Further to the discussion about the site structure, I've jumped into html/css and mocked up a potential header for subpages on the site. I've been thinking we'd do a similar but different header on the homepage of PHP.net and then have a consistent and very compact header for all other pages.
http://www.whitelands.com/daniel/php/mock1/
Notes:
1) Header is very compact. Much smaller and less intrusive than the current PHP.net header.
2) Primary links are reduced from 12 to 6. Much easier to scan/parse than before.
3) But... I'm using mega-dropdowns** under two of the menu items. This allows very quick access to most parts of the documentation and many of the sections that I've lumped under 'Community'. This could be a nice balance... reduce the number of menu items at the same time as giving more ready access to more areas of the site.
a) I'm really not sure 'Community' is a good name for this.
b) The 'Community' mega-dropdown is poorly formatted. I focused more on the doc one.
c) The mega-drop is a bit awkward in its current design. A non-white background or narrower width could help.
I forgot to mention in my original post that I'd suggest that the mega-dropdown would use JQuery to delay the appearance for a 1/4 second and appear using a very fast slide or fade effect. I'm currently just doing it on hover with css, which is easy but too fast – it'd get annoying quickly if the drop appeared each time you went to the location bar in your browser.
4) Don't pay any attention to the documentation under the header... it's rough/hardly started.
5) Small, compact, simple logo treatment can work at very small sizes.
** Jakob Neilsen has written a bit about the usability of mega-dropdowns. No matter what you think of the guy, he's often right about things. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/mega-dropdown-menus.html
Daniel
The structure and organization of the website is one of the areas that I think is most in need of improvement.
There are currently many (12) top-level menu options that appear on every page of PHP.net.
Pro: Quickly access many areas of the site once you've learned the nav.
Cons: Difficult to quickly parse. Intimidating. More overlap between potential options. Compact.
I think we should reduce this to 6 or 7 options. See this HTML doc with notes and a potential organization structure. I'm sure I'm missing parts of the site in here, which aren't immediately apparent in the current structure. Please educate me.
http://www.whitelands.com/daniel/php/sitemap.html
Also, this may make more sense in a wiki so everyone can edit. If so, tell me where to put it.
Daniel