UPDATE

I upgraded the software that runs the developer blogs hosted by Gentoo. Hopefully this will bring SPAM to zero (or close to it).

Let me, dsd or beandog know if you have any problems.

Link: http://planet.gentoo.org

In response to the amount of spam the dev blogs have been receiving lately, dsd asked me to setup and test a new version of the b2evolution software (the blog software that powers the dev blogs. This doesn't affect the planet software in any way).

This new version is 1.8-july-9 and it's an alpha release but reported to be relatively stable. It's going to need a good amount of testing once I have it set up before we can release it so I'll be calling for volunteers in the next few days.

This new version has a completely rewritten backend. It has been modularized and it's now very easy to use plug-ins. We are especially interested in this version because http://akismet.com is now compatible. This should drop the amount of spam from a torrent to a trickle. This will keep the manual work that beandog is doing (thanks beandog!) down to almost zero.

The 1.8 alpha is abi/api complete and promises to be upgradeable to the stable release version with no service interruptions necessary (although the initial upgrade will require a small downtime).

Stay tuned!

Link: http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=128588

I know we are all waiting with bated breath for the mysql cluster upgrade for bugs.gentoo.org (I know I am) and the team working on the issue has been working overtime. I've been following the progress on IRC and the infra mailing list and I can assure you that both the Gentoo and the OSU teams have been doing an excellent job setting this up and testing it.

The main OSU person working on this had an excellent opportunity to intern at the mozilla foundation this summer, congrtulations! Unfortunately, this means that we will not be getting our new mysql cluster as soon as we thought. :-(

The good news is that the Gentoo Infra team that is working on this has several back-up plans and is implementing one of them now as an interim solution. Of course, this isn't going to happen overnight but it will happen soon-ish.

This isn't an official status report or anything like that. An issue arose about poor communication from the Infra team so I thought I would just give a little heads up to everyone that the bugzie team *is* hard at work on this issue and is working to overcome a major obstacle.

bugzie team++

disclamier: I'm not part of the bugzie team so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Link: http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org/

A quick and dirty preview of what this upgrade to xhtml-1.0 strict and the style sheet selector will allow us to do (Change Style at the top right of the content area). It's not finished, I did this in two hours in between cooking dinner so please *please* don't start sending me bug reports about the layout/design/artwork or how it works.

The style sheet selector is javascript in this *preview* but THAT WILL CHANGE. Neysx has already written a function to make this 100% server side so NO java will ever be required.

The menus still need some work and rearranging.

This is an unfinished proof of concept.

http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org

For a more in depth example of this type of site and how it works visit http://csszengarden.com

Link: http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org/

Well, I was planning on announcing this later on but I guess now is as good a time as any. I posted this to the gentoo-dev mailing list in response to a question concerning the new Gentoo Theme. I thought it best to post it here as well:

The redesign as it was known up until this point is no more. There were things the winner of the contest had to do and he failed to do them (after almost 2 years of trying to get him too). I discussed it with klieber a little and after much thought I have decided that the WWW-Redesign Contest is now officially dead and abandoned.

Instead, I'm now the "Web Coordinator". I proposed this new role to the Infra Leads and met no resistance or objections so I have taken the initiative and created the role. Also, neysx and I together were approached and offered to be the new www node administrators as a team. Of course we both said yes. Official Infra Monkey at last! :D

As Web Coordinator I am responsible for ensuring a consistent look and feel and adherence to standards across all *.gentoo.org sites.

This includes standardizing on an xhtml-1.0 layout with a standard set of css id's and classes so that a single "core" style sheet can be shared across all *.gentoo.org sites with a minimal custom style sheet being imported to take care of the site specific styling. This will make it **so** easy to change the ENTIRE *.gentoo.org web presence layout/design by simply dropping in a new style sheet.

Basically what I'll be doing is letting the individual maintainers of the various sites focus on the back-end functionality of their sites. Leaving the forward facing html/css for me to worry about freeing up their valuable time.

wwwredesign.gentoo.org already has been converted and is going live on www.gentoo.org shortly (we just have a few last minute things to do).

