists no reason. Not a single one except maybe someone trying to follow some 'design guides' in a formalistic way that do not apply here (we're not a news site like Arstechnica -- there it makes some sense to redirect people from the forum back to the main page but not when the forum is the most attractive part of the whole site).

 

If you (would start to) look at your project from the outside having your users in mind you want to direct the visitors of your site in a reasonable and not a stupid way. There's nothing to see at www.armbian.com so it can be considered even a mistake to link to this page. You would need to hire a 'content marketing' guy to change this filling www.armbian.com with artificial content. But why? Why would this be needed?

 

Again wasted time trying to explain stuff. For no reason since what needed a serious amount of time will be destroyed later in seconds. As it happenend countless times in the past (we babbled already so much about eg. testing and release policies) and that's why it's useless to continue here (same with 'Board Bring-Up' BS in the meantime -- even if there is a consensus that we try to support way too much boards in the meantime obviously it doesn't affect you at all).

[Igor]

On 12/8/2017 at 1:46 PM, chwe said:

This is easier to maintain than a carousel (trust me, I've tested bootstraps carousels for content). This could be a place where people see the progress of armbian (also actual tweets,  youtube videos etc.  could be linked there)

 

Than a twit feed would be just fine. Now I was using a box below the menu to put out the news. Such place is a must and IMHO location is right. Twit is already multiuser ready so I don’t need to do it alone.
 

On 12/8/2017 at 1:46 PM, chwe said:

Then we should go for a harsher approach: Limit download speed when not using torrent! See example:

Here we talk about visually exposing torrents, to produce more clicks. Technical reality does not count and we can limit download speed later. Torrents can also be tuned up a little more. I don’t know why sometimes takes a lot of time before the download actually starts.

 

On 12/8/2017 at 7:11 PM, chwe said:

to have a 'Consistent Navigation' through the whole armbian webpage

 

On 12/8/2017 at 7:19 PM, zador.blood.stained said:

The thing is - forum.armbian.com is a separate site, not part of www.armbian.com.

Is logo home for www or forum or whatever? It’s a good question and perhaps we test how this works for new users. We already have hardwired navigation,  whether is correct or not. This can be prepared to match both scenarios and adjust according to new users natural behavior later when the new page is ready to roll. A 2-3 week test should tell.

 

12 hours ago, tkaiser said:

What's the purpose of these 'web services' Armbian provides? What happens here and there?

 

Imagine that we are setting up a web page from scratch. Or that we set up a future-proof website from the current perspective: “What is Armbian now. What is represent?” Current web presentation is still only some enhanced version of my personal project. There are some good points too and those we should keep, transform into the new experience. We need to properly link things together, add what’s missing, remove what’s pointless and adjust the design. I agree that things are not O.K. - that’s why this topic exists. That is why we seek out for help and I am not possibly able or willing to do this alone.
 

1. dl.armbian.com is a file server and nothing else. For experts only, for those who need little to no additional info. We only need to add a common header & footer, unify fonts and it’s more or less done. On a related topic. We have links with .7z in the name which are linked further anyway. Without .7z we could change to any compression method ...

2. forum.armbian.com is something you described. A mixture and the heart of the project. Perhaps we could rather say, content is the heart of Armbian. Overall. Not just forum content, but the project per see. There are many silent users which will never say anything or little. But they are around.

3. www.armbian.com is ugly and overloaded. Agree. That’s why we have this debate. It is not what it should be. Since the key element is content … page design does not matter so much, UX does and this is what we are fixing in a phase one.  The value what we give is worth many troubles and people do come back. Scientific data tells that there is no vivid difference between forum (58%) and www (56%) in returning VS new visitors in 2017. 

IMHO we need to give www a central role to the project. Without adding junk. It should be a place where you find news about development progress, features marketing and meaningful links to our product (images), content(documentation) or services(help/forum).
 

