Landing page content?

[jbranchaud]

Opening this so we can come up with an outline of what will go on the landing page.

@cweagans already mentioned that we definitely want a link to the bountysource funding page.

[cweagans]

I propose that we just put something up right now (it could be a coming soon message) just so that we know things are working.

[harciga]

you can upload the jekyll skeleton and then we can use the wiki or a ticket system to define the site structure and start working on the most urgent pages

[jbranchaud]

The main jekyll structure is up, just need to add some CSS styling. I suppose we can just use issues (this one even) to discuss what should be on the front page. Ideas?

Hey, I would like to help and contribute. I'll post some ideas soon.

[cweagans]

Awesome. Looking forward to it :)

[jbranchaud]

So let's figure out what the website (or at least the front page) needs to communicate:

• project name, project logo, and project tagline (I imagine "Vim's rebirth for the 21st century" is temporary)
• project status (does Neovim build, what version, milestone progress, what else?)
• community and contributing (how can I get plugged in or get help? how can I contribute code or cash?)
• supported systems
• sections:
  • Quick Look at Neovim
  • Getting Started (Installing/Using Neovim)
  • Writing Neovim Plugins
• What else?

The front page can also help direct people to other content such as:

• the GitHub repo
• documentation
• a listing of plugins (it would be awesome to eventually have a plugin/package manager similar to rubygems, NPM, etc. that, as a front-end, allowed people to search/discover plugins and, as a back-end, allowed people to install and update from neovim).
• neovim tips and tricks, cheat sheets, workflows, etc.
• FAQ
• what else?

[retrohacker]

Suggestions/Issues right off the bat:

• Logo: A 48 hour turnaround on a logo isn't realistic. I don't see them doing this. Maybe a placeholder from placehold.it for now.
• Supported Platforms: Do we have the data for this? Also, I've seen automated tables that show the current build status for platforms, but they have usually been internal to companies like Google. A prime example is Go's http://build.golang.org/
• For the sections, this seems very similar to content on the Wiki. Perhaps use a Markup Parser on these pages and just mirror the wiki content from GitHub?
• Plugins: Currently there are none. This may be something we should worry about when they actually start coming out. Unless we want to consider Vim plugins Neovim plugins for now, in which case we could also maintain a "Status" for the current Neovim release, such as "broken" or "working".
• Tips/Tricks/Cheat Sheets: Just borrow these from Vim resources for now? They won't really be different. Essentially on the frontend this will still look/feel/behave like the vim we all know and love.

[commonquail]

As I noted in #7, right now I think the single most important decision that needs to be made is precisely who the target audience of the site should be, because the landing page should be built for that audience. It's a choice between consumers and developers, and while there will be a lot of overlap it's an important distinction. I would prioritise consumers for the simple reason that they tend to be more difficult to hook; if you can get somebody interested in trying Neovim, if there were ever the slightest hope of them contributing the likelihood may well be higher now.

You can also make the decision to target developers now and consumers sometime down the line but I think that would probably be a mistake. Firstly, because if you don't take advantage of the attention you're getting right now you may not get another chance. Secondly, because then you're stuck with having to decide when is the right time for switching and you will have you actually carry out that switch.

[retrohacker]

@commonquail I agree. This should be consumer oriented. That being said consumers of neovim are developers, not necessarily developers of neovim, but they are generally using neovim to develop something.

I may be incorrect, but I think most of these points are valid for the consumer. Maybe not in a bulleted list form, but the core content does need to be there. The only exception to that might be "Writing your own plugins" or "Contributing".

With this bulleted list we can start working in the pep-talk of why NeoVim promises to revolutionise the way we write our code. We just have to make sure we work these points in there in a peppy way.

[jbranchaud]

You both are right that this should be consumer oriented. Here is what I envision for the flow of the page based on your feedback and what I had before:

• navigation bar that contains logo (let's just use the temporary logo that is already up for the github repo), Neovim, tagline (e.g. teaching an old dog new tricks) and then links to stuff me and @Crackerz mentioned like Download, FAQ, Plugins, Community, GitHub, and Docs
• Intro section with Neovim in large text followed by a line or two saying what Neovim is so that the average person immediately knows what they are looking at and then a download link
• Screenshot or animated gif showing off Neovim (if appropriate), I am imagining SublimeText's page here.
• Three part section with links for each jumping to the appropriate part of the page. Stuff like:
  • Quick Look at Neovim - this will immediately follow and will show off the different features and advantages of Neovim
  • Download/Setup/Installation - this will come after the Quick Look at Neovim section and tell people how to get Neovim on their machine
  • Advanced Neovim - adding plugins, configuration, etc. for power users.
• Quick Look at Neovim
• Download/Setup/Installation
• Advanced Neovim
• Contributing
  • Neovim is open source - help make it better
  • Writing Plugins for Neovim
• Anything else?
• Footer

[commonquail]

That being said consumers of neovim are developers, not necessarily developers of neovim, but they are generally using neovim to develop something.

Many potential consumers are developers, a small minority of which may be Neovim developers, but there are also sysadmins and even the rare academic that use vim, and classifying these as developers is slightly unfair (they don't have "developer" interests, and frankly neither do many developers).

Mind, I do agree the list is pretty good, but mostly because the list is nearly contained in the first two points of the nested list (i.e., intro and getting started). On the other hand, I personally wouldn't include, say, a Travis CI badge, because the average user isn't going to care that Neovim builds, they're going to expect it. Far more relevant is it to clearly show how Neovim and Vim are and aren't similar (conceptually and concretely), how that's expected to change in the future, and what the latest production-ready developments have been; and for the extra curious, a link to GitHub.

I like @jbranchaud's proposal but I have two concerns:

• Vim is ugly. Until we can actually show that Neovim is aesthetically and functionally different from Vim, I worry people will simply say either, "wow, that's ugly", or, "I can already do that in Vim" if you go for a flashy approach. This is definitely paranoia speaking, though, so I don't know.
• I'm not sure what the plugin and community sections are supposed to be (enlighten me?). I don't think there's any point in trying to mirror http://www.vim.org as long as Neovim is substantially backwards compatible, and doesn't offer relevant alternatives anyway, so I'm not convinced that a list of plugins achieves anything, perhaps other than giving the impression that no other plugins are compatible. At the same time, because there are at least four different ways to install Vim plugins, an easily digestible beginner's guide that focuses on one or two, and maybe generally getting started with (Neo)Vim, seems very relevant and not Wiki-only material. Consider, for instance, Jekyll's site.

[jbranchaud]

Yes, vim is ugly and so to some extent, Neovim probably will be too. Ideas of how one might show off the product without turning potential users off? Seems like we ought to be able to come up with something here.

I am also not sure what the Plugins and Community links are supposed to be either. I was just trying to brainstorm possible links and those made it on my list. It is a bit of forward thinking, but at some point I imagine a plugin registry for Neovim (similar to NPM, rubygems, etc.) and the Plugins link would go there. Again, these links are easy to change and move around, it is the content below that that we need to solidify.

[retrohacker]

Vim is ugly
Default Vim is ugly, there are ways to make vim visually orgasmic. We might have a screenshot of NeoVim on the main page using a popular color scheme like Monokai with omnicomplete, code folding, etc. Then in the "Setup" we could have a link to configuring a nice vimrc to make vim look like our main page. A tutorial like http://dougblack.io/words/a-good-vimrc.html