I'm also working on bugday.g.o (with GurliGebis), planet.g.o and torrents.g.o and those 3 should be ready to go by the end of the month. Hopefully upstream for planet and torrents will accept my patches where applicable. Even if they don't these web-apps are pretty simplistic and keeping a customized version up-to-date will be no problem.

I'll be working with tomk on forums.g.o and we already have a plan in the works. The forum has already been so heavily modified that it is almost not even recognizable as a phpbb anymore. tomk says we can pretty much do what we want to it (within reason) without having to worry about upstream accepting our modifications.

bugs.g.o will be done with jforman. bugs.g.o is a touchy one, it's one of our most used resources so it will have to be done very slowly, very carefully and I'll have to get all the relevant patches accepted upstream. I doubt jforman wants to stray from the official upstream release very much, I haven't talked to him about this yet though so I'm not sure. bugs may end up getting a new header/footer and nothing else. We'll see how it goes.

packages.g.o is a custom web-app written and maintained by marduk who is currently busy in real life. I'm putting this one on the bottom of the list until he gets more free time. I *could* just style the existing site without him but he is working on packages-2.0 and it will add a lot of needed functionality. I'd rather wait and do this the right way instead of wasting time styling a site that he is going to replace anyway.

Neysx and I also have a plan to make the stylesheet user selectable so we can offer multiple themes. He already has a semi-working prototype at gentoo.neysx.org (it doesn't work in IE yet). I'll extend that concept to all the other websites. This fits perfectly with the idea of theming the websites to match the liveCD's. We can offer that theme as the default but still let people choose the "classic" style or any other styles we may offer.

Realistically speaking I can have all of this done by the 2007.0 release (maybe not bugs - depends on how much jforman is willing to stray from the official bugzilla release). If everyone wants to shoot for 2006.1 for this new theme I will at least have 4 sites complete and ready for the new theme. The others can be themed as I get them upgraded.

I know the redesign was a great big PITA. I faced many obstacles in getting it put up live (the specifics are irrelevant). Now that I am a full fledged Infra member with some actual authority and the support of the rest of the Infra team (teaming up with neysx is also making it MUCH easier) I can actually get (and AM getting) things accomplished.

Link: http://dev.gentoo.org/~curtis119/x86-livecd-2006.0.html

Interesting to see how many people are downloading using a windows OS.

http://dev.gentoo.org/~curtis119/x86-livecd-2006.0.html

http://dev.gentoo.org/~curtis119/x86-installcd-2006.0.html

Here's stats for the server upload:

http://dev.gentoo.org/~curtis119/torrent-client-upload-feb_2-10amEST-330pmEST.txt

Link: http://torrents.gentoo.org/

I volunteered to set up a new Torrent Tracker for the project. jforman and ramereth were both great to work with. I was a little nervous when we went live but everything went smooth.

The server is going strong with 350+G transferred and 900+ connected users as of right now (5am EST).

Thanks to everyone who participated in this release. :-)

The specification for xhtml-1.1 says that the server *should* send application/xml+xhtml in the HTTP header but that it *can* send text/html in order to remain backwards compatible with older user agents, IE for example. As long as the doctype is set correctly (and it is) it is still valid xhtml-1.1.

In fact, if you use the validator and let it auto detect the doctype it correctly detects xhtml-1.1 and validates the page using that specification (ignore the errors, I'm still workin' on it). Browsers will also detect it, including IE, and use the correct specs to render the page. They also render the page in Standards Compliance Mode, including IE.

Trust me on this, I researched it *extensively* before making the jump to xhtml-1.1, I didn't just blindly decide to change. I read the entire xhmtl-1.1 specification. I didn't just skim it or skip any parts I read the entire thing. I read the XSLT-1.0 specification to make sure I was doing it right in the xsl. I also read TONS of threads from all over the world discussing this, including from IE support sites, apache, mozilla, w3c and web designer sites.

