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Website Project

Leads: Louis Suárez-Potts, Christian Lohmaier

Contents

General Information

Key Links

Mission of the Website project

To recreate the OpenOffice.org website. Included in our mandate:

  • Site architecture
  • Homepage, Download, and other key pages
  • Nurturing of a volunteer-friendly and volunteer-empowering environment

Background

After languishing for many months, website.openoffice.org is now open for business. We even have a dedicated mailing list, which you can subscribe to from the Project Tools to the left. So, if you dislike the current look, are annoyed by the fonts (too small, wrong color, you name it), and have the skills and want to change it (or just want to change it), join this project and start contributing!

Contributing

The best way to contribute: if you are an HTML coder (it doesn't matter whether you just WYSIWYG or you like getting your nose stuck into the source code itself) and would like to work directly on the site's HTML code, join the mailing-list, and once you have become familiar with the problems and challenges the site presents, ask for developer status and start to work on those pages which most need to be worked on.

We also need people with the following skills who can work effectively with their favourite HTML wizard (maybe it'd be a good idea for the both of you to join the website project at the same time!).

Content editors who can carry out one or both of the following tasks:
Assess current site content and know how to restructure it in a logical and friendly way for a range of people from new software users looking for basic installation help to developers requiring CVS support (you do not need to have HTML skills to carry out this function)
Identify new and ongoing user, contributor and developer needs which require support material (HowTos, Flash tutorials etc.) and look for or suggest such material (you do not need HTML or Flash skills to carry out this function)
Translators
We would suggest that before joining the website project, you should check whether your language has a native-lang project. If this is the case, you will probably find it more enjoyable helping the website project through that native-lang project, as you will be working with people who speak your language and share your culture
you may also like to look in on the documentation project where you may also find translators like yourself already working on key documents
If, however, you find no one else in either of these projects who speaks your language, we would welcome you to the website project, where you can start translating key documents into your own language whenever you want. Do not worry if you cannot see your language in the table below - let us know, and we'll add the link and the files you'll need to get started
Proofreaders - check broken links by clicking here
Attention to detail and a knowledge of the language (any language) are standard skills in proofreading. It doesn't even matter if you don't know anything about HTML. As long as you are able to pick up linguistic errors or correct badly-expressed phrases, or check links to see if they really go where they should, you can help improve the readability and the utility of the OpenOffice.org site
Flash programmers and web designers
At website.openoffice.org/tryouts you have a space where you can play with ideas and perhaps even make a bit of a splash. Use your imagination and show people what the site could - even should - be like

And, as always, feel free to report any website issues to Issue Tracker. This includes typos, broken links and anything else you may feel strongly about.

Homepage Redesign Process

We always want fresh images on the OpenOffice.org homepage! But we want these not only to be arresting and aesthetically pleasing but also functional. Therefore, some simple guidelines:

  • It must in general not be a new symbol but should represent either a product or the project in general or specific occasions. The idea is that images should fairly obviously refer to things going on in OpenOffice.org.
  • It must conform with the extant colors and design logic, except where there is a reason for it not to.
  • And that would be when it symbolizes a specific occasion or event.
  • Images should be small, smaller than 40KB and preferably closes to 20KB.

These simple principles give us lots of room for creativity.

The acid test: Does this image obviously relate to OpenOffice.org? Or does it cause confusion?

The process for new images is: propose it to the list, dev@website.openoffice.org. The list does not accept attachments, so you can use our Documents & Files mechanism or, which is better, attach it to an issue and assign it to "louis" in the "website" component. We will discuss the image, if needed, briefly, but at least for one full day, thus giving all in different time zones time to find reasons to object.

Who ultimately decides on the homepage image? The Website Project Leads, Louis and Kay.

Resources
dev@website mailing-list | feedback@website.openoffice.org archives | contributor resources | tryouts
How-Tos for HTML developers and content contributors

Installing and using CVS under Windows - this version has been tested on Windows 98, ME and XP

W3C Validation

To learn how we validated the site for W3C compliance, read this issue: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=7294

Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional