Re: PHP.net Update

On 4-Oct-09, at 9:55 PM, Burka Daniel wrote:

Hey guys, this is Daniel Burka. One more time I'd like to apologize for my difficulty in tackling the project as a leader earlier due to my heavy workload. However... I left Digg last Thursday to pursue a new job with a few of the Flickr guys. I'm sure I'll still be very busy, but I'm taking the next three weeks as 'vacation' and I likely won't be as swamped as I was at Digg. So, if you'll have me, I'd like to at least contribute a little bit where I can, though I won't be a linchpin for the project obviously and hopefully I can speed things up rather than slow them down this time! Ok...

Congratulations on the new job! It's great to hear that you'll be able to pitch in.

Absolutely. I think there should be an introductory piece about contribution front-and-center on the homepage that leads to better (yet simple) tips on getting involved further into the site. I spent some time trying to narrow the focus of the navigation. I'll write a separate email tomorrow to have that discussion on its own as it will become a complex email I'm sure. Yes, this was a nice improvement to the Mozilla site when HappyCog recently redesigned it. I think we can do even better than a glitzy graphic and give people real tangible ways to get involved very quickly. Yes, the download page is unnecessarily confusing. This could be greatly simplified. I think the styling could be better and the organization of the menu system might be improved, but updated the styles here might be a simple first step. I took a stab at this months ago when I was working on the redesign. See the one file on this. Good. Redesigning the logo is a tempting place to start (and I had toyed with a few ideas early in my redesign stuff) but it's a bit of a red herring. It also opens a whole area of political issues that probably aren't worth tackling as they'd become a distraction. One thing I did play with was simply taking out the three letters and removing the effects – simple, clean, and modern. See some of the files. Again, I'm really afraid of bike shedding on this one. A clean simpler version might be nice, but making a 'new' logo or an icon could easily become a huge distraction.

Bike shedding? Oh... I get it (thank you urban dictionary).

------------------------------------------------- I've posted a few Photoshop comps I pulled together months ago to give you an idea of the direction I was headed. Take or leave anything you see here. Please don't take the colors seriously at all... I think there are even two link colors in some of the files and the teal one especially doesn't work that well. A few general notes:

I like them! Very clean. Nice work :)

1) There's an example of the simplified logo here. Would be interested in hearing your thoughts. I think clean, professional, and modern are the important attributes of a PHP logo or wordmark. Fun, exciting, etc. wouldn't be my first goals.

Dropping the background definitely cleans it up. I am happy to defer to your expertise. I just hope we can find ways to inject some fun into the site.

2) I've greatly simplified the menu. I'll try to explain where all the bits would go in tomorrow's email. 3) The homepage is very incomplete. The treatment of the conferences is especially weak as it would force too much content on the left and plus it all looks cluttered. Super pared down simple would be nice if we can manage it. 4) The writing on PHP.net is extremely verbose and overly conversational. I think that a lot of places (such as the description of what PHP is) could be shredded and made much simpler. I'm a decent writer (was a history major) but I'm no copywriter. Perhaps it would be valuable to trick a real copywriter into helping us out here! 5) I can't stress enough how rough these are. Please look at them with an open mind. http://www.whitelands.com/daniel/php/concept2s-home.png http://www.whitelands.com/daniel/php/concept2s-documentation.png http://www.whitelands.com/daniel/php/concept2s-downloads.png http://www.whitelands.com/daniel/php/concept2s-community.png

I think they are a great start! Were you thinking of doing more work on them? Are you looking for critical feedback? Cheers, Stew