13 hours ago, tkaiser said:

maybe even do device differentiation to prepare a buy.

 

IMHO this should be placed at /download as it is now … somehow it is natural that where we see all devices to have an (advanced) option to narrow down what do we see. By their properties. Technical background is that we need to prepare a better database, actually only add to board.conf those missing data. This way two things are solved – we are all used to enter data via Github and we don’t need to code separate entry form … which means anyone with commit rights can change any board property on the main website. Now not everything came from there - I still needed to add some data (image, name, which file to include) via WP. The only technical difference is that Github data will be sucked to WP database and anything search-wise can be done in WP.  This part will be done by those guys.

 

12 hours ago, tkaiser said:

You would need to hire a 'content marketing' guy to change this filling www.armbian.com with artificial content. But why? Why would this be needed?

We certainly don’t need content creator since we have plenty of it. Unique.

 

12 hours ago, tkaiser said:

For no reason since what needed a serious amount of time will be destroyed later in seconds. As it happenend countless times in the past (we babbled already so much about eg. testing and release policies) and that's why it's useless to continue here

1

If little and big executions fall mostly on me, I have two options: push out when it's ready which means "never" or push it out with compromises and fix on the spot - check how many releases Debian put out after their first new stable release. And Debian as a synonym for conservative approach also seems to be only a myth by now ... Perfectionism in software development can backfire. Waiting, sprinting, staying hight on alert before release can’t last long. It’s harmful to us ... 

[zador.blood.stained]

59 minutes ago, Igor said:

IMHO we need to give www a central role to the project. Without adding junk. It should be a place where you find news about development progress, features marketing and meaningful links to our product (images), content(documentation) or services(help/forum).

And for this we need a proper, manageable CMS with a control panel, WYSIWYG editor, etc. Where anyone could add a new device page and customize it if needed - since we don't add new devices that often flexible customizeable device pages would be better than current script generated ones. I.e. we could add a reduced kernel status matrix for some devices, manage known issues and limitations in a better way, link relevant tutorials and documentation for each device, etc.

 

14 hours ago, tkaiser said:

• forum.armbian.com: could be a place to complain and asking for help about installation related stuff. But instead it's something different: the heart of Armbian's community, a place where people can learn a lot and even collectively develop new ideas/projects. We have here device reviews, we have technical tutorials, we have overview articles/threads to help users decide which device to choose (not hours but days of my life went into this kind of forum contents over the last 2 years -- for the sole reason to make this forum and community attractive for more users)

This may seem wrong at first, but for tutorials and reviews this forum gives a good way to discuss stuff. Switching i.e. to a Wordpress based solution like on cnx-software means having limited discussion capabilities (compared to the forum) and having to manage/moderate comments due to spam and other unwanted stuff.

 

59 minutes ago, Igor said:

If little and big executions fall mostly on me, I have two options: push out when it's ready which means "never" or push it out with compromises and fix on the spot - check how many releases Debian put out after their first new stable release. And Debian as a synonym for conservative approach also seems to be only a myth by now ... Perfectionism in software development can backfire. Waiting, sprinting, staying hight on alert before release can’t last long. It’s harmful to us ... 

Still we (or some of us) advertise Armbian as "the best distro in the world" for these devices but fail to provide a good enough upgrade experience due to many factors - backwards compatibility, incorrect/obsolete documentation or forum posts, minimal upgrade related testing...

Regarding Linux kernel development - there is a more or less strict release policy and a hierarchy of maintainers, and a maintainer can NACK a patch set regardless of its usability for end users if it doesn't fit good enough or wasn't tested good enough. Here opinions like "we should not add firmware that exists in upstream packages to armbian-firmware" are simply ignored without any discussions and as a result we end up with this.

[TonyMac32]

10 minutes ago, zador.blood.stained said:

This may seem wrong at first, but for tutorials and reviews this forum gives a good way to discuss stuff. Switching i.e. to a Wordpress based solution like on cnx-software means having limited discussion capabilities (compared to the forum) and having to manage/moderate comments due to spam and other unwanted stuff.

