Message-ID: <48B85DCF.8070206@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:36:31 -0400
From: Chander Ganesan <chander.ganesan@gmail.com>
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To: Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org>, pgsql-www@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Download links
References: <937d27e10808110203l790a9c3eud97fdde42f70b92f@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <937d27e10808110203l790a9c3eud97fdde42f70b92f@mail.gmail.com>
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Dave Page wrote:
> As most of you know, over the past few months I've been making
> incremental changes to the downloads pages to make it easier for
> people to find the PostgreSQL downloads they need. This included
> bringing together all the binary package and source options for
> different OS's and making them easy to browse and choose.
>   
I just noticed this.  I'm a little surprised that the "Release 
Candidate" all-in-one-binaries are situated such that they're the first 
thing selected.  I would think that RC type stuff would remain somewhere 
other than the download pages until it's "released", or at least 
indicated in a hard-to-miss manner that they're release candidate.
> On the homepage we have a number of links that point to the binaries
> section of our ftp site, to encourage people to upgrade as well as
> install for the first time. The problem is, most of the binaries we
> offer in the downloads section don't actually live on our ftp site, so
> for may people these links are useless and misleading. I propose we
> change that section of the home page to look something like:
>
> Latest Releases
>
> 8.3.3: Notes
> 8.2.9: Notes
> 8.1.13: Notes
> 8.0.17: Notes
> 7.4.21: Notes
>
> <link to /downloads>Downloads</link>
>
> RSS | Why should I upgrade?
>
> The downside is that this may lead to a couple of extra clicks for
> people to find what they need. The upside is that the pages they go to
> will almost certainly have a section for the packages they actually
> want, and should be more simple and easy to understand.
>   
I had to spend a bit of time hunting around to find the latest release 
of 8.2.x, in fact, it's not really "indicated" anywhere that "old" 
versions are there.  Looking at the /download page, I cannot find a 
single reference to older versions (the big advantage to the old 
format).  One has to hunt around until they find the "source code" link 
to locate an older version of postgresql.

Perhaps you can simply leave it using the old style, but for the 
*latest* release (8.3.3 in this case) go to the new "/download" page, 
which allows selection from the myriad of choices available...  IMHO, 
the new download page caters to the latest release, and provides little 
or no benefit to users of older PG versions...

Just my 2 cents :-)

thanks
> Thoughts?
>
>