[Clipart] new site design in progress

[Jonadab the Unsightly One]

Alan Horkan <horkana at maths.tcd.ie> writes:

>> The upload section is large. It seems like that is not useful for
>> most of our audience. Maybe only one out of 100 would ever submit
>> anything. Maybe the upload should be on a separate webpage.
>
> I'm in two minds on this one.
>
> The project is new and we want to attract as many contributions as
> possible but at some point it makes sense to move this off the front
> page.  (I've always disliked how some Wiki sites are totally in your
> face about editing/contributing which makes the site unpleasant to
> just use).

I agree with all of that.  But I don't know how soon to pull the
quicksubmit from the front page.  Maybe when the project hits some
important milestone?  1000 images?  5000?  10000?

> Is it already time to move it off the front page?  Would a prominant
> link to a seperate page be enough?  (probably).

Eventually for sure.  Soon?  Probably.  Now?  Possibly.  Hard to say.
The advantages of removing it are obvious:  it would clean up the
layout of the front page considerably to have it off of there, and
most users probably don't need it most of the time, and in any case
it's redundant with the separate upload form -- and as far as that
goes, the separate upload form is slightly more complete, and it
really would in some ways be better for contributors to use that.

On the other hand, having the upload on the front page is convenient
for regular contributors (especially those who already have their
metadata embedded in the image) and, perhaps more importantly,
encourages everyone to think about contributing.  (Though we could do
the latter with periodic news items I suppose, but the upload form
gets your attention and really emphasizes the sharing/contribution
aspect of the project, which is good.)

I can really go either way.  If you guys think it's time to remove it,
I can go along with that, but if you think we should keep it a while
longer, I can go along with that too.

I do think the "Upload" link that points to the main upload form
should be present on all pages and easy to find.  Always.  We don't
want anyone to skip contributing because they can't find the upload
form.

Something else we should do before we forget:  dynamic pages that do
computation-intensive or disk-intensive stuff should check the HTTP
Referer and quickly dish out something static if it's slashdot.  I
really should make OpenClipart::Web check for this and use its static
cached copy of shell.php under such conditions.

Also, NOTE TO SELF:  don't forget to update its static copy of the
shell after the redesign.

>> The quick submit if kept on front page should be below any news.

I think that would defeat the purpose of having it.  _Beside_ the news
might work, but that would push down the recent contributions...

I tend to think we should keep it approximately where it is until we
are ready to remove it.  I like the reshaping that the mockup does,
which lets it be a little wider, but moving it below the news just
seems pointless; if we do that, we should just remove it and leave the
link to the main upload form.

-- 
$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}
split//,"ten.thgirb\@badanoj$/ --";$\=$ ;-> ();print$/