Subject: Some restructuring of the download section

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 17:48:38 +0800

Per discussions I've had with people for a long time now, I finally
got around to making some changes to the structure of the download
section last week, to make it a little bit less cluttered and
confusing. And I think minus a few details they're about ready to go.
And then I promptly forgot about posting it here...

So, important things first. Since it contains a lot of cut/paste
between different places the diff can be a bit hard to read. So I've
pushed a preview version of it up at
http://young-window-5672.herokuapp.com/download/. Username is webtest,
password foobar - to make sure google doesn't end up crawling it for
me...

I've pushed my development branch to github. It contains a lot of
minor changes and back/forth changes, so the history is probably not
very interested, but you can view the full diff to master at
https://github.com/mhagander/pgweb/compare/master...downloadrefactor,
or clone that github repo if you want to make some changes off it.

The main difference for people to actually see are, other than
generally trying to make it easier to read:
* Add more distinct links in the navigation bar. The Download one
becomes redundant, but it also makes it much easier to "get back" to
the starting point
* Remove the strange horizontal menu we used to select platform - it
didn't correspond to any kind of standard way of doing webpage layout,
and confused a lot of people
* Introduce a more granular split between Linux distributions, to be
able to target information more specifically - instead of a huge
if/elseif/elseif block between which distro you're on. Results in more
pages, but a lot more structured and easy to read pages.
* Put much more actual information on the per-distribution/per-os
pages. E.g. instead of "you can use yum", it has "how and why to use
yum" (and similar for other distros)
* Remove individual (and usually inconsistent) packager crediting -
this should be credited on the main project (/community/contributors/
page) like all other contributors.
* Update the snapshot download information which has been lacking love
for a long time
* In some pages, get rid of 200-char long rows and just fold them into
normal rows (e.g. the windows download page). Generates a big diff,
though...

Constructive comments are most welcome ;)

Also, I need help to update the details for operating systems/distros
and install methods that I don't know myself. I'd appreciate it if
someone who does could look at e.g. the RedHat pages and then
construct similar pages for the following OSes (either send me the
text, or just do a fork+pullreq on github):
* FreeBSD (Palle has promised to work on this alrady)
* OpenBSD (I suggest you wait until Palle is done with FreeBSD, since
I suspect they will be very similar)
* SuSE
* Mac OS X (the Fink and Macports part - I think I have the rest
covered by bugging people on IRC)
* Solaris

It's no worse than it is before, but it would be good to  be able to
improve the information on those pages as well.

-- 
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 12:53:54 +0100

> password foobar - to make sure google doesn't end up crawling it for

Thanks for working on this - it looks good.

> and confused a lot of people

Better remove the other horizontal menu at the top of the page too then :-p

(that's a joke, but seriously, I've never heard of anyone getting
confused by that - and frankly if someone does get confused by a
horizontal list, they probably stand zero chance of using PostgreSQL
without getting confused).

> pages, but a lot more structured and easy to read pages.

The large bold warnings about the installers were added because they
used to be listed at the top of the page, above the platform-specific
packaging options (because they tended to confuse people less). It's
yet to be seen if users will become confused again - we have the info
they should need now, but I suspect that doesn't necessarily mean
they'll read it before emailing us. In any case, I think those
warnings should either be removed or made non-bold now.

> * Update the snapshot download information which has been lacking love

Per the above for the platform packaging warning (though, if you just
un-bold it, it should refer to the packages above, not below).

> covered by bugging people on IRC)

Postgres.app shouldn't be included on there (yet) for a number of reasons:

- We have noone on the packagers list maintaining releases with the
community schedule.
- We haven't had any commitment to maintain releases in line with our
support policy.
- It's still a beta.

-- 
Dave Page
Blog: http://pgsnake.blogspot.com
Twitter: @pgsnake

EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 21:14:25 +0800

> without getting confused).

Yeah, I realize that was a joke. So maybe my phrasing was bad.

The way it was positioned as a horizontal menu *where it was*, and the
way it looks, doesn't really conform to anything that people do
elsewhere. If other sites use things like that *at all*, it's for
links to places further down on the same page or such - certainly not
for what's actually the most important links on the whole page...

> warnings should either be removed or made non-bold now.

I wouldn't want to remove them at all, since they're clearly still correct.

In fact, given the number of people I've run into who've had problems
because of that, I'd rather leave them as bold as well. But I'll be
happy to defer that decision to someone who's neither you nor me ;)

> un-bold it, it should refer to the packages above, not below).

Oh, nice one. Fixed.

> - We haven't had any commitment to maintain releases in line with our

agreed. That was actually mostly put in there as an example of how it
would look, and in the hope that they would finish it. And then I
forgot about commenting it out :-) Also done now.

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 14:25:04 +0100

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]> wrote:
> because of that, I'd rather leave them as bold as well.

Citations please? I don't recall ever hearing of people running into
such problems. I still maintain that it should be pretty blindingly
obvious that a graphical installer isn't an RPM or DEB - and that
being the case it seems like clutter on the page that is distracting
from the more important text that's there and will achieve little
except cause fewer people to actually read everything else.

