&I really dislike having the search bar at the bottom of the Homepage and only on the homepage. Why not give every page a search input? And getting off of Google and using a live search would be very nice.
— JW
<hr /;
I also second these comments about the search only being on the home page.. its such a pain to find anything here!
— RC
Search should definitely be on all pages and consistently appear in the same location.
— David Jones
I’m concerned that there is too much content on the homepage. I think the wiki homepage should really suck1.
— LeeO
Hm… I don’t think there’s too much content. I’d prefer flat hierarchies to get to what I am looking for. As long as all topics on the homepage are nicely sorted it leads me to thinking that I will find my question’s answers fast…
— Magirus
Rev #1: 55 words
Rev #61: 85 words
I supose you could argue that it’s just personal taste, but I do think that if it’s too large it will be unwelcomming to new users. I don’t think the homepage should be aimed primarily at seasoned Railers, I think it should focus on introducing the best of the wiki and other content for Rails novices. I think it should be a starting place a launch point, not an index-of-everything-you’ll-ever-need.
— LeeO
Ok, I see… so we think of the homepage from different view angles. Would be interesting to know about how many novices visit the Wiki and how many semi-experienced users come by.
What about dividing the homepage in two pages. One novice-introduction-type-thing and one learning-and-frequently-visiting developer-type-thing.
The novice page comes first and has a link to the developers page.
— Magirus
It’s been awhile since this page has been touched, I guess. (Seems it was before the i2 switchover.) Anyhow, I’ve lately been disgusted at the amount of information being added to the HomePage without being organized. We had some bulleted lists here, and comma seperated lists there. Some headings are WikiWords, and other headings have descriptions. It’s rather confusing, and I think it scares away Rails Rookies. ^^
I was the one that moved the UserGroups onto its own page (could you imagine that page still being in front?) and I’ve recently put all the lists back into bulleted lists, and reorganized them to fit into the categories better.
I think the HomePage could use a bit of a re-think. Maybe make the “above the fold” area for newbies, and the rest could be links to documentation, hints, and community related things.
Course, it is a community page, so I’m not going to do all that without seeing what other think, of course.
So who else thinks the HomePage needs some wiki-gardening?
— Jason
I thought it was about time that the wiki got a semi-attractive front page, so I’ve started working on a new one at Home Page Redesign Sandbox. Maybe once it’s finished we can finally throw out this old one.
Update: OK, it’s finished! I’ve replaced the old home page with the new one. Hope the rearrangement doesn’t upset too many people.
— Anonymous Main Page Redesigner
Why don’t you have a link to http://www.canadaonrails.com ??
— Erik.
I had an issue with the search which I logged by creating a new article named HelpDesk. (It wasn’t immediately obvious to me where to go for wiki help.) It may be out of scope for this page but I wanted to make sure it didn’t get lost if people aren’t actively monitoring Recent Changes. Cheers, PhilipR