The Joomla! Forum ™

This thread is to discuss the blog post about Open Source Matters (OSM) draft goals for 2013.

Beginning December 21, 2012, OSM board members will begin finalizing these 2013 goals, taking into account feedback from the community in this forum thread.

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Paul Orwig
President, Open Source Matters

I assume this is a typo

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"Exploited yesterday... Hacked tomorrow"
Blog http://brian.teeman.net/
Joomla Hidden Secrets http://hiddenjoomlasecrets.com/

Yes, thanks for catching that Brian - I have changed that to January 2013.

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Paul Orwig
President, Open Source Matters

I thought www.joomla.org was supposed to serve up project information for news/media groups and those not acquainted with Joomla?

And don't we have about a dozen (or more) communications channels for those who ARE familiar with Joomla?

Please explain why you are considering building another communications channel for those who need to learn more about Joomla and for those who are already part of Joomla.

It seems to me your time would be far better spent combing through www.joomla.org and figuring out how to organize the information so that it's usable to these groups and updating it with the latest information.

Why is OSM even concerned with this and what part of the mission do these sites fall under? Serving up information to these audiences via another site/blog/"portal" feels, to me, like an end-run around the Community Leadership Team, which is supposed to be in charge of joomla.org properties and websites.

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Jen Kramer
lynda.com author, instructor, and curriculum designer
http://www.jenkramer.org

Hi Jen,



I think what you mean here is exactly what we intend by the goals which are very broad at the moment.

For communicating information to those who know what Joomla is, and use it in some way shape or form, that information already exists. We do not need to create new streams of communication for that audience, but we do need to do a better job of pulling it all together, making it easier to find, in a "one stop shop" for aggregated project info.

As for those not acquainted at all with Joomla, our website currently does not have a landing page for them. It is best practices for an organization the size of Joomla to present a prominent organization blog page geared to an entirely external (not currently involved) audience (includes the press/media, but also developers, creatives, small businesses, enterprise decision makers, and prospective volunteers). In this case, the final result may be more involved than just aggregating info from across j.org and its subdomains.

Thanks for your feed back. I hope this further clarification helps.

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Alice Grevet

Secretary, Open Source Matters, Inc.
Co Lead Editor, Joomla! Community Magazine

Thank you, Alice -- this definitely helps.

I agree that Joomla does not have a place for those who do not know what it is to get that information.



Also correct, but there's no need for a "landing page just for them." The home page is the orientation point for people who don't know what a product or service is for most any website out there. You shouldn't need to click from the home page to some sort of newbie page. Therefore, we need to do a better job with http://www.joomla.org. The current home page incarnation is better than those we've had in the past, but there's still plenty of room for improvement.

Joomla has always treated its home page for those who are in the know about Joomla. That might be because of politics, or it might be because there are still far too many communications channels for Joomla to effectively coordinate.

I encourage the people working on this project to look at the simplicity of wordpress.org, which does an excellent job of inviting a newbie to try their software.

- It states exactly what it is in the first sentence, in phrasing anyone can understand ("WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. ")

- It contains the 3 steps you need to follow to get Wordpress running quickly -- 3 steps which, incidentally, are exactly the same for Joomla. The 3 steps link to more information. These 3 linked pages are also built simply, providing easy information for those who already know what they're doing (for the download page, there's a link to the downloaded zip file) and for those who don't ("If you have no idea what to do with this download, we recommend signing up with one of our web hosting partners that offers a one-click install of WordPress or getting a free account on WordPress.com.")

- Note how the Wordpress.org home page *invites* users to try their software, where Joomla's home page *sells Joomla.* The tone of the page established by this invitation to try is far more effective, particularly for users are new to working with this kind of software.


Joomla.org, like many successful websites, has grown organically over 7 years. People have felt like X audience was being neglected, and they cobbled on another part of the site. Joomla.org now resembles the Winchester Mystery House (see http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/), with staircases to nowhere, doors that open to nothing on the second floor, and dead ends everywhere.

Rather than putting another patch on Joomla.org, even rather than redesigning the home page again, time would be better spent reworking the entire architecture of all of the joomla.org sites. Ideally this would be done without regard to politics, so non-functional areas of the site can be discarded and streamlined. That's a huge job, and politics make it extremely difficult. Ideally you would bring in someone from outside of Joomla to rework the information architecture and message of the sites, and I think you'd wind up with an improved product if you did that.

You did not explain why the task of reworking the website has fallen to OSM and not to the CLT. Again, I find this division of labor to be puzzling based on what I know about Joomla's current leadership structure.

Jen

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Jen Kramer
lynda.com author, instructor, and curriculum designer
http://www.jenkramer.org

Dear Jen,

You raise some great points - we are and will be mindful of them as we move forward, and take example from other organizations as you suggest. Thanks very much for outlining your thoughts here.

As for your question about OSM vs. CLT responsibilities, it's a good one given our project's current leadership structure. What perhaps isn't really captured in our three summary bullet points is (1) the high level concept that communications touches every part of the project, and (2) we think the challenge (and the opportunity) for making significant improvements in communications (as well as many other areas) lies in looking for more ways for all leadership teams to collaboratively work together.

All of these draft goals reflect areas that OSM board members are already working on, but it is a given that progress can only be made with the support and collaboration of all teams. We have been discussing some different ideas about how OSM and CLT can work together better in a number of ways to improve different aspects of communications. There is a lot more work to do, and hopefully this will be just one of many ways our leadership teams will work together more closely than in the past.

Thanks again,

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Alice Grevet

Secretary, Open Source Matters, Inc.
Co Lead Editor, Joomla! Community Magazine