From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Michael Tremer To: development@lists.ipfire.org Subject: Re: Launching our new website Date: Tue, 09 Jan 2024 11:33:45 +0000 Message-ID: <412DAF18-4375-4B90-9A69-6454A8B1D691@ipfire.org> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7299557402506601983==" List-Id: --===============7299557402506601983== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > On 8 Jan 2024, at 21:40, jon wrote: >=20 > Hy Michael, >=20 > Comments below... >=20 >> On Jan 8, 2024, at 12:33 PM, Michael Tremer = wrote: >>=20 >> Hello Jon, >>=20 >>> On 8 Jan 2024, at 17:35, jon wrote: >>>=20 >>> Over all I like what was created. Lots of good stuff! >>>=20 >>>> This should hopefully make everyone happy who for a long time wanted but= tons to change from one thing to the next here. Here it finally is! >>>=20 >>> YES! I do like change buttons across the top! =20 >>>=20 >>> Can Community also be added? Community should be a "one click" to find s= ince it is highly used/access. >>>=20 >>> Please add a site search to the top. It did take me a few clicks to find= Community. >>=20 >> I don=E2=80=99t think that it belongs there=E2=80=A6 >>=20 >> * I don=E2=80=99t see the community portal as a tier one destination for a= ) new users, b) returning users. Instead we have multiple places that kind of= do a similar thing: The wiki, Discourse, and the bug tracker. All of them do= n=E2=80=99t fit, which is why there is a page that helps people to decide whi= ch one they want: https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/help >>=20 >> * On the sitemap (https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/sitemap), Discourse c= omes after the documentation (LWL is in the middle because of the colour and = creating symmetry). >>=20 >> * I toyed around with a drop down menu, but that because even more clutter= ed and does not work well on mobile. >=20 > In my opinion, with the removal of the individual sub-domains (e.g., blog, = wiki, etc) it seems to be signaling a one-stop for all items IPFire. Someth= ing like a landing zone. And people that want to learn more would go to that= landing zone and then start their journey from there. >=20 > To me, for that landing zone to be effective, you=E2=80=99d want people to = be able to easily access Support or the Community. =20 Yes, the website is basically a place to direct people to the place they want= to go to. The website itself does not carry a lot of static information in o= ur case. But support isn=E2=80=99t the first priority that people are looking for... > And keeping the "Support" thought in mind for what seems to be a landing zo= ne =E2=80=94 now people see a LWL banner stating Support goes to LWL. This is a standard business model that we are running here and I can assure y= ou that I do not get support tickets at LWL that were supposed to be a post o= n community.ipfire.org . People don=E2=80=99t c= onfuse those two things. > To me, these are mixed messages. >=20 >=20 >>=20 >>> LWL >>> =E2=80=94=E2=80=94 >>> I truly feel there should be a little more separation between IPFire and = LWL (i.e., non-profit vs. profit). I realize you are highly invested in LWL= =E2=80=99s health and well-being. >>>=20 >>> I would like to see the Professional Support and the "BUY" type items mov= e to another page. Maybe the HELP page and something softer like, "need even= more help? Let the professionals at LWL assist!".=20 >>>=20 >>> I realize these comments might be maddening and I apologize for that. I = just feel like there should be more separations between "church and state" or= non-profit and profit. >>=20 >> The difference is very clear by using a different colour and the advertisi= ng is *that* obvious because I am still talking to people who tell me that th= ey are unaware that support is available and don=E2=80=99t use IPFire because= they want support. I KNOW. I could barely make it any bigger. >=20 > If this is a big number, then new/existing Community users could easily get= an email stating that point as part of LWL sales or marketing. To me, IPFir= e is a volunteer organization for the benefit of any user, group, etc. and fo= r the benefit of the open source project for a really good firewall. Yes, but we need to pay for the fun of having this volunteer organisation. > More comments below. >=20 >=20 >=20 >>=20 >>> More comments below. >>>=20 >>>=20 >>> PS - Once again, sorry for the "kiss" and "kick". >>=20 >> I am happy to listen to both, positive and negative feedback. Very often t= hings are not ideal, but they are the result of a long process and something = the results are the best that we could come up with in the given time. >>=20 >>>> On Jan 8, 2024, at 11:11 AM, Michael Tremer wrote: >>>>=20 >>>>=20 >>>>=20 >>>>> On 8 Jan 2024, at 13:17, Adolf Belka wrote: >>>>>=20 >>>>> Hi Michael & Rico, >>>>>=20 >>>>> On 06/01/2024 15:08, Michael Tremer wrote: >>>>>> Hello Adolf, >>>>>>> On 5 Jan 2024, at 14:43, Adolf Belka wrote: >>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>> Hi Michael, >>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>> On 04/01/2024 17:44, Michael Tremer wrote: >>>>>>>> Hello everyone, >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> (yes, yes, I am still alive=E2=80=A6) >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> I would like to pre-announce our new website which Rico and I have b= een working on over the last couple of months, and collect some final feedbac= k before we roll it out as soon as possible. