Dear Community Members,
I am finally able to build a new website for
Xen.org. The
aim of this work is to create an engaging and integrated community
web site
that invites participation and acts as a portal for Xen users,
developers and
companies in the eco-system. You can give input on the site by
going to http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/New_Xen_Website
The new site will have several main areas:
The home page, which mainly acts as an
aggregator for news
and activity happening in the community. This should make it
easier for
newcomers to Xen, to have a brief look and get a feeling of the
vibrancy of the
Xen community. There is
actually a lot
of activity today: it is merely obscured and hidden as the
activity is
dispersed to many places. The home page will also provide a window
into the new
Xen.org blog, as well as sections for Xen events, etc.
An area for users. This area will provide
information
about Xen and Xen projects, will help you learn about Xen, will
point people to
downloads and Linux/Unix distributions that contain Xen, will help
you find
documentation, will help
you get help
and support, etc. Xen has traditionally been a very developer
focused
community. As a
consequence we have not
supported our users that well. I have some open questions in this
area, where I
will be looking for your input. For example: is there a preference
for mailing
lists, forums, or stackoverflow like functionality? How should we
best link to
Linux distributions and other projects that distribute Xen?
An eco-system area: this is essentially a
searchable
directory of product and projects that use Xen, modify Xen, build
on top of
Xen, distribute Xen, etc. It is also a directory of research
around Xen and
services such as consultancy, training, hosting and cloud vendors
that are
built on top of Xen. This section will be fairly interactive: the
intention is
that if you are a vendor, you can add an entry to the directory
which will be
approved by a moderator moderator before publication. As a user of
the
directory, you can rate, recommend, comment on vendors, products,
projects,
etc.
An area for developers: this contains project
descriptions, links to downloads, codelines, information about
governance,
mailing lists, etc.
Other changes: the site will have the
capability to
register users. Generally, all areas of the site will be
accessible without any
user account, except for areas where you need to write to the site
and
identification is thus necessary. We envisage that we will be able
to implement
single sign-on capability for the new site and at least the Xen wiki. There will be user
profiles that
allow you to provide information about how you use Xen, but
ultimately you only
have to provide what you are comfortable with. The idea is for
example that I
can implement functionality such as the old community spotlight
section by just
maintaining a list of profile names. Name, pictures, bio, etc.
would be managed
and maintained by you. I am also looking at capabilities, such as
being able to
send newsletters, to registered site users.
Where I need your input
We will consult you on questions such as look
and feel, on a
new or revamped Xen logo, on new panda's, on navigation, on some
of the
headlines and taglines.
In some areas we do not quite know
what you want from
Xen.org: e.g. should we have a user mailing list, user fora and/or
support
forum functionality similar to stackoverflow? Should we make the
developer
mailing lists accessible via the website?
I also wanted to get views on whether it is OK
to require
logging into the site before you download a Xen or XCP binary. My
thinking is
that this is not good, but that it is OK to ask you nicely to sign
in and/or
create an account before you download. Having some information
about its users
is important to maintain the long term health of an open source
project: today
Xen has very little information about its users. Mainly, because we never asked.
Providing information
is an easy way how you can give something back to the community.
Another area where we will consult you is on
how we migrate
you from existing systems to the new one. Is it OK, to migrate
existing users
to the new site (using some kind of opt-out or activation scheme)?
Is it not,
etc.?
Links to feedback sheets, mockups, etc. can be
found here: http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/New_Xen_Website
Looking forward to hear from you
Best Regards
Lars
