Ideas for enhancing the SDUG Page on D.O.

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shawn_smiley's picture

I was chatting with someone (sorry, I'm terrible with names) after the last group meeting in May about our page here on D.O. and things that could be done to improve it.

So I decided to look through a bunch of the other group pages on D.O. to see what interesting things other groups are doing and draw some inspiration from that. I found a number of group pages that stood out to me for one reason or another (full list at the end of this post).

Here are the top 3 that really grabbed my attention:

Personally, I'm prefer a more minimalistic approach to site organization and presentation. I would like to see the SDUG home page stripped down to just a few highlights and some summary information. Just enough to tell a visitor who we are and that we are a very active group of great and talented Drupalites. Almost all of the pages I looked at seemed like they were trying to cram too much information into a single page which makes the page look confusing.

So I'm thinking that our home page could consist of something like the following:

  • Welcome/Who we are/how to join type message
  • Title and Date/Time of the next event with a link to how to get there
  • List of the 5 or 10 most recent discussions (titles only) with comment counts
  • List of the 5 most recent job postings (titles only)
  • A list of the last 5 members to visit the site
  • An area promoting our sponsors

Following that idea, I'd like to see us make more use of tabs to organize the content into meaningful structures that make it easy to dig into the information your looking for. So maybe we could have the following tabs:

  • Conversations - Full list of all discussions
  • Events - List of all events past and future with a prominent link to directions
  • SANDCamp - Information about the current SANCamp plus links to info on past camps
  • Jobs & Resources - Full listing of jobs and maybe a list of companies/individuals providing Drupal services
  • Training - Resources and links to help learn about Drupal

That's my initial thoughts on this anyway. What do you think? Let's get a discussion going around this to make the SDUG site the shining start of G.D.O.

Here is the full list of sites that caught my attention for various reasons:
http://groups.drupal.org/shanghai
http://groups.drupal.org/maryland
http://groups.drupal.org/japan
http://groups.drupal.org/arizona-state-university
http://groups.drupal.org/cincinnatisw-ohio-cindug
http://groups.drupal.org/berkeley
http://groups.drupal.org/hudson-valley-ny
http://groups.drupal.org/bulgaria
http://groups.drupal.org/node/23337/og-panel/1
http://groups.drupal.org/japan-tokyo
http://groups.drupal.org/drupalcamp-spain
http://groups.drupal.org/boise
http://groups.drupal.org/houston-texas/schedule
http://groups.drupal.org/connecticut
http://groups.drupal.org/hyderabad/workshop
http://groups.drupal.org/la
http://groups.drupal.org/ann-arbor
http://groups.drupal.org/madrid
http://groups.drupal.org/florida/drupalcamp
http://groups.drupal.org/sweden
http://groups.drupal.org/montreal-quebec
http://groups.drupal.org/iowa
http://groups.drupal.org/southern-california
http://groups.drupal.org/argentina
http://groups.drupal.org/philippines
http://groups.drupal.org/nyc
http://groups.drupal.org/central-ohio/drupal-resources
http://groups.drupal.org/new-zealand
http://groups.drupal.org/denver-boulder-colorado-user-group-dbug
http://groups.drupal.org/vancouver
http://groups.drupal.org/boston/home2

Comments

Awesome Analysis!

kathyh's picture

Hey Shawn - Great overview on what makes a good g.d.o site and analysis of the existing sites. Yes - it was Karl and I who were talking to you about it at the SDDUG.

As for next steps, Karl might have better ideas, but I would propose either coming to a SANDCamp website meeting and work on it there and/or discuss at the next SDDUG. I can send you info on the former once I have details.

Would you be interested in

christefano's picture

Would you be interested in doing a Drupal Dojo session with other groups.drupal.org group admins? I rebuilt the LA Drupal page to what it is now after the D6 upgrade broke everything and am happy to share what I learned when stumbling through it.

nice work!

kscheirer's picture

Thanks shawn, those sound like some cool ideas! The next step is bringing this info back to the group and starting some discussion on it. Posting here was a good choice too :) The next meetup is june 9 - maybe you could do a lightning talk - or even a longer one if you're up for it - on what you found and your recommendations. Possibly with some slides or mockups? :D We should be able to set up permissions for anyone that has time and wants to do the actual work, and I'm sure some other folks will volunteer to help out.

Thanks for the comments

shawn_smiley's picture

Thanks for the comments everyone. I'll see if I can squeeze in a mockup by tomorrow night.

Christefano, I'd certainly be willing to have a Dojo session with the other group admins. It'd be a great way to learn what's possible since I haven't worked much with OG and haven't done anything with G.D.o BTW, great job on the LA site!

See you all tomorrow night at the SandCamp planning meeting.

Another idea I just had for

shawn_smiley's picture

Another idea I just had for enhancing the SDUG page is to see what ideas we can take from the OC Drupal site on meetup.com (http://www.meetup.com/ocdrupal/).

A couple thing I like about the meetup site are:
* The next event is prominently highlighted at the top of the page
* There is a list of past events with indicators on how many people attended and how they rated that event
* A prominent and easy way for members to suggest ideas for presentations

I've posted a couple quick

shawn_smiley's picture

I've posted a couple quick mockups of what the new SDUG home page could look like at http://www.shawnsmiley.com/sdug

I just composited elements from the various sites that caught my attention into a single image.

My idea here is that our home page should just present a focused set of the most important content and provide jumping off points for users to dig into things in more detail.

New Homepage

druroot's picture

I made some changes to the homepage and added a few extra pages. Whaddaya think? Definitely still have some more work to do, but I think it's looking a bit better already.

Simple, but effective

burt.lo's picture

Nice, druroot! Looks better already IMHO. Way to put some of those suggestions in place! Thanks.

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Looking good.

shawn_smiley's picture

Looking good.