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> So here is an outline of what has happened and what will happen next: >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * Rico has helped me to implement a fresh design for our website whi= ch has been drafted by another friend. The goals were to get rid of the sad a= nd grey website, which is also *way* too simplistic, and create something tha= t is nice looking, memorable, and brings people in. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * During that journey, we have waved goodbye to Bootstrap which is h= ard to work with once you have discovered Bulma (https://bulma.io/), our new = CSS framework of choice. We have also rewritten and refactored some parts of = the backend code. There is now less Javascript and less CSS - and I am sure t= hat we could actually still go and save a lot more. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * One of the biggest rewrites is fireinfo, as with a growing number = of profiles, our PostgreSQL database started to suffer. We haven=E2=80=99t te= sted this in full production, yet, but I am sure this will be a lot faster th= an the older version. This all only affects how we store the data and nothing= changes for the clients or users. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * We have upgraded the PostgreSQL driver from psycopg2 to psycopg3, = and we use async programming a lot more where possible (these are all lessons= learned from the build service). >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * We have replaced memcached with redis. Not because memcache didn= =E2=80=99t do its job well, but rather because of the reason that we have bot= h in our infrastructure and it is a little bit easier to just deploy one. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * There is a new integration with Asterisk to see current calls - pr= eviously the phone stuff didn=E2=80=99t work at all any more since we replace= d FreePBX with Asterisk. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> But that is enough about the technical stuff=E2=80=A6 Let=E2=80=99s = talk about what has visually changed, and why: >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * First of all, we have brighter colours. Very bright! Because we ar= e a fun project! The grey used to depress me slightly and if you ask a design= er what would represent us as a community, you get this. I am a lot happier w= ith that. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * The tux is gone. This is kind of a bitter sweet moment, but the ol= d IPFire =E2=80=9Clogo=E2=80=9D is gone with this. I am sure it will be found= here or there in a couple of places, but there is no way to make something a= ncient like this work with something modern-looking. I spent days together wi= th professionals to draft a new logo, and we got nothing, well, apart from th= e simple things that is: IPFire_ >>>>>>>>=20 >>>=20 >>> It would be great to have an "official logo". Especially for coffee mugs= and t-shirts. I do like the IPFire_ ! >>=20 >> IPFire_ will become the logo. This is 1000 times easier to print on things= instead of heading the tux with all its gradients, a background and some wri= ting on its belly that becomes impossible to read. >>=20 >>> Maybe make the underscore blink every one in a random (long) time. Just = to keep users on guard! >>=20 >> Lol, that would actually be funny. >>=20 >>>=20 >>>>>>>> * IPFire_ is not supposed to replace the word =E2=80=9CIPFire=E2=80= =9D in texts, but I think it is a nice way to highlight the nerdiness/console= people/Linux things without becoming complex to understand, or confusing to = the corporate people=E2=80=A6 >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * On top of the front page, we finally have some mission statement: = More Than A Firewall. We need to talk more about what we are and what we can = do, and we need to explain (I don=E2=80=99t know why, but we do) to people wh= at opportunities IPFire can open for them. This still needs a lot of work and= I am happy to hear any ideas what is a nice way to communicate what IPFire i= s to new people using as few words as possible. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * Then, there are a couple of new pages: One of the bigger ones is t= he About page that explains in more detail what IPFire does (which is why it = feels hard to repeat the same on the front page) and it has a large list of (= hopefully) all features that IPFire can do/supports/etc. This needs to be upd= ated with every core update, so please let me know if there is something miss= ing in the future as I will probably miss them. Additionally, we have a secti= on with us, the team. Being a faceless project is not very good to attract mo= re people joining our missing, and here is now the place where people will se= e us for the first time - the people who make IPFire happen. