From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Adolf Belka To: development@lists.ipfire.org Subject: Re: Launching our new website Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2024 15:43:16 +0100 Message-ID: <6a4c9e80-b880-4748-a221-77909ab28cc2@ipfire.org> In-Reply-To: <3E0502D7-81BD-4E81-9E92-BF8F93BFA31D@ipfire.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1726872121984158338==" List-Id: --===============1726872121984158338== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hi Michael, On 04/01/2024 17:44, Michael Tremer wrote: > Hello everyone, > > (yes, yes, I am still alive=E2=80=A6) > > I would like to pre-announce our new website which Rico and I have been wor= king on over the last couple of months, and collect some final feedback befor= e we roll it out as soon as possible. > > So here is an outline of what has happened and what will happen next: > > * Rico has helped me to implement a fresh design for our website which has = been drafted by another friend. The goals were to get rid of the sad and grey= website, which is also *way* too simplistic, and create something that is ni= ce looking, memorable, and brings people in. > > * 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 fra= mework of choice. We have also rewritten and refactored some parts of the bac= kend code. There is now less Javascript and less CSS - and I am sure that we = could actually still go and save a lot more. > > * One of the biggest rewrites is fireinfo, as with a growing number of prof= iles, our PostgreSQL database started to suffer. We haven=E2=80=99t tested th= is in full production, yet, but I am sure this will be a lot faster than the = older version. This all only affects how we store the data and nothing change= s for the clients or users. > > * We have upgraded the PostgreSQL driver from psycopg2 to psycopg3, and we = use async programming a lot more where possible (these are all lessons learne= d from the build service). > > * We have replaced memcached with redis. Not because memcache didn=E2=80=99= t do its job well, but rather because of the reason that we have both in our = infrastructure and it is a little bit easier to just deploy one. > > * There is a new integration with Asterisk to see current calls - previousl= y the phone stuff didn=E2=80=99t work at all any more since we replaced FreeP= BX with Asterisk. > > But that is enough about the technical stuff=E2=80=A6 Let=E2=80=99s talk ab= out what has visually changed, and why: > > * 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 what= would represent us as a community, you get this. I am a lot happier with tha= t. > > * The tux is gone. This is kind of a bitter sweet moment, but the old IPFir= e =E2=80=9Clogo=E2=80=9D is gone with this. I am sure it will be found here o= r there in a couple of places, but there is no way to make something ancient = like this work with something modern-looking. I spent days together with prof= essionals to draft a new logo, and we got nothing, well, apart from the simpl= e things that is: IPFire_ > > * IPFire_ is not supposed to replace the word =E2=80=9CIPFire=E2=80=9D in t= exts, 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 corp= orate people=E2=80=A6 > > * On top of the front page, we finally have some mission statement: More Th= an 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 oppo= rtunities IPFire can open for them. This still needs a lot of work and I am h= appy to hear any ideas what is a nice way to communicate what IPFire is to ne= w people using as few words as possible. > > * Then, there are a couple of new pages: One of the bigger ones is the Abou= t page that explains in more detail what IPFire does (which is why it feels h= ard to repeat the same on the front page) and it has a large list of (hopeful= ly) all features that IPFire can do/supports/etc. This needs to be updated wi= th 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 with= us, the team. Being a faceless project is not very good to attract more peop= le joining our missing, and here is now the place where people will see us fo= r the first time - the people who make IPFire happen. > > * The download page has mainly been made shorter and now includes the chang= e log. Cloud providers have been added to an extra page. If you know of any c= loud providers that support IPFire, please let me know. Torrent downloads are= gone. > > * Help: The help page has always been a hard one for me. This time it conta= ins 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 > > * This is a big one: We are getting rid of the thousand subdomains that we = are having. There is no more wiki.ipfire.org , blog.= ipfire.org , people.ipfire.org , location.ipfire.org , and so on (excepti= ons do apply of course). Everything is now in one place: ipfire.org . The blog is a subsection of the website, people register account= s on the main page, log in, the documentation has moved there as well. This s= hould hopefully make everyone happy who for a long time wanted buttons to cha= nge from one thing to the next here. Here it finally is! > > * But there isn=E2=80=99t enough space for everything on the main navigatio= n bar. So at the bottom of the page, there is an extra link called =E2=80=9CS= itemap=E2=80=9D with all the other things that didn=E2=80=99t get a large lin= k. There is a lot of development stuff on there, too. > > * When logged in, the users area is a bit tidier and hopefully we are able = to bring a couple more features to this in the future=E2=80=A6 > > * Since users might also be logged in on the main page/the blog/etc. we sho= w =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 more o= bvious what the next step of action for users is and a lot less confusing for= the people who have already done so. > > * There has been a large list of bugs/feature requests submitted by a numbe= r 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 tha= t needs fixing. > > All in all we hope that this is a big first step to make IPFire appear the = modern distribution that it is, instead of having the dark image of some code= rs in their basements. To summarise this all in one email feels very short fo= r 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. > > We would like to ask you now for your feedback on all of this. I know 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 :) We have = taken some risky decisions and we are happy to see how they are turning out= =E2=80=A6 > > The new website is currently running at https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/= to get to things like fireinfo, just change the subdomain like so https://fi= reinfo.michael.dev.ipfire.org/. A couple of things like editing your own prof= ile won=E2=80=99t work because the development instance can=E2=80=99t write t= o our LDAP system, but apart from that, things should be running just fine. > > I am exciting to hear some feedback and hopefully we can build a small road= map out of it for the future! Some relatively minor feedback. In the section labelled Under The Hood, It mentions the ciphers Blowfish, DES/3DES and CAST5. As these are so=20 insecure, and hopefully in the near future will disappear, I don't think=20 we should have them as a focus point. Similar thing with LZO Compression. The function was insecure so since=20 OpenVPN2.5 the option no longer does any compression on the server, even=20 if the LZO Compression checkbox is checked. So I think best to not=20 mention it in this page. My photo is still rotated 90 degrees in the Meet The Team section. Regards, Adolf. > > Best, > -Michael & Rico --=20 Sent from my laptop --===============1726872121984158338==--