[BioRuby] Restyling BioRuby.org

[Peter Cock]

On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 10:37 AM, Naohisa GOTO
<ngoto at gen-info.osaka-u.ac.jp> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sun, 19 Feb 2012 09:56:12 +0100
> Pjotr Prins <pjotr.public14 at thebird.nl> wrote:
>
>> With an embarrassing 0 (zero) responses, I can conclude there is
>> either no interest in this matter, or no one considers it his/her
>> business. That is sad. Open source software matters. Web presence
>> matters.
>
> I think requesting for writing responses for the mail posted
> on Friday night in the weekend is too hurry.

+1

I'm sure some people wouldn't even have seen Pjotr's email until
Monday. Personally I saw this thread but was tied up with a
workshop on Monday & Tuesday so didn't reply immediately.

> I personally don't feel strong dissatisfaction with the current
> http://bioruby.org/ website, although I agree it is not the
> best ideal state, and I don't have strong motivation to discuss
> about the topic unless new website candidate is sent by someone.

I quite like the style of the current BioRuby.org page - there
are two issues here, style and content. Obviously they are
linked and the technical side will restrain the style and things
like the ability to embed Twitter feeds or RSS.

In terms of style, most of the Bio* home pages are simply
wiki pages - usually protected to prevent vandalism, while
most of the Bio* wiki pages are able to be edited by any
registered account.

This made it easy for anyone to create an alternative
home page for discussion, and for that to be adopted.
That's how we did the last major restructuring of the
Biopython home page on our wiki,
http://biopython.org/wiki/Main_Page

> So, please send new site html contents.
> Current contents is now on th GitHub.
> https://github.com/ngoto/bioruby.org-webpage
> Writing new pages without using current contents is also welcomed.

That is interesting - I know other major open source
projects have or are moving their home pages to
github like this. For developers this isn't a major
barrier to contribution - you can fork it and build
an alterative webpage proposal.

Pjotr wrote:
>> Myself, I am thinking we need to retool the site
>> for inexperienced programmers. That means
>> accentuating Tutorials and examples, as
>> Michael Barton suggested.

We had similar concerns with Biopython's homepage
and the current rather minimal page is attempting
to highlight this kind of thing and make it obvious.

While tutorial links are on the BioPerl, BioJava
and BioRuby home pages, and near the start, I
personally I find they are lost in an overly full page.

(Constructive criticism/feedback on the Biopython
website is also welcome)

Another issue is keeping the content fresh. I notice
that the Biopython, BioPerl and BioRuby homepage
all have an embedded news feed top right from the
OBF news server (filtering on the project category).
This is great but relies on regular content appearing
on the news server.

I've tried to write blog posts on new or forthcoming
features for Biopython, and suggested this would be
a nice thing for all our developers to do.

Another idea is community updates posts, perhaps
monthly - something BioPerl used to do by email
some years ago. The trouble is you need someone keen
and committed to keep this going - although they
don't have to be a developer so this is a nice way
of trying to broaden community participation,

We might be able to embed a Twitter feed on the
home pages too...

Regards,

Peter