SEUL: Web Site Redesign

[EAMorical@aol.com]

Here are my ideas for a new SEUL home page/web site. Everybody's
ideas/comments are important. First I will present the contents of the
home page (most of the layout is unimportant at this point, the idea
being to get to the content first). Following I will give the rational for
my ideas.

                                                SEUL
                                   Simple End User Linux
                                Bring Linux to the end user
                                                   or
                  Making Linux a  viable option for the end user

                                  Volunteer Work Available

	About SEUL                                    Hardware
	Survey                                            Linux distributions
	FAQ                                                Kernel
	Advocacy                                        Drivers
	Documentation                                 Utilities
	How To                                            Libraries
	What else?                                      GUI
	                                                       Applications
	                                                       Education

                                What's missing?

	Send suggestions/problems/whatever to Webmaster at _____


Definitely put SEUL at the top. That is where people look first or at
least I do. I recently went through a computer magazine 3 times
looking for an ad I knew was there, before I found it by going page
by page carefully looking for it. It turned out the computer store had
put their name at the bottom of the ad rather than at the top. Next
spell out what SEUL means, namely Simple End User Linux. Don't
assume people know. At the first meeting for the open software show
someone asked what does SEUL stand for. The open software show
is an effort to produce a video on the open software movement that
can be shown on public access TV etc. They are in the process of
registering opensoft.org (I believe) as a domain name. Currently the
web site is at (http://www.jps.net/absweger/opensoft-show). Next put
a brief description of your goal or mission statement namely, what
you are trying to accomplish. It can be expanded on in the "About SEUL"
page. I put out a couple of examples. Next put "Volunteer Work Available"
in a prominent place near the top. A click on this would take one to a
page containing what  are basically help wanted ads placed in categories
such as writting skills, web page skills, whatever. Under each category
would be a list of current jobs containing who to contact etc. The jobs
should be arranged in order of estimated time to complete and the
critical ones should be marked in some way. I feel we should have a
number of ads for jobs that only take a few hours like an advocacy
letter for some particular purpose (basically helping to make Linux
a household word like 7Up). This way people who aren't ready to make
a big commitment can still participate. We now need to provide a means
for identifing a person with a task. Perhaps a click on the ad takes one
to a page with a complete description of the task, a ToDo list with names
beside selected tasks (I've seen this on a number of ToDo lists), maybe
a timeline, how to contact whomever is in charge, whatever. By
prototyping this we can refine it to perfection. Chuck, this has been my
concern about not wasting effort on the web site design. I know you're
eager to get at it. I feel this could be implemented very quickly. Another
thought, we need to include something like "call for ideas" for when we
want to get all the ideas we can on a specific topic. Another thought on
division of labor. I always remember an incident when another person
and myself decided we were going to get something done that had been
kicking around because it was difficult to do. We sat down and said I'll
do this because I know more about it and you do that because you know
more about it. We had it done in two days and I sat there in total
amasement at what we had done. Don't underestimate what can be done
and how fast it can be done when people cooperate. At this point I'm more
concerned about content than layout. Basically what we need is a top
level list of all the pieces required to bring Linux to the SEUL defined end
user. In time we can keep breaking things down into smaller and smaller
pieces. This strategy is known as divide and conquer. For starters I made
a list of the general topics such as "About SEUL", etc. Then I made a list
of things viewed in a logical order from hardware to OS to GUI to
applications. I split out education because there has been so much talk
about it and a SEUL project on it. Initially we can readily find links to
information on the various subjects. In time we will fill them out as we
find people interested in working on them. Finally at the bottom, let people
know how to make suggestions or report problems concerning the web
site. Done for now.

Bob