# Proposed new FreeBSD.org website design



## usdmatt (Nov 4, 2015)

This has already been mentioned in the thread below, but it was suggested that it should be a separate discussion (makes perfect sense), so I may as well start it. Someone also mentioned discussion on a mailing list but I can't find that?

https://reviews.freebsd.org/D3934
http://www.freesbd.org/
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/the-actual-freebsd-logo.53849/

Personally I'm not a fan.

I like that it's responsive, as well as thinking that being responsive to tablet/mobile/etc is one good reason why a new website should be considered.

However, I think it's a bit *too* sparse. There really isn't much to it, and a lot of what is there could do with polishing up a bit. For some reason the languages always split across two lines for me, the footer looks like no real thought has been put into the layout - there's just a big block of links, and why is the logo 5 times the size of any logo I've ever seen on a website before? Also the search could do with spacing away from the menu on the smaller layout, and the same for the content and side menu on other pages. All in all it has a long way to go for me.

This may be a contentious point but I think FreeBSD is a great project with some global-scale users. I think if they're going to rebuild the entire site, they may as well try and actually make it look like an enterprise grade product, and try and give the same sort of impression you get from sites like suse.com or ubuntu.com. I've no doubt some people on here will jump in to tell me how much they hate both those websites and anything like it, but to me the new design still looks like a pet project compared to them.

I would like to try myself but I've always been more of a developer than designer. Unfortunately I get the impression the people behind the existing website, and this new design, are probably in the same position. Maybe it needs a completely different tactic and the Foundation should consider hiring a designer to draw up designs (no code literally just mockups)? Completely unrelated but I believe Roundcube just hire an external designer for their web interfaces and their existing interface was great back in the day (looking a bit tired now) and the new Roundcube Next interface looks awesome.

Or course it's probably mostly a waste of time. The entire existing system is built on some giant XML/XLST templating/automation system I believe (my idea of hell). The people behind that aren't going to be the ones making a new website, and anyone from outside is going to struggle to create something that integrates perfectly with the existing infrastructure.


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## wblock@ (Nov 4, 2015)

The existing website does a lot of things, and not all of them are obvious.  Of course, discussions of a replacement are often diverted by what it should look like.  That is really one of the easier issues.  The more difficult ones are documenting everything the existing site does, and having viable replacements for all of that functionality.

To be clear: I'm a documentation committer, a member of doceng, and was involved with the talks about the proposed new web site since 2014.  It was not something I particularly wanted to do, people asked.  The most recent discussion of that proposed site took place in several different locations, not all of them public.  It was a largely one-sided and unproductive discussion.

To replace the existing web site successfully, it must first be fully understood.  A lack of understanding of legacy systems is one reason so many IT projects fail.

The web site is part of the documentation tree, and can be checked out and built locally.  I recommend this as a first step to understanding.  See the FDP Primer chapter on that for instructions on building it.  See the Quick Start to get a documentation tree checkout.

Some of the site is hand-written HTML, some is HTML generated from XML source documents.  There is some CGI.  It is not a CMS, no database is involved.  It is more like the new trend of static site generators in how it works.

The CSS is available in en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/layout/css.

There are many areas where it could be improved.  For example, the quarterly status reports depend on XML documents submitted by people who generally do not write those type of documents.  This could be made easier for them by using one of the more common web markup languages.

To me, the CGI portions are a weakness, requiring a web server and additional code to work.  Can they be reworked or eliminated to remove that need?  Probably.
There are portions where people are expected to maintain sections of raw HTML.
I would prefer to see more separation between content and presentation.  We have a provision for "Styles" in these forums so that people can choose how they look.  Why couldn't we do that for the main web site also?

The look of the site can be drastically changed just by editing the CSS.  I know this for a fact, because I recently changed only the parts relating to font size and screen width and people thought we had redesigned the site.

If needed, new images and possibly Javascript could be added.  The question then becomes whether the way the site is generated needs to change, rather than just the way it looks.


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## Beastie7 (Nov 4, 2015)

Wow.. I had no idea the site was so monolithic. And XML? Ugh.. 



wblock@ said:


> The web site is part of the documentation tree



Why is this?


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## wblock@ (Nov 4, 2015)

usdmatt said:


> Or course it's probably mostly a waste of time. The entire existing system is built on some giant XML/XLST templating/automation system I believe (my idea of hell). The people behind that aren't going to be the ones making a new website, and anyone from outside is going to struggle to create something that integrates perfectly with the existing infrastructure.


I disagree.  We doc people are the people behind it, and we update docs and the web site all the time.  We just don't throw out working build systems until there is a viable replacement.

As far as integrating with the existing infrastructure, agreed to some extent.  But that is always the case with legacy systems, and why it seems so simple to just throw it all out and replace with a new, clean implementation.  Until you learn about all the stuff the old system does...


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## wblock@ (Nov 4, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> Wow.. I had no idea the site was so monolithic. And XML? Ugh..


We must have different definitions of "monolithic", because I just posted about how at least three different systems were used.  That does not include the documentation, which is in DocBook.



Beastie7 said:


> > The web site is part of the documentation tree
> 
> 
> Why is this?


I can only guess that when the original source, ports, and doc repositories were created, the web site seemed to go most logically with doc.  Much of the web site contents come from the documentation tree anyway.


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## usdmatt (Nov 4, 2015)

Obviously I'm not suggesting that the entire current management system be dropped. Just that trying to get a new website, especially one developed by people who haven't had historic involvement with the site, integrated with the existing infrastructure is probabaly going to be the main stumbling block.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 4, 2015)

usdmatt said:


> The entire existing system is built on some giant XML/XLST templating/automation system I believe (my idea of hell).