I agree, but wish we had a way to "document-ize" the tutorial after all the discussion.  You get 40 pages of talk on a tutorial and it's easy to miss the important parts.

 

27 minutes ago, zador.blood.stained said:

Regarding Linux kernel development - there is a more or less strict release policy and a hierarchy of maintainers, and a maintainer can NACK a patch set regardless of its usability for end users if it doesn't fit good enough or wasn't tested good enough.

Yes, there is.  I think we run into trouble that there aren't many maintainers to begin with, and we range from " This is good enough I don't need feedback" to "I want 100% absolute direct democracy on every decision".  This is difficult, and there are pros and cons to both.100% direct democracy does quite literally mean nothing gets done in a reasonable time, but everything will be more stable.  "Good Enough" gets you more bugs, but also more on-time releases and a sense that you're "doing something" to the general public.  (See the criticism Debian gets about their definition of "Stable")

 

There is one thing I can say that is hard to dispute:  I can test something pretty thoroughly on my hardware in my laboratory with my equipment.  That doesn't mean it's going to work for anyone else repeatably.  So I test, and I commit the changes.  My changes are immediately live, there is no means to "trial" a change.  This is a discussion for another thread, but we should have a stable "release" branch that only gets updated for bugfixes.  Then our download page would have "Stable Release" and "development" images.  People want to use dev images?  Ok, but know that a 5.37-beta release may not be stable, even if it is a legacy kernel/etc. 

 

 

For the Website: I think a CMS is best.  However, if the primary maintainer of the website is not fond of that idea, then a set of templates and a github would be a wise alternative.

[chwe]

46 minutes ago, zador.blood.stained said:

And for this we need a proper, manageable CMS with a control panel, WYSIWYG editor, etc. Where anyone could add a new device page and customize it if needed - since we don't add new devices as often a flexible customizeable device pages would be better than current script generated ones.

To be honest, I'm not really familiar with WordPress, but this should be possible without problems. Maybe not 'anyone' but you could give 'limited rights' to the people which are responsible for the content of the webpage.  I'm more the 'DjangoCMS/Bootstrap guy' but this is more a 'personal preference', I'm sure WP can do this as good as Django. 

 

52 minutes ago, zador.blood.stained said:

This may seem wrong at first, but for tutorials and reviews this forum gives a good way to discuss stuff. Switching i.e. to a Wordpress based solution like on cnx-software means having limited discussion capabilities (compared to the forum) and having to manage/moderate comments due to spam and other unwanted stuff.

I don't think that we should 'divide' the community into an Armbian-Blog and Armbian-Forum fraction. But why not use those forum sections (e.g. tutorial subforum) as a 'peer-review' place for interesting tutorials with discussion and when a tutorial is 'peer reviewed', we generate a tutorial on a 'tutorials.armbian.com' page outside from the forum (without possibility to comment, but with a link to the forum post).

For example:

• SBCs as NAS is a evergreen topic. It doesn't really belong to armbians documentation, but a Tutorial which summarizes the performance of boards (e.g. USB2 based, all 'sort' of SATA based, USB3 based etc.) is something people would recognize. This tutorial can be edited when a new board which fits in this use-case came up (with discussion in the tutorial part of the forum). I think the armbian community has a lot of knowledge on various fields related to 'computer science' let's try to make this more visible. 

1 hour ago, zador.blood.stained said:

Still we (or some of us) advertise Armbian as "the best distro in the world"

Best distro is every time an opinion...  Things we shine: Support, support, support, maybe sometimes a little bit harsh (when people are to ignorant) but on most questions you get an answer to your question within 24h. That's even faster than most answers from the customer support of a *random company*. 

But we don't shine on 'educate our customers' (e.g. a lot of people still think: If I get mali to work, my SBC could be the cheapes & best multimediacenter cause mali is the SBCs 'graphic card' and the 'graphic card' is needed for HW accelerated video decoding).