---

From: Guillaume Lelarge <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 16:06:15 +0200

> improve the information on those pages as well.

Seems good to me, though I would add PGXN on the "Additional Software"
part (before pgFoundry).

-- 
Guillaume
http://blog.guillaume.lelarge.info
http://www.dalibo.com

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 23:43:51 +0800

> such problems. I still maintain that it should be pretty blindingly

As I've said previously, it's mainly been from people who aren't on
our lists, so I can't easily point there. I know it's up on the lists
every now and then as well, but it's getting too late in the evening
to spend time searching for that.

I've heard it from customers. I've heard it from people I've met at
conferences. I've heard it in IRC channels. I've heard it in
usergroups.

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 16:51:50 +0100

> conferences. I've heard it in IRC channels. I've heard it in

So why don't I hear it? I get enough private emails from users with
other questions/comments - presumably as my name is next to the
download link.

Regardless though - I'm fine with leaving it there, or removing it. I
would rather remove it to simplify the text, but most importantly
don't think it should be bold, for exactly the reason Kevin gave.

---

From: Dave Page <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 16:58:40 +0100

>> conferences. I've heard it in IRC channels. I've heard it in

One other thought - presumably the people telling you this are not
reading the bold text that's there at the moment? Which probably means
those people aren't reading the rest of what's there either, so
there's likely not much we can do to help them.

In other words, maybe they aren't the best people to consider when we
think about anything other than simplifying those pages.

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 00:11:06 +0800

> there's likely not much we can do to help them.

Well, it's certainly gone down since the warning was added :-) A
number of them had just done it, found the problem, fixed it
themselves and then took a chance to report it once they ran into
someone who actually works on the site...

> think about anything other than simplifying those pages.

That's a pretty good point though, that still holds at least partially :)

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 14:54:28 -0700

Magnus,

Wow, much more comprehensible.  I'm sure I'll find some nits later, but
it's so much easier to understand now that it's hard to find anything
worth adjusting.

Except ...

http://young-window-5672.herokuapp.com/download/snapshots/

For Snapshots page, I think the Source Code text block should be the top
section, instead of the bottom, since the most updated snapshots are
usually source.

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

---

From: Josh Berkus <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2012 14:59:23 -0700

Dave, Magnus,

I do think we should keep the warning about One-Click being an
alternative to RPM/Deb/Whatever and not complimentary to it.  However, I
don't think it needs to be Bold.

Cynically, I don't think people will actually read the warning, but when
I get complaints about it, I like to point out that it's there.

-- 
Josh Berkus
PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
http://pgexperts.com

---

From: Martin Atukunda <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 21:28:27 +0100

Looks good and *is* much more readable than the current version on the site.

I would suggest (in a bid to make even more readable) that we indent
the paragraphs so that its clear under which heading the content is.

For instance I find the section on Binary Distributions a lot easier
to read because of the indentation introduced by the list.

just my 2c

- Martin -

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 10:48 AM, Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Sent via pgsql-www mailing list ([email-masked])
> To make changes to your subscription:
> http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-www

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:45:49 +0800

> to read because of the indentation introduced by the list.

Hi!

That might well be a good idea, but it's "out of scope" for this
patch. We're not going to use a different layout for just these pages,
we're using the standard stylesheets from the website. Unfortunately
they are a little bit unclear on exafctly these things. I believe it's
already on the TODO list for whenever we do the next website style
update, to get that more clear.

But thanks for the suggestion anyway!

---

From: Bjorn Munch <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 09:44:10 +0200

> text, or just do a fork+pullreq on github):

OK one comment about the details for Solaris. I can't easily access
non-web stuff from within the firewall, but it's just one small
change:

I'd like to remove OpenSolaris form the list of "Solarises" mentioned;
I replaced that with Solaris 11 several minor versions ago, so Solaris
10 and 11 will be the platforms packaged for in the foreseeable
future.

- Bjorn (Solaris tar ball builder)

---

From: Pierre-Emmanuel André <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 10:22:16 +0200

> improve the information on those pages as well.

Hi,

The new page have a better look and i think that it's more readable.
Regards,

-- 
Pierre-Emmanuel André <pea at raveland.org>
GPG key: 0x7AE329DC

---

From: Magnus Hagander <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:51:22 +0800

> non-web stuff from within the firewall, but it's just one small

You can browse the files on githjub if you want ;) In theory, you can even
edit them from a webbrowser I think - I've never tried that myself though...

> 10 and 11 will be the platforms packaged for in the foreseeable

ok, that's easy enough - changed in my local copy.

Should we perhaps extract some of the information from the README file and
put it on this webpage instead, to make it more in line with the other
pages? (Note that I say that without having actually looked at the README
file since I'm on a non-wifi flight - so if the information corresponding
to the stuff we have for other platforms isn't in the README file, perhaps
we can write at least some of that?)

//Magnus