Re: New website for the PHP project

On 2/4/2019 6:32 AM, Andrey Andreev wrote:

Hi, I could nitpick on most of the proposed plan, but I really only wanted to reply to this:

* A new home page, not a "news" page, but a page simply showing the PHP Logo, a code example maybe and the download link [3]. [...] [3] https://camo.githubusercontent.com/762e5d9fcaaa4ecf645343350a91929f99f452e9/68747470733a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f584477675261662e706e67

I just hate those useless landing pages. Yes, it looks neat and clean, but after the initial "OMG so pretty" phase it just becomes annoying - noone cares about the code example and I for one never know what "Get Started" means. PHP isn't some consumer desktop software; nobody would just stumble upon php.net and "get started" with it, whatever that means ... I'm all for a modern look and all, but let's please keep the news on the index page. Personally, I only go to php.net to look for the news, changelogs and to search the docs. This image suggests that I'd need to do an extra click for each of those things and I'm sure I wouldn't be the only one unhappy about that. Cheers, Andrey.

I regularly go to the php.net homepage for the live documentation search function just to make sure I'm using functions correctly. My most frequent search is the date() function for the % code list. One of these days I'll print out that docs page instead of looking it up every time to save everyone the bandwidth. Of the things I'd miss the most would be the live documentation search feature to jump directly to what I'm looking for. Google Search doesn't cut it here. For a newbie, I'd say a "Get Started" button that goes to a vetted group of starter tutorials (maybe videos?) on a variety of subjects could be valuable. I wouldn't want the homepage to load a video player though. My biggest complaint is that there's nothing in the mockup that says what PHP is for. Website: "Here's PHP spelled out and a difficult to comprehend code example. Uh...Get Started?" First time visitor: "Okay, that's great. Now tell me what is PHP in words I can understand and what can I use it for and is it popular?" A code example rarely, if ever, makes a good first impression. -- Thomas Hruska CubicleSoft President I've got great, time saving software that you will find useful. http://cubiclesoft.com/ And once you find my software useful: http://cubiclesoft.com/donate/