 

45 minutes ago, TonyMac32 said:

This is difficult, and there are pros and cons to both.100% direct democracy does quite literally mean nothing gets done in a reasonable time, but everything will be more stable.

Be careful about direct democracy we (the Swiss) are quite fast upset if you're against it...  I suggest forking the 'armbians upgrade policy' to a different thread to keep this one where it belongs too: Web page(s) redesign

--> Cause I think the majority doesn't expect this discussion in a thread where it's about web page redesign. 

 

[pfeerick]

New homepage UX looks fine, once the carousel is replaced with a newsfeed (or even the armbian twitter?) of some sort... as someone mentioned... New WiP board, x board depreciated for x reason, new beta in the works...  I agree about the consistency of the links... make sure the big buttons are in the same order as the links in the menu. 

 

For the download page, list view looks great. Server/Desktop may become more apparent once options are seen. Else there would need to be an explanatory note at the top that Server images are mean for setups where a monitor is not connected, and Desktop images are... that sort of thing. If you wanted to introduce faster torrent / slower HTTP concept, why not just put links in smaller print underneath "HTTP link (slow), Torrent link (fast)". Experienced people will know to click the icon for the torrent, big text for HTTP, others will be guided by the smaller links.

 

re: forum logo... if the guideline from the w3c is that the logo on sub-site should link to the main site, then that is just plain stupid. I am on the forum.armbian.com domain... when I click the logo, it should to forum.armbian.com... not some other site (armbian.com). The pine64 forum does the same, and that is just annoying. If you want a link to the main site, it belongs in the menu bar. 

 

With a suitable template, Wordpress should do just fine... it a CMS after all! 

 

Tutorials... will a hybrid approach work? Tutorials written/managed under WordPress/main site, so they remain 'clean' and 'to the point' (i.e. more wiki style) , and a link on the forum to the tutorial when it is published, and a link in the tutorial to the forum page for discussion and questions? Or does that sound too convoluted? 

 

Now @chwe What's wrong with talking about the need for a 'stable' release branch in this thread... doesn't that come under 'redesign'? :-P :-D :-D And I've also been guilty of the Mali misunderstand too.... trying to apply the old PC graphics card understanding to SoCs, when they threw that idea out the window! :-O And hey, it's great we're discussing this stuff, as between all of us this might take a bit longer, but there is some mutual ownership of what's going on, and some great ideas are coming out! 

[TonyMac32]

Well, I do agree we need to stick to web page topic, the other stuff is an elsewhere conversation.  

 

So I spent some time in the documentation github, I saw changes go live instantly on the documentation page, nice.  What is the rate of update on the webpage itself?  I added the ethernet issues to the potato board notes, it wasn't there initially, but was several hours later.  I like the GitHub --> Web page link, that allows for direct community contribution via pull request, and allows for rollback of mistakes.

[Tido]

On 9.12.2017 at 10:20 PM, zador.blood.stained said:

Still we (or some of us) advertise Armbian as "the best distro in the world" for these devices but fail to provide a good enough upgrade experience due to many factors - backwards compatibility, incorrect/obsolete documentation or forum posts, minimal upgrade related testing...

IIRC, it was you who said having a stable branch with our build-system is to complicated - but a stable branch would fix a couple things right away.

 

23 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

a stable "release" branch

And while reading on, I come across this. So TK, Tony and me would appreciate this IIRC a couple more in the forum.

Ouch, sorry - it has nothing to do with the website.

---

22 hours ago, chwe said:

SBCs as NAS is a evergreen topic.

I repeat myself, but same as with HW description, why do something again if it already exists ?   or just describe the special functions per board..

Documentation - a good thing I already gave a suggestion on the frist page of this thread.