MS officially suggests using text/html in the HTTP header when serving xhtml-1.1 documents to IE. Mozilla, Opera, Firefox, Konqueror can all correctly use application/xml+xhtml and officially suggest that is what you send in the HTTP header but **ALL** of them are also backwards compatible with text/html.

None of the text browsers, as far as I know, can use application/xml+xhtml yet but, just like IE, they can correctly render an xhtml-1.1 page validly and in Standards Compliance Mode with text/html in the HTTP header.

So, to sum it up:

The site is validly serving XHTML-1.1 (except for the errors I haven't fixed yet) that is recognized by all browsers and correctly rendered. The server doesn't have to send application/xml+xhtml in the HTTP header in order for it to be valid, it can send text/html too.

Link: http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xhtml-modularization-20010410/Overview.html

So, since I have to wait for Aaron to produce a new logo anyway I've decided to take the time to update the site to xhtml-1.1. This isn't as easy as it may first seem. Not only does the resultant html need to conform to the specification but the XSL also needs to be altered somewhat to be compatible with this new version of xhtml. Just figuring out how to write the xsl:output method correctly was enough to give me a headache!

It turns out that xhtml is actually considered to be xml and NOT html at all so the XSLT processor has to be informed of this and different namespaces declared. Did you know that xhtml is not "text/html" but "application/xhtml+xml"? Neither did I until yesterday.

Anyway, I have the wwwredesign.gentoo.org site now serving xhtml-1.1 and it is *almost* error free and compliant. I'm almost done reading the xhtml-1.1 specification and I should have the site passing the validation within a week. In just the last few days I've cut the number of errors from 59 to 15 so I'm almost there. :-)

I got rid of the dead space under the ads today. I had to rework a bunch of elements to make it work correctly but it looks much nicer now. I really hate IE, I'm trying to make the menu degrade more gracefully when you increase the font size or make the window small but IE isn't cooperating. I have it working in every single browser except that one. Did I mention that I hate IE?

ps. Internet Explorer sucks

Link: http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org

I implemented the search today. The search box is back on the right hand side, it uses google.com to search all *.gentoo.org domains. This includes the forums, planet, documentation and dev space among others. The donate button was moved back to the ads column because of this.

There are a few other minor changes as well. Link colors have been made more consistant: purple on white for content areas and white on purple in the menu bar. All links turn green on :hover. These color combinations pass the color-blind test, look really good and are consistant. All links except the grey menu bar are now underlined to be in-line with accessibility standards (the grey bar is an exception made for aesthetic reasons).

The content area and ads column still need to be fixed. Currently they are in a table (I was testing it out in attempt to not use an absolute position css tag and it didn't do very well) and I need to put it back into divs.

I'm trying to maximize the space in the purple boxes on the front page (this only appears on the front page). Those boxes are supposed to be used as advertisements promoting Gentoo. I just redid "Interact" and I still need some ideas for "Manage" and "Optimize". I want at least two links in all four of those boxes. They should convey a feeling of empowerment and community. Suggestions?

The top level menu (main, planet, forums, etc...) had an issue. The green arrow designates which site you are on. If you are on planet.gentoo.org then PLANET would be first in line with the green arrow. I spaced the first word out more to make it more obvious. The link colors were changed to white with green hover to be consistant with the site-wide color scheme and also to pass the color blind test.

print icon was moved to the right and an email to the docs-team icon added.

There were a bunch of small details that were ironed out so the entire site is really looking very polished and professional and it's really coming together now. I've gotten lots of great feedback from the community that really helped, thanks everybody.

One bit of feedback is still lingering. The new logo is being questioned and many people have voiced a desire to put it to a vote. Aaron Shi has agreed to make an alternate version and the project leads have consented to the Gentoo Developers voting in the normal fashion on which one will become the new Official Gentoo Logo.

Aaron is presently in school taking his exams so don't expect to see the alternate version until after the $HOLIDAY. Once Aaron submits it I'll post it to the list and give everyone a chance to review it before we vote.

