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 18:33:55 +0000 Message-ID: <9D6D7154-5769-433E-A500-E583EA0725DC@ipfire.org> In-Reply-To: <92869CA1-474F-4124-8B2E-7F0034E0BDE0@ipfire.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============4194369561335086625==" List-Id: --===============4194369561335086625== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Hello Jon, > 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 butto= ns 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 sin= ce it is highly used/access. >=20 > Please add a site search to the top. It did take me a few clicks to find C= ommunity. I don=E2=80=99t think that it belongs there=E2=80=A6 * I don=E2=80=99t see the community portal as a tier one destination for a) n= ew 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 don= =E2=80=99t fit, which is why there is a page that helps people to decide whic= h one they want: https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/help * On the sitemap (https://www.michael.dev.ipfire.org/sitemap), Discourse come= s after the documentation (LWL is in the middle because of the colour and cre= ating symmetry). * I toyed around with a drop down menu, but that because even more cluttered = and does not work well on mobile. > LWL > =E2=80=94=E2=80=94 > I truly feel there should be a little more separation between IPFire and LW= L (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 move = to another page. Maybe the HELP page and something softer like, "need even m= ore help? Let the professionals at LWL assist!".=20 >=20 > I realize these comments might be maddening and I apologize for that. I ju= st feel like there should be more separations between "church and state" or n= on-profit and profit. The difference is very clear by using a different colour and the advertising = is *that* obvious because I am still talking to people who tell me that they = are unaware that support is available and don=E2=80=99t use IPFire because th= ey want support. I KNOW. I could barely make it any bigger. > More comments below. >=20 >=20 > PS - Once again, sorry for the "kiss" and "kick". I am happy to listen to both, positive and negative feedback. Very often thin= gs 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. >> 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 bee= n working on over the last couple of months, and collect some final feedback = 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 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 nice looking, memorable, and brings people in. >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> * During that journey, we have waved goodbye to Bootstrap which is har= d to work with once you have discovered Bulma (https://bulma.io/), our new CS= S framework of choice. We have also rewritten and refactored some parts of th= e backend code. There is now less Javascript and less CSS - and I am sure tha= t 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 test= ed this 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 c= hanges for the clients or users. >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> * We have upgraded the PostgreSQL driver from psycopg2 to psycopg3, an= d we use async programming a lot more where possible (these are all lessons l= earned 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 i= n 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 - prev= iously the phone stuff didn=E2=80=99t work at all any more since we replaced = FreePBX with Asterisk. >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> But that is enough about the technical stuff=E2=80=A6 Let=E2=80=99s ta= lk 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= what would represent us as a community, you get this. I am a lot happier wit= h that. >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> * The tux is gone. This is kind of a bitter sweet moment, but the old = IPFire =E2=80=9Clogo=E2=80=9D is gone with this. I am sure it will be found h= ere or there in a couple of places, but there is no way to make something anc= ient like this work with something modern-looking. I spent days together with= professionals to draft a new logo, and we got nothing, well, apart from the = 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_ ! IPFire_ will become the logo. This is 1000 times easier to print on things in= stead of heading the tux with all its gradients, a background and some writin= g on its belly that becomes impossible to read. > Maybe make the underscore blink every one in a random (long) time. Just to= keep users on guard! Lol, that would actually be funny. >=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 pe= ople/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: Mo= re 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= 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 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= About page that explains in more detail what IPFire does (which is why it fe= els hard to repeat the same on the front page) and it has a large list of (ho= pefully) all features that IPFire can do/supports/etc. This needs to be updat= ed with every core update, so please let me know if there is something missin= g 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= people 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 = change log. Cloud providers have been added to an extra page. If you know of = any cloud providers that support IPFire, please let me know. Torrent download= s are gone. >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> * Help: The help page has always been a hard one for me. This time it = 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 tha= t we are having. There is no more wiki.ipfire.org , = blog.ipfire.org , people.ipfire.org , location.ipfire.org , and so on (ex= ceptions do apply of course). Everything is now in one place: ipfire.org . The blog is a subsection of the website, people register ac= counts on the main page, log in, the documentation has moved there as well. T= his should hopefully make everyone happy who for a long time wanted buttons t= o 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 navi= gation 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 are = 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. w= e 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 = number of people who have been fixed in this. We might have introduced a coup= le of new ones, so please file a ticket in Bugzilla if something is broken an= d that needs fixing. >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> 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= coders in their basements. To summarise this all in one email feels very sho= rt for all the labour that we have put into this over the years, but I suppos= e 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 = that many of you have seen this before, but please help us to double check, t= hat 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 >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> 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= ://fireinfo.michael.dev.ipfire.org/. A couple of things like editing your own= profile won=E2=80=99t work because the development instance can=E2=80=99t wr= ite to our LDAP system, but apart from that, things should be running just fi= ne. >>>>>>=20 >>>>>> I am exciting to hear some feedback and hopefully we can build a small= 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 i= nsecure, and hopefully in the near future will disappear, I don't think we sh= ould have them as a focus point. >>>>>=20 >>>>> Similar thing with LZO Compression. The function was insecure so since = OpenVPN2.5 the option no longer does any compression on the server, even if t= he LZO Compression checkbox is checked. So I think best to not mention it in = this page. >>>> I did stop a moment when I wrote it down initially, but then decided to = include it, because we actually do support this. And I thought that the page = should simply have an almost complete list of all features that IPFire suppor= ts. >>>> Thoughts I had before were to add a little (Deprecated) tag, but that ma= kes the page too long and complicated. It will also become a nightmare to kee= p up to date. I could settle on something like a star though. > >>>> The preferred option would be that these bullet points become links to t= he wiki pages and there we have a lot of space to explain. Would that work fo= r you, too? >>>=20 >>> I think a star against them is fine. It highlights them in a way and the = details can be found in the wiki as the ciphers are mentioned there as being = insecure. >>>=20 >>> For the LZO Compression, I have planned to go and update the wiki on that= point so it makes it clear that no one is actually getting any compression i= f 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/brigh= t. >>>=20 >>> I never noticed that in my case. >>=20 >> Thank you for this feedback. I think the colour is not really the problem. >>=20 >> 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 ful= lscreen mode on my 27=E2=80=9D screen, I cannot under any circumstance call t= his a burning colour. It is a fun colour, but it does not in any way hurt my = eyes. And I think that can only be because of the screen which represents a d= ifferent colour to me than to other people. >=20 > The idea of brighter is good, but the red/pink is too pink. Sorry to be me= an, but barbie pink is a lot (and I=E2=80=99ve looked at it on a few differen= t screens/browsers). Maybe a few shades closer to red. In my opinion the re= d (like on the old blog) was a more "elegant red".=20 This colour is very far away from a barbie pink... >=20 > =20 >=20 >>=20 >>> Today I checked this out on my laptop with a 15" screen and on my desktop= with a 32" screen. >>> I personally do not have a problem with the colour effect. I have tried s= witching between the Home and the About pages but it did not feel too bright = to me at all. >>=20 >> 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 colour= s more vivid. >>=20 >>> If it is going to be toned down, then it should stay the same colour but = reduce the brightness and not by too much. >>>=20 >>> One thing I noticed today when going through the website was that while t= he 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. >>=20 >> Exoscale does not have a process to update the image, and they tend to not= 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 these= companies work... >>=20 >>> This is nothing to do with the new website but it just seemed peculiar wh= en 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 --===============4194369561335086625==--