[Biopython-dev] Work on an updated biopython.org website

[Jeffrey Chang]

Hey Brad,

This looks great!  Nice and clean.

A few comments:

- A contact email address should be on the front page somewhere.  
Something like, "To contact us, write biopython at biopython.org"

- Is there a way to put the current version of the software (e.g. 
Current Release: Biopython 1.10) on the front page?  This way, people 
will know at a glance if they're up to date.  It would be best if it 
could be automatically sync'd with the Download page.  It's no use if 
the version number displayed on the web page is out of date!  :)

- Can we simplify the links on the right side?  Probably all that's 
necessary is:
Home
Download
Documentation
Mailing Lists
Bugs
CVS  (contains ViewCVS, instructions to get read-only and read-write 
CVS)
Participants (?)

License and sponsors are not required.

Is Participants useful?  What do people think?  I think it gives a more 
personal feel to the project, but it's not kept up to date well.  Also, 
in the participants section, we should like what general area each 
participant works on, so that people will know who to ask questions to.

Is a FAQ link necessary?  Is it useful?  It's not up to date.  Maybe it 
should be linked from the Documentation page, if at all.

- Is webteam and Chris OK with using Quixotic?

Jeff



On Saturday, March 8, 2003, at 02:18 PM, Brad Chapman wrote:

> Hey all;
> As some of you may know, one of the things we tried to do at the
> hackathon in Sinapore was to do some simplification of the Bio*
> websites so that they are easier to keep updated. One aspect of this 
> was
> introducing a shared news site where it is easy to post news for
> different projects (http://news.open-bio.org).
>
> With website redesign in mind, I volunteered to do some work on getting
> a new biopython.org site up and running (yes, I was out of my mind
> during volunteering). I have been working on this over the past couple
> of weeks and have a prototype website up at:
>
> http://evostick.agtec.uga.edu/biopython/
>
> (be nice to this, it's just my work computer, okay). So far I've done
> the main index page and the download page, just to give people 
> something
> to look at and give feedback on.
>
> The page is implemented using Quixote:
>
> http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/quixote/
>
> This is a very nice (in my opinion, of course) framework for making web
> pages. The advantage of it are that the pages are basically made up of
> python code returning HTML, so I think the page makeup and everything 
> is
> very easy to understand. This also allowed me to do stuff like talk to
> the news.open-bio.org page by XML-RPC, and theoretically could let us 
> do
> more dynamic pages in the future.
>
> To get an idea of what the current pages look like, you can download 
> the
> website in it's current form from:
>
> http://www.biopython.org/~chapmanb/BioWebsite-0.1.tar.gz
>
> In my mind, this can make the site a little easier to update and
> maintain and might ease some of the annoying HTML-typing you have to do
> right now.
>
> I'd love to get feedback on this from people to see what they think
> about what I've got.
>
> Hope everyone is having a nice weekend. Time for me to enjoy the warm
> Georgia weather.
> Brad
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