I got together with the project leads and we finalized some decisions. The site, http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org, is now in it's final state except for the search and donate.

The search is going to be implemented using google as a back end as an interim solution. The only free version of google site search that is available to us is the normal one that anyone can use. We are not the right kind of non-profit to get the free, customized search. This means you will be taken out of the gentoo site to a google controlled page.

The good news is that it will allow us to do a very comprehensive advanced search page where you can fine grain your search to any of the gentoo web sites. You will be able to search documents by language, forums, developer pages, etc.... We will also hook into the bugs and forum native search engines to further enhance the search. You will be able to specify google or forum search as the search backend when you search the forum.

We will be investigating alternative search engines that we can host ouselves so that we have maximum control. I won't be able to get around to that until after the other gentoo sites are migrated to the new design so google will be the default for a while. If anyone wants to do some preliminary research and start submitting suggestions I would appreciate it.

I'll be setting up the search over the next week or two so stay tuned.

As you can see Aarons reference site has been implemented pretty accurately now. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

I've had individual reports from a few key people and can safely say that it renders correctly in all browsers with the exception of IE5 on mac. I decided that it was not used enough to justify the hack it would require to support it and there are alternative browsers for the mac all the way back to OS8.X that don't have outstanding security issues as IE5 does. I hope the few users of this browser will understand.

There was a small bug in konqueror that I finally got sorted out, thanks to dangle for being my tester.

I'll report back when the search is ready for wide testing.

cross posted to gentoo-dev and www-redesign mailing list.

First of all, thank you everyone for all the feedback. Your input is important and greatly appreciated.

I should have said that the last update was not complete as far as design was concerned. I was mainly looking for accessibility and rendering issues on as many browsers/OS's as possible. I got that feedback and fixed the issues that came up. I also implemented the rest of the design so it should now be more visually appealing and better match Aarons reference design. I took into consideration all of the suggestions that were submitted and now ask for additional feedback to ensure that my changes didn't introduce any additional rendering/accessibility bugs and that the design is acceptable to as many people as possible.

If there are no more outstanding issues reported I will submit this current layout for approval.

Questions to some of the answers and suggestions that were brought up:

The artwork is all part of the winning design. Any issues with the infinity symbol should have been addressed a year ago.

I am not the designer of this site. I am merely implementing it in the XSL backend. I am the only person working on this and I am the designated official developer, the project lead is Swift and his role is to offer advice, enforce design policy and generally oversee my actions and help me with internal gentoo policies and procedures. The project is actually owned by Infra and they (they == infra leads which is klieber and ramereth as far as I know), along with Swift, have the final say on everything. I welcome any and all patches that you are willing to submit. All submissions will be evaluated on a case by case basis.

Aarons reference design at www.aaronshi.com/gentoo/ is exactly that: A reference. In it's current form it differs from his original submission which was the winning entry and should not be considered as anything else but a reference. I tried to stick to that design as much as possible but some things were simply not possible.

Aarons design uses a smaller default font, that is not acceptable from an accessibility POV. The main font is at 1em and all cursory fonts multipliers of 1em. The main font will remain at 1em which is the standard for the accessibility guidelines. If you don't like the standard font size every single graphical browser offers a font zoom capability, use it.

Aarons use of a smaller font allows more information to appear on the page. This is an illusion of size. If you have your browser window set to 800x600 or smaller the jumpads disappear and the page has to be scrolled to see them no matter how big/small the font is. If you enlarge the font on Aarons reference to the standard 1em the jumppads disappear and the page must be scrolled anyway so this point is moot.

Purple background with yellow text is hideous. Not going to happen.

The "Locator" would require rewrites of not only the XSL but also the actual xml files and is outside the scope of this project. Touching any xml content file is strictly off limits, all existing xml should be backwards compatible with the new design. This point is not debatable. Use of a database would make this task easier while allowing backwards compatibility but it will have to wait for a future update to the site to be implemented.

