Overall look for the main classicpress.net website

[jujist]

Hi,
I’m sorry to be the one who disclose some critics again,
but my being here is exactly because I care about ClassicPress and I wish full success to build a solid existence of ClassicPress in the CMS market.

The main ClassicPress website

• although it looks pretty nice in first impression, there are many issues about mixed-design style which is unprofessional in my opinion
• the navigation needs some improvements, for example it would be good if the main navbar will show directly the most desirable elements as for CMS - such as “plugins” and “forum”
• the webstite is blocking keyboard-based scrolling - it’s a bad practice adn adding unnecessary difficulty for users
• current informational layer of the website is - in my opinion - not very suitable for newcomers - people who look Wordpress alternative - may expect plain information (without terminology threshold) and straightforward path of the journey (so called Customer Journey), for example: introduction → features → differences → download → where to get support | documentation | contribution – it’s just the short idea of sample Customer Journey, but it would be good to consider few of them, for example one for plugin-oriented users.

The Plugin Directory

I consider it the biggest flaw, but it’s totally not because of it’s amount, it’s only because very unprofessional look and poor informative role:

• misconceived layout,
• usability issues, readability problem (names, short-decription)
• mixed design
• nasty images
• very poor navigation
• and so on

Also I would say the plugin-page template is asking for many improvements, people may need:

• an extra-short description what the plugin do (TLDR approach)
• simple screenshot or how to use section (if the plugin is code-oriented)
• simple tags (flags) for quick recognition about the type of the plugin (i.e. graphical-UI, code-oriented, shortcode) and the category (i.e. SEO, cleanup & utility)
• easy to use filtering options

Well, the whole world of Wordpress plugins is in big mess. But ClassicPress is a big hope to bring back the simplicity, which many Wordpress users/developers missed for years. ClassicPress may bring back the bright side of Open-Source CMS by providing lightweight plugins (~50KB) which do exactly what they are expected to do: no bloatware, no spyware, no irritating popups in admin panel, free to use, and fast as should be. ClassicPress team did already so good job to turn dreams into a reality by building this ecosystem. And I think the plugin directory is the first thing which need a solid management to make sure the overall path of ClassicPress development is designated and consistent.

I will say it again, it’s not to ciriticise anyone’s work, my intention is just to share a subjective point of view, and some ideas about how can we make it better…

[Guido07111975]

Hi,

As a fellow CP user I partly agree, but there’s only a few people that actually contribute to core and the various CP sites, currently. But it should be more contributors..

The theme and plugin info in the CP Directory is provided by the theme and plugin developers, so they are responsible for providing solid info about their software. Maybe the theme and plugin review team should pay more attention to this.

Re the keyboard navigation, see my reply in your other topic.

Guido

[jujist]

If you see that too, and it’s because there is too few people, maybe I could help,
starting from the homepage, proposing some rearangements…?

[EliteStarServices]

I think Tim does the most with the classicpress.net site.
However, as Guido mentioned, he is more valuable working with core code.
While ClassicPress itself allows a path to contributing code, the site is not set up in a way that someone can submit a ‘PR’. Some of what any given person thinks is best is also subjective and each person may have a different idea in that respect. Tim was on vacation, so I am sure he will review these suggestions as time allows.

[timkaye]

I would love it if someone else would take on responsibility for the website. But that person can’t be someone who just imposes their own subjective view on what the site should look like. That’s exactly how we’ve come to where we are.

Comments like “misconceived layout” are unhelpful because (a) they don’t say what’s supposedly misconceived and (b) usually they turn out to be about personal preference only. There’s also a mixing here of comments about the main website and the directory. Those are quite different things.

Here’s what would really help. Create a theme for either the main site or the directory and put it on GitHub where others can test it out. It must use CP branding and be accessible, but otherwise there are no restrictions. If the theme looks good and provides better functionality than what we have now, we’ll be happy to adopt it. (If you aren’t good at accessibility, I’ll be able to help if the rest of the design is good.)

But remember: whatever you create will need buy-in from others. So you might find that what you consider improvements are absolute no-no’s for others.