 

19 hours ago, pfeerick said:

is just plain stupid. I am on the forum.armbian.com domain... when I click the logo, it should to forum.armbian.com

Isn't  forum.armbian.com a SUB-domain?  Looking at it from my point of view, without a keyboard you cannot-return-to-armbian.com - I truly hate that, everywhere. The Logo always keeps the HOME link, always. That is the reason that a 'home' is unnecessary. It is in the Logo.

 

[chwe]

20 minutes ago, Tido said:

I repeat myself, but same as with HW description, why do something again if it already exists ?

Maybe cause armbian does not support only SUNXI boards? Cause for NAS use-cases boards like the HC1 outperform every SUNXI boards easily? Thanks to @tkaiser we have a lot of SBCs tested in a 'NAS use-case'. All the 'performance numbers'/benchmarks came from the same person taking care about 'do it right'.  Same counts for HW description...  

Personally, I like sunxis wiki but it is a wiki for developers (and maybe experienced SBC users) and not for the 'Hi all, I'm new to linux and SBC and bought *random SBC* for *random use case* guy'.  Since some boardmakers found out that they sell much more boards when they start with a Kickstarter campaign instead of selling them on their website & aliexpress and we support quite often their boards, we have to deal with them. 

52 minutes ago, Tido said:

Isn't  forum.armbian.com a SUB-domain?  Looking at it from my point of view, without a keyboard you cannot-return-to-armbian.com - I truly hate that, everywhere. The Logo always keeps the HOME link, always. That is the reason that a 'home' is unnecessary. It is in the Logo.

both 'versions' have valid arguments. Personally, I like @zador.blood.staineds argumentation.

On 8.12.2017 at 7:19 PM, zador.blood.stained said:

To compare: if you are using Google services - the "Google" logo in top left on docs.google.com, drive.google.com, play.google.com, mail.google.com, etc. doesn't link to www.google.com but to the respective service start/index page.

Having 'Home' in the navbar and you can go back to armbian.com.  

 

 

[zador.blood.stained]

7 hours ago, Tido said:

Looking at it from my point of view, without a keyboard you cannot-return-to-armbian.com - I truly hate that, everywhere.

Going to www.armbian.com from here was possible before, but current menu (navbar) was changed several times after that.

 

7 hours ago, Tido said:

Isn't  forum.armbian.com a SUB-domain?

Yes, but it's a separate service which has its own index page aka "home".

[TonyMac32]

Could just put a subscript "Forum" at the bottom right corner of Armbian.

[Igor]

On 27. 11. 2017 at 9:26 AM, tkaiser said:

mSATA: the Hummingboard has no mSATA but mPCIe only, same with the Clearfogs by default: you need to rebuild u-boot and have to freeze the packages to get reliable mSATA/SATA on the mPCIe slot(s)

 

On 27. 11. 2017 at 11:47 AM, tkaiser said:

• Filter by board: Banana Pi, Nano Pi, ODROID, Olimex, Orange Pi, Pine, Others
• Filter by feature: Fast storage, very fast storage, Gigabit Ethernet, video acceleration, M.2/mPCIe, USB3, SPI NOR flash
• Filter by feature: 32-bit, 64-bit, BT, onboard Wi-Fi, A20, A31, A33, A64, H2+/H3, H5, i.MX6, Marvell, Rockchip, Amlogic

Hummingboard v1 has mSATA and mPCI so this information is correct  Now let's think how to store those features best way possible. Exactly what is useful to store and how? Currently, we get some data from /build/boards, then board properties are attached to WordPress articles(board download pages) as TAGs and I have one exception table for boards without the unique config, which is used when building download pages. Now we shell have all at one place/sucked to the database, but since one board config covers more boards, what would be the best way to proceed. Cubox-i is first such example. It's one image and covers 3 boards, HB1, 2 and Cubox. Shall we have those alike boards in the main config or we add subfolder in build/boards/xxxx and keep those configs there? We only need them for building this database and when in the database, we can do filtering.