I actually implemented a search that used google much like the example that was posted here. The search was discussed at length with the project lead and it was decided that using a third party search engine such as google was unacceptable. As Lance said, this will have to be coordinated with infra at a later date. Gentoo is a not-for-profit but, unfortunetly, it is the wrong kind of non-profit so Google will not sponsor us.

The contents of the uppermost menu are to sites that are outside the www.gentoo.org website. They will stay in this location. They are green to contrast with the purple background to ensure that colorblind and other visually impaired people can see it. Green is the compliment to purple so I am baffled that people think the combination is not attractive. In Aarons preview the light purple color of these links is not visible to color blind individuals thus it is unacceptable. This color will not change.

The grey menu should contain links that would be used in order of a new user and that highlight the main parts of the site. I did this quickly to have something there to look at. I didn't notice any good suggestions to replace what is there. If you have suggestions please send them. The same goes for the wording in the purple boxes, if you don't like what they say submit a suggestion for each. Suggestions of "I don't like it you should change it" that don't include a clearly worded replacement will be ignored. The donate box is here to stay until the search function is implemented.

Graphics should be implemented in the CSS as much as possible to aid future maintenance (the xsl templates are huge and not easy to maintain. The least amount of editing of these files as possible is one of the major goals). In text browsers that can handle graphics but don't support CSS the upper left logo (which is a background image so it can be put in the css) will not appear but will leave space for the missing background image. I can't figure out a way around this. If you have a suggestion I would appreciate it.

Horizontal scrolling of the entire page when a code listing is wider than the page only happens in IE. All other browsers understand the CSS scroll:auto tag and will only scroll the actual code listing. The same applies to inline images within the page contents. IE is broken but I did everything I could to make it behave the same as other browsers. This is one issue that IE is simply broken on and there is nothing I can do to fix that. Javascript fixes are available but the use of Javascript is strictly forbidden. Javascript is not debatable.

Redundant links to important pages such as the Handbook and Documention only serve to make them easier for a user to locate. They will remain for the time being unless someone can come up with a good reason to remove them other than "I don't like it".

The

tags in the Handbook navigation are contained within the handbook xsl template. Touching that file is outside my scope.

The redesign test site is not a full mirror. I added the security index page so we could see what it looks like.

The site is not XHTML it is HTML-4.01 Transitional and it passes the w3c validator. Manually overriding HTML-4.01 Transitional in the w3c validator is not required and any errors that it reports if you do this will not be addressed. If you can come up with a good technical reason why doing this would benefit anyone I will address it.

Navigation and useability studies are beyond my scope. These issues should have been addressed a year ago.

The left hand navigation column is dead. No amount of beating this dead horse will resurrect it. The jumppads will remain at the bottom and appear on all non-documentation pages so that those links are accessible as much as possible.

base href is not needed for this site to function properly. If you want to save the page locally you are free to do so and add the tag yourself for your local copy.

The CSS is only 12k. Why would shaving 4k off of it to make it 8k make a difference to anyone?

The site is dynamically generated with XSL/XML all the pages end in .xml. There are no plans to change it to .xhtml now or in the future.

The image on the about page is within the content xml file and not within the XSL template. Touching about.xml or any other xml content file is outside my scope.

GLEP 10 is outside my scope.

The jumppads have alt text. They always have. They pop up as tool tips on every browser I have tested. If they aren't for you please submit your browser version and OS and I will look into it.

The blue text that represents code was darkened for accessibility issues. It will not change.

In Aarons preview the search box and the ads column are placed with a Position:absolute and has it's size set. At resolutions below 800x600 this makes the ads overlap the content and the search box overlap the box to the left on every browser. When content is scarce the ads overlap the footer. This is not fixable given the current state of css support in the various browsers. After many many many long hours of research and experimentation I decided that we would have to resort to a table for the ads column and include the search (now donate) box within the div that contains the four purple boxes with a % width to fix this issue. I lowered the % width of the donate box and increased the others to bring it more inline with Aarons original design. It's not perfect but it's close enough.

