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: Mon, 08 Jan 2024 17:11:56 +0000 Message-ID: <5E2622DD-64D4-4F1A-80A7-E68461CF0A6C@ipfire.org> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============7278143241755216785==" List-Id: --===============7278143241755216785== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable > 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 been = working on over the last couple of months, and collect some final feedback be= fore 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 which h= as been drafted by another friend. The goals were to get rid of the sad and g= rey website, which is also *way* too simplistic, and create something that is= nice looking, memorable, and brings people in. >>>>=20 >>>> * During that journey, we have waved goodbye to Bootstrap which is hard = 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 that = we could actually still go and save a lot more. >>>>=20 >>>> * One of the biggest rewrites is fireinfo, as with a growing number of p= rofiles, our PostgreSQL database started to suffer. We haven=E2=80=99t tested= this in full production, yet, but I am sure this will be a lot faster than t= he older version. This all only affects how we store the data and nothing cha= nges 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 lea= rned 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 both in o= ur infrastructure and it is a little bit easier to just deploy one. >>>>=20 >>>> * There is a new integration with Asterisk to see current calls - previo= usly the phone stuff didn=E2=80=99t work at all any more since we replaced Fr= eePBX 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 are a = fun project! The grey used to depress me slightly and if you ask a designer w= hat would represent us as a community, you get this. I am a lot happier with = that. >>>>=20 >>>> * The tux is gone. This is kind of a bitter sweet moment, but the old IP= Fire =E2=80=9Clogo=E2=80=9D is gone with this. I am sure it will be found her= e or there in a couple of places, but there is no way to make something ancie= nt like this work with something modern-looking. I spent days together with p= rofessionals to draft a new logo, and we got nothing, well, apart from the si= mple things that is: IPFire_ >>>>=20 >>>> * IPFire_ is not supposed to replace the word =E2=80=9CIPFire=E2=80=9D i= n texts, but I think it is a nice way to highlight the nerdiness/console peop= le/Linux things without becoming complex to understand, or confusing to the c= orporate 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 what o= pportunities IPFire can open for them. This still needs a lot of work and I a= m happy to hear any ideas what is a nice way to communicate what IPFire is to= new people using as few words as possible. >>>>=20 >>>> * Then, there are a couple of new pages: One of the bigger ones is the A= bout page that explains in more detail what IPFire does (which is why it feel= s hard to repeat the same on the front page) and it has a large list of (hope= fully) all features that IPFire can do/supports/etc. This needs to be updated= with every core update, so please let me know if there is something missing = in the future as I will probably miss them. Additionally, we have a section w= ith us, the team. Being a faceless project is not very good to attract more p= eople joining our missing, and here is now the place where people will see us= for the first time - the people who make IPFire happen. >>>>=20 >>>> * The download page has mainly been made shorter and now includes the ch= ange log. Cloud providers have been added to an extra page. If you know of an= y cloud providers that support IPFire, please let me know. Torrent downloads = are gone. >>>>=20 >>>> * Help: The help page has always been a hard one for me. This time it co= ntains 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 that = we are having. There is no more wiki.ipfire.org , bl= og.ipfire.org , people.ipfire.org , location.ipfire.org , and so on (exce= ptions do apply of course). Everything is now in one place: ipfire.org . The blog is a subsection of the website, people register acco= unts on the main page, log in, the documentation has moved there as well. Thi= s 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 naviga= tion 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 large= 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 are ab= le 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 newsletter= =E2=80=9D only when people have not already done so, which makes it a lot mor= e obvious what the next step of action for users is and a lot less confusing = for the people who have already done so. >>>>=20 >>>> * There has been a large list of bugs/feature requests submitted by a nu= mber of people who have been fixed in this. We might have introduced a couple= 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 appear t= he modern distribution that it is, instead of having the dark image of some c= oders in their basements. To summarise this all in one email feels very short= for all the labour that we have put into this over the years, but I suppose = 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 know th= at many of you have seen this before, but please help us to double check, tha= t a big launch does not become an embarrassment for some tiny reason :) We ha= ve taken some risky decisions and we are happy to see how they are turning ou= t=E2=80=A6 >>>>=20 >>>> The new website is currently running at https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.o= rg/ to get to things like fireinfo, just change the subdomain like so https:/= /fireinfo.michael.dev.ipfire.org/. A couple of things like editing your own p= rofile won=E2=80=99t work because the development instance can=E2=80=99t writ= e 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 small r= oadmap 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 ins= ecure, and hopefully in the near future will disappear, I don't think we shou= ld have them as a focus point. >>>=20 >>> Similar thing with LZO Compression. The function was insecure so since Op= enVPN2.5 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 in th= is page. >> I did stop a moment when I wrote it down initially, but then decided to in= clude it, because we actually do support this. And I thought that the page sh= ould simply have an almost complete list of all features that IPFire supports. >> Thoughts I had before were to add a little (Deprecated) tag, but that make= s the page too long and complicated. It will also become a nightmare to keep = 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 the de= tails can be found in the wiki as the ciphers are mentioned there as being in= secure. >=20 > For the LZO Compression, I have planned to go and update the wiki on that p= oint 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 t= ried 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/bright. >=20 > I never noticed that in my case. Thank you for this feedback. I think the colour is not really the problem. I have my screen on full brightness all of the time; right now it is dark and= I only have a small light on my desk; and if I open the login page in fullsc= reen 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 my eye= s. And I think that can only be because of the screen which represents a diff= erent colour to me than to other people. > Today I checked this out on my laptop with a 15" screen and on my desktop w= ith a 32" screen. > I personally do not have a problem with the colour effect. I have tried swi= tching between the Home and the About pages but it did not feel too bright to= me at all. The About page is a lot brighter because it has a white background. So it can= only be down to some software in GPUs or screens that make certain colours m= ore vivid. > If it is going to be toned down, then it should stay the same colour but re= duce 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 image, = on the Exoscale site it has the available version as Core Update 149. Exoscale does not have a process to update the image, and they tend to not re= act to emails. I will put this on my list so that they update the image. > Is that Exoscale or us that has to keep that image version up to date? Well, it would be nice if they would do it=E2=80=A6 but you know how these co= mpanies work... > 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. -Michael >=20 > Regards, > Adolf. >=20 >> -Michael >>> Regards, >>> Adolf. >>>>=20 >>>> Best, >>>> -Michael & Rico >>>=20 >>> --=20 >>> Sent from my laptop >=20 > --=20 > Sent from my laptop --===============7278143241755216785==--