The website needs some work

[wusatosi]

Hi, as a person who is interested in the beman-project, the website is really confusing for a new-comer.

• The Join Us link on the top of the page doesn't work
• The "recent post" section is empty
• Will be nice to have a discourse link and a GitHub org link on the front page
• There's a confusing empty box in the bottom of all pages.
• The fact "For Library Authors"/ "For Library Users"/ "Mission Details" is not clickable is confusing.
• I cannot find the website code under the beman-project GitHub org.

[dietmarkuehl]

Some feedback I got from Frank Birbacher: the web page should have a prominent link to the repo and/or the overview of available libraries.

[dabrahams]

If somebody would like to volunteer to fix these things, privileges can be granted. It's a WordPress site.

[wusatosi]

If somebody would like to volunteer to fix these things, privileges can be granted. It's a WordPress site.

I must admit that I do not have a good sense of design. I cannot take this as I fear I will make it worse.

[dietmarkuehl]

I'm not going to volunteer to change the site (my own pages are just bad) but I want think the page would also benefit from actual content: pointers to Beman projects, possibly with a short blurb what's in there and what state they are in, etc.

Dave's comment about lack of blogs made me, at least, think about writing something up (if I do I'll leave it to others whether that's the place to post it).

[dabrahams]

I cannot take this as I fear I will make it worse.

@wusatosi the nice thing about PRs is that other people get to review your work before it does any damage, and they can help you make it better. Taking a stab at it can't hurt.

Oh crud; it's a wordpress site; I don't know if it's checked in anywhere. :-(.

Probably GH pages would have been a better choice.

[wusatosi]

I cannot take this as I fear I will make it worse.

@wusatosi the nice thing about PRs is that other people get to review your work before it does any damage, and they can help you make it better. Taking a stab at it can't hurt.

Oh crud; it's a wordpress site; I don't know if it's checked in anywhere. :-(.

Probably GH pages would have been a better choice.

HAHA nice try. Time to play the open source game of how about you do it.

In all honesty, I can see what I can do if we put the website page into some GitHub repo, I don't know who has access to it and why it isn't out.

I also have enough improvements I want to make to exemplar, inplace-vector and dump to justify (to myself) to not touch any web code.

[wusatosi]

Honestly though, if we are okay this being closed source (I don't see anyone complaining right now). Something like notion pages are a not-so-bad idea at all (bemanproject.org -> beman.notion.site).

I personally find a relief to not have to code up something/ deal with all the things with wp.

Notion pages are clean and really easy to setup, it was designed as a note taking app afterall. It's just not "built in house" or "geeky".

I know this is probably not a popular approach, but given we are not exactly the project that attracts web designers and web devs, I would recommend this above asking someone to suffer with HTML and CSS.

I can make a proof of concept, should only take like 5 mins ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

[wusatosi]

At this point the website should just be a 302 to:
The README.

[wusatosi]

Proof of concept at notion: https://wusatosi.notion.site/Beman-Project-Proof-of-concept-13d2b40ed25980068d5ddcfddef22138

It did take more than 5 mins.

[dabrahams]

At this point the website should just be a 302 to:
The README.

Really? I put some effort into the one blog post that's currently there.

The notion site looks pretty. Can a notion site be checked into Git and accept PRs? I think that's probably important for a project like this.

I have no stake in the answer, but the most popular open source site generators these days seem to be 11ty and astro. I would bypass GitHub pages' built-in Jekyll system as you will surely outgrow it. You can easily set those things to be run as GitHub workflows and publish the resulting HTML to GH pages, FWIW. My experience with Wordpress (pretty extensive though not recent) tells me you should avoid it.

[wusatosi]

Really? I put some effort into the one blog post that's currently there.

I didn't say we shouldn't migrate the blog as well :P , also I am joking a bit. I mainly want to point out the absence of interest to updating the website.

[static site generator]

Yes, but they require maintenance, e.g. looking after npm dependencies, having someone able to understand these systems, dealing with someone wanting to update minor styles. Static site generators and templates seem to have short lifespan as well, personally I have static website that become un-maintainable (with the amount of effort I am willing to give) after few years because the template isn't getting updated anymore and there's breaking change from static generator, and npm being npm. I want to again point out that no-one, at least right now, wants to work on this :P , and we are not exactly the project to attract web developers.

[notion checking into version control and accepting PRs]

No*, it is a note taking app, it's like a google docs that have better formatting. People just found out it's really good for documentations.

There is technically a GitHub integration, but again I want to point out that we don't have to be geeky about this, its fine for us to have a issue tracker, the website itself on notion and some webmaster updating typos and posting new blogs.

Well, that's unless someone to jump out and be happy to maintain a static website for us in code.