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * The download page has mainly been made shorter and now includes th= e change log. Cloud providers have been added to an extra page. If you know o= f any cloud providers that support IPFire, please let me know. Torrent downlo= ads are gone. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * Help: The help page has always been a hard one for me. This time i= t contains a sentence or two that explains what all those things are good for= :) Let=E2=80=99s see how that is going to work out=E2=80=A6 >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * This is a big one: We are getting rid of the thousand subdomains t= hat we are having. There is no more wiki.ipfire.org = , blog.ipfire.org , people.ipfire.org , location.ipfire.org , and so on (= exceptions do apply of course). Everything is now in one place: ipfire.org . The blog is a subsection of the website, people register = accounts on the main page, log in, the documentation has moved there as well.= This should hopefully make everyone happy who for a long time wanted buttons= to change from one thing to the next here. Here it finally is! >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * But there isn=E2=80=99t enough space for everything on the main na= vigation bar. So at the bottom of the page, there is an extra link called =E2= =80=9CSitemap=E2=80=9D with all the other things that didn=E2=80=99t get a la= rge link. There is a lot of development stuff on there, too. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * When logged in, the users area is a bit tidier and hopefully we ar= e able to bring a couple more features to this in the future=E2=80=A6 >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * Since users might also be logged in on the main page/the blog/etc.= we show =E2=80=9Cjoin us now=E2=80=9D and =E2=80=9Csubscribe to our newslett= er=E2=80=9D only when people have not already done so, which makes it a lot m= ore obvious what the next step of action for users is and a lot less confusin= g for the people who have already done so. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> * There has been a large list of bugs/feature requests submitted by = a number of people who have been fixed in this. We might have introduced a co= uple of new ones, so please file a ticket in Bugzilla if something is broken = and that needs fixing. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> All in all we hope that this is a big first step to make IPFire appe= ar the modern distribution that it is, instead of having the dark image of so= me coders in their basements. To summarise this all in one email feels very s= hort for all the labour that we have put into this over the years, but I supp= ose it is a good sign to have simplicity in the end. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> We would like to ask you now for your feedback on all of this. I kno= w that many of you have seen this before, but please help us to double check,= that a big launch does not become an embarrassment for some tiny reason :) W= e have taken some risky decisions and we are happy to see how they are turnin= g out=E2=80=A6 >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> The new website is currently running at https://www.michael.dev.ipfi= re.org/ to get to things like fireinfo, just change the subdomain like so htt= ps://fireinfo.michael.dev.ipfire.org/. A couple of things like editing your o= wn profile won=E2=80=99t work because the development instance can=E2=80=99t = write to our LDAP system, but apart from that, things should be running just = fine. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> I am exciting to hear some feedback and hopefully we can build a sma= ll roadmap out of it for the future! >>>>>>> Some relatively minor feedback. >>>>>> That is probably very good at this point :) >>>>>>> In the section labelled Under The Hood, >>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>> It mentions the ciphers Blowfish, DES/3DES and CAST5. As these are so= insecure, and hopefully in the near future will disappear, I don't think we = should have them as a focus point. >>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>> Similar thing with LZO Compression. The function was insecure so sinc= e OpenVPN2.5 the option no longer does any compression on the server, even if= the LZO Compression checkbox is checked. So I think best to not mention it i= n this page. >>>>>> I did stop a moment when I wrote it down initially, but then decided t= o include it, because we actually do support this. And I thought that the pag= e should simply have an almost complete list of all features that IPFire supp= orts. >>>>>> Thoughts I had before