Thoughts on Landing Page
( I know this goes a bit ahead of the fanfare, with no content strategy etc. yet discussed. )
Some first musings on a landing page. A fairly traditional page structure:
- Top-level menu
- “Getting Started” Hero
- “Standards Movement” Section
- “Grassroots Fedi” Highlights
- “News & Events” Section
- Footer
Top-level Menu
Menu’s can be CSS dropdowns or plain links. There’s many ways to slice this, but imho the distinction between Standardization Process and Grassroots Fediverse should be clear. Some possibilities for this division:
- Standards Process | Directory
- ActivityPub | Fediverse
- Learn | Explore
Other candidate items: News, About, Calendar, Blog, AP feed (icon), RSS feed (icon)
“Getting Started” Hero
The hero is the invitation to delve right in. Here’s the starting point onboarding newcomers to the fedi dev community. The “Getting Started” journey MUST lead to a proper understanding of the Standards Process.
- Hero title: ActivityPub Rocks!
- Hero tagline: Delve into the Fediverse (TBD, something snappy and fun)
- Hero text: TBD (with a single “Getting Started” link to it)
- Hero iconbar: TBD (optional, some direct jumps, e.g. to SocialCG, SH forum)
- Hero mascot: TBD (a cute and fun mascot representing the developer hub)
“Standards Movement” Section
Instant clarity on the Standards Process that drives AS/AP-based Fediverse evolution. Plus drill-down into more explanatory page(s). Some creativity needed to convey the relationship:
- W3C → SocialHub → FEP
Layout-wise it may be a horizontal section with 3 blocks for each part of this process.
“Grassroots Fedi” Highlights
Fediverse is, and will always be, a grassroots movement. There’s a ton of activity in independent projects, communities and other initiatives. The portal should provide an entry to all that excitement. However, there are too many initiatives to list them all on the landing page. Instead the most prominent and valuable ones can be highlighted. Followed by a link to a “Discover more…” Directory page (that can have categories and filtering and such).
The Directory Highlights section may 4 blocks by 2 rows in a card layout, and where the highlighted initiatives can deliver the card image and text. Clicking a card may either directly lead to the initiative, or to a sub-page that presents the initiative with some additional useful metadata (contact persons, repo’s, etc.)
“News & Events” Section
This may be a 2-column list of News, Announcements, Blog Posts, and Calendar Events.
Footer
A 4 column list of relevant/important links as you often encounter them, e.g. see codeberg.org
Thoughts on Sub-Pages
About page
The “About Us” page should once more clearly outline the structure of the Standards Movement and reference the Standards Process, with URL’s to the appropriate locations.
Notably this page SHOULD highlight a clear Mission and Vision for the Fediverse wrt AS/AP et al. Laying out a shared (technology) vision that is indicative of the full potential of the Fediverse to be unleashed is important to foster a creative mindset that helps drive Fediverse evolution. The Mission should serve to activate people towards that vision, and encourage collaboration in the appropriate places, with emphasis on emergence of an open and inclusive ecosystem.
A “History of ActivityPub Rocks” section gives due credit to the contributors/maintainers of Haunt and @cwebber’s involvement.
Directory page
The Fediverse emerged from a grassroots movement. It was created by everyone for everyone. The openness of the ecosystem that emerged is one of the greatest qualities of the Fediverse, and MUST be fostered and protected. All the various independent initiatives that exist are collectively driving evolution.
Fediverse technology is decentralized. But also the people evolving it work in decentralized groups.
This is great and helps make the Fediverse more diverse, and resilient. But all the various initiatives are also highly fragmented, often hard to find. Wheels are reinvented because of that, and collaboration opportunities are lost. An important objective of the portal MUST be to allow initiatives in the Grassroots Fediverse to find each other.
The Directory page facilitates that. Functionality TBD.