Accessibilty guidelines say that all text links should be underlined. I made an exception for the grey menu bar for aesthetic purposes but will not make an exception for any other links.

gentoo.org and all domains owned by the Gentoo Foundation should render correctly in all browsers that are still in general use. IE5 on the mac is still a valid browser and will be supported as much as possible.

Summary and authors are important and should be prominently displayed before the actual content. On the current design they are on the right in a tiny column that wraps every two words. This is unacceptable. These items will stay at the top for now unless someone can come up with a place to put them that makes sense, looks good, allows the summary to be seen on top and not below the content (because a summary should be above the content otherwise why have a summary if you have to scroll past the content to see it?). The handbook is the only page that has a large list of authors and authors only appear on the first page so this should not be a problem.

Here is a list of items that have changed since my last post:

*menu code was changed from a floated block list to a simple inline div with non-breaking spaces. This should fix the IE5 on Mac issue.

*Background color for content was made light grey with black text for better visibility of the text. Bright monitors should no longer be a problem.

*background color of the ads was made darker to contrast with the content area. Decorative header was added.

*white space was collapsed as much as possible.

*all extraneous information and decorative news headers were removed from the front page to help readability and to bring focus to the information. This includes the cow image and text. Overwhelming amounts of information on the front page should no longer be a problem. This also brings the jumppads closer to the top so new users will be better able to spot them.

*table headers were centered and data cells left justified.

*table borders are now collapsed and only 1px thick. They are no longer ugly.

*removed the BOLD from the design credit in the footer. This wasn't supposed to be BOLD in the first place, probably a mistake on my part.

*The purple boxes below the grey menu bar now only appear on the main index.

*news poster date and submitter color changed to match Aarons design

*added a filter that removes the author and date if they are missing or script generated.

*removed redundant doc title

*removed the donation button image and replaced it with a simple button.

http://wwwredesign.gentoo.org

After receiving a ton of very useful feedback from the developer community I have updated the redesign. It should now be closer to 100% accessible and it should (hopefully) render perfectly in all browsers including text only browsers. It now passes XHTML and CSS validation tests.

I'm asking for everyone (developers and users alike) to please have a look at the updated site and send any feedback you may have. I'm especially interested in feedback from anyone who uses accessibilty programs such as screen readers or if you are color blind or have any other accessibilty issues.

Also, I only use GNU/Linux and I have only tested on the following browsers:

Mozilla-1.7
firefox-1.0
Opera-8.5
Internet Explorer-6 under CrossOver Office
Epiphany-1.8.2
Links-2.1 in text mode and graphics mode.

If you have access to a Macintosh, Windows, *BSD or any other OS or Browser please test the site and include your OS and the browser version in your feedback. I haven't received feedback from Konqueror or Safari so feedback from those browsers would be much appreciated.

The only major outstanding issue is the contents of the menu in the grey bar at the top and what should appear in the 5 purple boxes directly under them. Currently I have that menu listed in order of what a new Gentoo user would need to access first. If you have a better idea of what should be included in this menu or think something important is being left out please send that in your feedback as well.

Thanks in advance

Curtis

neysx (the guy who did almost all of the current website) was really busy while I was away and added tons of new features to the backend. He is one smart guy, I need to start talking to him more and pick his brain. It took me a while to study his changes and figure out how it all works. I spent all day yesterday integrating it and am almost done. I'll push my changes to CVS tonight.

The forum is going well, we had a spammer that wouldn't give up and I think deathwing got a little frustrated with him, hehehehe. Oh well, forum life is fun. :-)

Hi everyone,
I'm sure a lot of you are wondering what is going on with the website redesign since I haven't been blogging and no progress has been seen at the test site. I was away for the last month setting up a new client and taking care of the beginning of the school year PTA stuff (PTA == Parent Teacher Association). I'm done with that stuff and back in action (other than the occasional brownie baking marathon for our monthly bake sale).