were to add a little (Deprecated) tag, but that = makes the page too long and complicated. It will also become a nightmare to k= eep up to date. I could settle on something like a star though. > >>>>>> The preferred option would be that these bullet points become links to= the wiki pages and there we have a lot of space to explain. Would that work = for you, too? >>>>>=20 >>>>> I think a star against them is fine. It highlights them in a way and th= e details can be found in the wiki as the ciphers are mentioned there as bein= g insecure. >>>>>=20 >>>>> For the LZO Compression, I have planned to go and update the wiki on th= at point so it makes it clear that no one is actually getting any compression= if it is checked, just the compression headers added. >>>>>=20 >>>>> If links to the wiki can be made then that would work very well. >>>>>=20 >>>>>>> My photo is still rotated 90 degrees in the Meet The Team section. >>>>>> Yes, I noticed. Did you try to upload it again or did this happen when= I tried to upload it? >>>>>=20 >>>>> It has been fixed now. Last check my head was the right way round :-) >>>>>=20 >>>>> Other people have mentioned the red colour as being a bit too harsh/bri= ght. >>>>>=20 >>>>> I never noticed that in my case. >>>>=20 >>>> Thank you for this feedback. I think the colour is not really the proble= m. >>>>=20 >>>> I have my screen on full brightness all of the time; right now it is dar= k and I only have a small light on my desk; and if I open the login page in f= ullscreen mode on my 27=E2=80=9D screen, I cannot under any circumstance call= this a burning colour. It is a fun colour, but it does not in any way hurt m= y eyes. And I think that can only be because of the screen which represents a= different colour to me than to other people. >>>=20 >>> The idea of brighter is good, but the red/pink is too pink. Sorry to be = mean, but barbie pink is a lot (and I=E2=80=99ve looked at it on a few differ= ent screens/browsers). Maybe a few shades closer to red. In my opinion the = red (like on the old blog) was a more "elegant red".=20 >>=20 >> This colour is very far away from a barbie pink... >=20 > Yes, I agree it is far from barbie pink. But, that wasn=E2=80=99t really m= y point. >=20 > So throughout this thread I=E2=80=99ve seen comments about staying away fro= m Raspberry Pi things and pushing more to office/company things. I agree. B= ut I strongly suggest keeping to colors that suggest security and integrity. = =20 >=20 > Bright red (pink in my mind) is not a color that you=E2=80=99ll find when t= hinking about those words. =20 >=20 > I am guessing there are a hundred web-sites discussing the philosophy of co= lors. And I am guessing most of them relate bright red (to me, pink) to some= thing sexy. And I=E2=80=99d rather have someone think smart, intelligent, se= cure - rather than sexy. >=20 > Please pick an elegant, strong red. Based on your reasoning, you don=E2=80=99t want red at all. It is not a colou= r that shows safety or calmness. That would be blue. Red shows danger and pan= ic. Yet it is the colour of choice for many firewalls and security products out t= here. This colour was picked by someone who doesn=E2=80=99t do anything else but th= ese things as their day job. I am just going with that expertise that is avai= lable to me. -Michael >=20 >=20 >>=20 >>>=20 >>> =20 >>>=20 >>>>=20 >>>>> Today I checked this out on my laptop with a 15" screen and on my deskt= op with a 32" screen. >>>>> I personally do not have a problem with the colour effect. I have tried= switching between the Home and the About pages but it did not feel too brigh= t to me at all. >>>>=20 >>>> The About page is a lot brighter because it has a white background. So i= t can only be down to some software in GPUs or screens that make certain colo= urs more vivid. >>>>=20 >>>>> If it is going to be toned down, then it should stay the same colour bu= t reduce the brightness and not by too much. >>>>>=20 >>>>> One thing I noticed today when going through the website was that while= the AWS site is showing the latest Core Update 182 as being an available ima= ge, on the Exoscale site it has the available version as Core Update 149. >>>>=20 >>>> Exoscale does not have a process to update the image, and they tend to n= ot react to emails. >>>>=20 >>>> I will put this on my list so that they update the image. >>>>=20 >>>>> Is that Exoscale or us that has to keep that image version up to date? >>>>=20 >>>> Well, it would be nice if they would do it=E2=80=A6 but you know how the= se companies work... >>>>=20 >>>>> This is nothing to do with the new website but it just seemed peculiar = when I noticed it so I thought I would mention it. >>>>=20 >>>> -Michael >>>>=20 >>>>>=20 >>>>> Regards, >>>>> Adolf. >>>>>=20 >>>>>> -Michael >>>>>>> Regards, >>>>>>> Adolf. >>>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>>> Best, >>>>>>>> -Michael & Rico >>>>>>>=20 >>>>>>> --=20 >>>>>>> Sent from my laptop >>>>>=20 >>>>> --=20 >>>>> Sent from my laptop --===============7299557402506601983==--