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.
Website looks *much* nicer than last time I looked, nice work.
As for searching, be sure to check out Lucene. The base version is written in java (http://lucene.apache.org/). It is also ported to C# (http://www.dotlucene.net/) and there are C/C++ versions available as well. Probably not the most convenient choice of languages for you, but lucene is pretty incredible. If you decide to investigate this any further, feel free to find me on IRC and I can explain its workings a bit better. Beagle uses dotLucene as its data store.
Like Daniel says, the site looks a lot better then the last time I looked at it as well.
Still not a fan of the infinity symbol in the logo though.
It’s too difficult to find the “Forums” link. It should be placed somewhere where it’s difficult to miss it.
Ir seems I didn’t look well enough :). I’d switch the Optimize and Interact fields – Interact should be to the left, in the centre of the screen – more visible.
The new site looks fantastic. 😀
In regards to the search engine stuff, have you tried ht://dig ? I don’t know how well it’d handle all the XML stuff that Gentoo uses as a backend, but it’s supposed to be quite nice…
Nice job, mate.
Some little things:
– can the search / donate area be the same width as the ad column so they align vertically?
– I like the way the dates / authors look in Aaaron’s reference. Notice how the date aligns with the heading? Also, the column of dates has a faint purplish background color, and a light dotted border on the right. This works mainly because the bar under “Recent headlines” ties it together, so I understand if the background / border won’t happen, but the alignment bugs me.