I've spent the last week or so catching up on my forum duties and am planning on working on the website all this week. I have a short list that I need to accomplish to get the test site stable and in working order which *should* only take me until this coming Sunday, Oct 9th. Once that happens I will be posting to the gentoo-dev mailing list asking for feedback on useability, accessibilty, menu entries and browser compatibility, etc....

Sorry I was away for so long but the kids and my job have to come first. It's good to be back and I look forward to getting our new website up and running soon!

First let me say, thanks for the welcome lisa :-)

I received a few comments on my blog, in irc and an email or three on the redesign already. Most of them were very encouraging and I thank everyone for the kind words. I can't take credit for the design though, that was done by Aaron Shi. Gentoo sponsored a contest to redesign the site. There were five contestants that were picked by the Gentoo developers and Aarons' design won the poll that was posted to the forum for the Gentoo user community to vote on. His design won by 46% and the runner up had 20%.

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-227589.html

My role in this is simply to implement the new design in the XSL template that powers the Gentoo web site. While I'm doing that I'm also going to make the XSL a little more friendly to administer so that future Gentoo devs will have an easier time making changes. The current XSL evolved over the last few years in an ad-hoc manner and this time around it will be planned out.

Some of the emails and comments on irc were suggestions for how the design should be changed. I have no power over that. I was told up front before being offered dev status that I cannot change the design in any way other than usability issues (accessibility, cross-browser support, etc..). Besides, I'm not an artist. I can't even draw stick people without a ruler and I'm slightly color blind. ;-)

If you want to give your ideas and suggestions please join the www-redesign@gentoo.org mailing list by sending an empty email to www-redesign-subscribe@gentoo.org and send your suggestions and ideas there. Aaron and the powers that be are subscribed to the list.

---------------

I got a lot of work done on the kernel configuration guide today. I should have a first draft for the interested kernel devs to look at in a day or two so keep your eyes peeled for it. bug #94955

----------

I wrote a new FAQ in the Forum. It covers the RSYNC_EXCLUDEFROM variable in make.conf. We get a lot of new threads started asking this question and it isn't in the portage man page so a FAQ was in order. Hopefully this will cut down on all the duplicate threads.

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-2551222.html

My blog is online at last. Thanks dsd for setting it up.

For those of you that don't know me I'm a new developer working on the website redesign. I'm also contributing to the GDP a little and I'm a Global Moderator on the Forum. My devspace is still under construction and I'm not sure when I'll have a front page up and running but I do have some screenshots of the preliminary redesign uploaded:

http://dev.gentoo.org/~curtis119/screenshots/redesign1.png
http://dev.gentoo.org/~curtis119/screenshots/redesign2.png
http://dev.gentoo.org/~curtis119/screenshots/redesign3.png
http://dev.gentoo.org/~curtis119/screenshots/redesign4.png
http://dev.gentoo.org/~curtis119/screenshots/redesign5.png
http://dev.gentoo.org/~curtis119/screenshots/redesign6.png
http://dev.gentoo.org/~curtis119/screenshots/redesign9.png

I have the entire main www.gentoo.org and the forums set up on a mirror here in my house that is fully functional and uses the new design. It runs off of my DSL line so I don't want to make it publicly accessible. infra has set up a test box for me to use so once I have everything cleaned up and migrated to that box I'll post a link.

Ioannis Aslanidis (Deathwing00) and I wrote a new document for the Forum, forum-guide.xml. I have a preview on my dev space in html format. It's waiting for a directory under /proj to be set up before I can put it up live on www.gentoo.org

http://dev.gentoo.org/~curtis119/forum-guide.html

I'm also in the process of writing a kernel-configuration guide as requested by dsd. I've made great progress but still have a ways to go before it can go live. Hopefully it will help kernel newbies to understand the ins and outs of configuring a kernel and cut down on all the duplicate posts on the forums and in #gentoo on freenode. I'm sure NeddySeagoon will be happy to hear this ;-)