From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Mar 30 02:25:50 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DBDC316A4E7 for ; Tue, 30 Mar 2004 02:25:49 -0800 (PST) Received: from cimbali.dssrg.curtin.edu.au (cimbali.dssrg.curtin.edu.au [134.7.165.135]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 068DD43D2D for ; Tue, 30 Mar 2004 02:25:49 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from charon@cimbali.dssrg.curtin.edu.au) Received: from cimbali.dssrg.curtin.edu.au (localhost.dssrg.curtin.edu.au [127.0.0.1])i2UAPPGB027627 for ; Tue, 30 Mar 2004 18:25:25 +0800 (WST) (envelope-from charon@cimbali.dssrg.curtin.edu.au) Received: (from charon@localhost)i2UAPPiB027626 for freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org; Tue, 30 Mar 2004 18:25:25 +0800 (WST) (envelope-from charon) Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 18:25:25 +0800 From: Charon To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20040330102525.GA27612@cimbali.dssrg.curtin.edu.au> References: <200403300555.i2U5tGrM026994@cimbali.dssrg.curtin.edu.au> <20040330063015.83276.qmail@web14606.mail.yahoo.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20040330063015.83276.qmail@web14606.mail.yahoo.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Subject: Re: The Website X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 10:25:50 -0000 On Mon, Mar 29, 2004 at 10:30:15PM -0800, peter lageotakes wrote: > > Please describe corporate and or professional. > Hopefully a pedantic description of 'corporate' or 'professional' won't be used as a means of negating any argument. I assume we are trying to get more people to use FreeBSD for home, business, and other markets. A typical home user is going to be used to seeing things a certain way on the web. They will be using commercial sites and particularly Microsoft whenever they have to think about their operating system (downloading a patch, fetching a new version of IE, and so on). When home users look for hardware online they are likely to look first at branded sites like Compaq, Dell, HP, and so on. In summary; they will look at branded commercial sites they recall before starting to look for alternatives. For business users the situation is not much different. In this case however other factors like time constraints and vendor relations start to apply. Both groups are going to commit the error of judging a book by its cover and correspondingly theres more members in the group who value substance _and_ style. Theres also the factor of belief reinforcement. For example, if I am looking for alternatives to my current OS I will expect the competition's website to look and behave in similar ways. What for example would happen if FreeBSD's website all of a sudden used a community bbs style (phpNuke say) with all the latest FreeBSD news listed on the centreline but no other material change to content? - a casual user would immediately identify the site as a news source not an OS vendor. That same user would feel uncomfortable using the site because it violates their expectations. What I am arguing for is a change to the site to make it more like the competition. In this case RedHat, MicroSoft, IBM, and so on. At the moment it looks like a three column url listing with no really strong visual cues to things important to capturing, converting, and supporting new users. ps: when I started hunting for a new OS around 1997/8 my selection of FreeBSD was based on the website being prettier than Net or OpenBSD's offerings. I figured at the time that if FreeBSDs web facing had a higher quality then the OS would be better. I still see a similar metric applied today by people who mistake KDE as a more advanced version of FreeBSD when compared with fvwm2 on the same OS. Today if I was placed in a similar situation with the same knowledge I had then, I probably would have gone with RedHat. I think the current site is serving its purpose and the maintainers and contributors are doing a good job but I think there is room for a little more icing to capture a larger portion of first time visitors to the site.