XML and XSLT are alive and well in many places. There is even new tech being introduced that is, essentially, XML . AJAX (XHR) had XML in its name. What goes around, comes around.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 4, 2015)

wblock@ said:


> To me, the CGI portions are a weakness, requiring a web server and additional code to work.


Can you explain that? How would the site not use a web server?


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## wblock@ (Nov 4, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Can you explain that? How would the site not use a web server?


Sorry, that was not clear.  When you generate the web site locally for editing and testing, all the generated HTML files can be viewed just as static files.  Nothing extra is needed but a browser.  However, anything provided by a CGI script cannot be tested unless a web server is installed and set up for CGI.


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## kpa (Nov 4, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Can you explain that? How would the site not use a web server?



The current website could be just static pages even with the manual pages pre-rendered. The thinking that you have to have active content to have a good website is flawed IMO.


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## usdmatt (Nov 4, 2015)

I think that's one thing most people would agree on (although probably not lol). It makes far more sense for the FreeBSD website to be pre-generated, then consist entirely of HTML documents, than have some overly complex dynamic website that needs a web server, or even worse one of those fancy ruby/Python/insert-new-language-of-the-week deployment systems just to test with.

From a sysadmin point of view, hosting and running the actual site would be much more predictable and easy to manage if it's static.


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## usdmatt (Nov 4, 2015)

But seriously XML sucks 

I remember when it first became popular and was going to revolutionise the Internet. Everything was going to use XML and a simple text format was going to change the world. I even bought into it and used XML as the config file format for one of my projects once. Just made the config file 10x bigger than it needed to be, more hassle to edit, and needed expat + a bunch of dependencies installed to parse it... Unfortunately for Microsoft they seem to have brought into it a bit too much for their config format as they use it everywhere. I think their parser is pretty efficient these days though and at the least it means they can create universal tools to generate, edit and validate configuration files against DTDs, etc.

It was supposed to be a simple format that a CS graduate could write a parser for in a couple of hours. The ability to parse it with any simple code died out almost immediately when they started bringing in namespaces and every other kitchen sink feature it now has.

I also used AJAX once. I think that was also Microsoft funnily enough who decided XML was a great format for browser data interchange and coined the acronym. I believe they first used it for Outlook Web in IE. Pretty much the first time I tried it I realised how ridiculous it was spinning up an XML parser instance in the browser just to parse a bit of data from the server. Just sending a simple string produced about 5 times as much XML compared to just using plain text or JSON and performed like crap.

Of course I appreciate a lot of legacy (and new) systems use XML, and make very good use of it. I believe there's a pretty "enterprise" document management system (docbook?) based on XML or similar that probably does all sorts of clever stuff (In fact I seem to remember some document format using an older, more complex ancestor of XML?). Probably why FreeBSD docs are all XML based. I also fully agree that the existing FreeBSD doc system needs to stay as it is, and that any new website needs to work with content generated via the existing infrastructure. I'm mostly being awkward but await the flaming .


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## kpa (Nov 4, 2015)

There's nothing wrong with separating content and structure from presentation and formatting. XML and the related technologies just get it wrong by insisting on a clumsy format that nobody wants to edit directly.


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## usdmatt (Nov 4, 2015)

In all fairness, for the FreeBSD website and associated data (handbook, etc), what else is there other than XML that can be used to create text based data documents, which can be source controlled, then rendered into HTML, PDF, man pages or whatever other format you might want to view the data in? Off the top of my head I can't think of anything decent.


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## wblock@ (Nov 4, 2015)

As said earlier, we could generate the web site with something else.  But first, let's say this:

Here is the generated HTML of the site.  You have complete freedom to do whatever you want with the CSS.  It is more complicated to change some of the HTML or the make(1) system, but still possible.

Given that, why even worry about replacing the build system?  What changes to the site would require that?

This is the opportunity for anyone who does not like the web site: check out the doc tree, rip out the CSS, and do it "right".  Or just modify the existing CSS to make it better.  Submit the diff to reviews.freebsd.org, and please be sure to add me as a reviewer.


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## usdmatt (Nov 4, 2015)

I'm probably being a bit of *** just complaining about things and not attempting to do actually anything but I really don't have time to work on it. Maybe if I had something more usable than a laptop at home but unfortunately I don't at the moment.

I just thought that if this is a serious enough attempt to update freebsd.org that it has a website, GitHub and has actually been submitted to reviews.freebsd.org, that there should be a thread on here for people to discuss it, even if it has kind of veered away from talking about the design so far.


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## wblock@ (Nov 4, 2015)

Sorry, wasn't calling you out or anything.  People complain about the web site, and rightly so.  A few notes like these might prevent hurt feelings when someone works hard on a replacement that we might not be able to use, and now seemed like a good time to give some notes on how the present site works.

And I'm serious about the CSS rework, I would love to see a rework of the site.  Or several.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 4, 2015)

wblock@ said:


> And I'm serious about the CSS rework, I would love to see a rework of the site.


The reason I asked my questions, and visited the github site, was cause I was going to see what was involved with the started rewrite by Claudia. I own a web dev company, and we do pretty good, but it's smaller sites in the entertainment and restaurant sectors but none as big as what FreeBSD is if you include everything. Not that I'm afraid of that but it's a matter of not knowing how far the rabbit hole goes and "Why are you working on that when you should be working on this?!!" I'll hear, I'm sure.

I have one project I'm trying to finish. The wife is going out of town to see our son tomorrow. I'll see if I can get to it.


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## wblock@ (Nov 4, 2015)

Thank you!  If you need help, ask and I will try to provide it.


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## PacketMan (Nov 5, 2015)

wblock@ said:


> The existing website does a lot of things, and not all of them are obvious.  Of course, discussions of a replacement are often diverted by what it should look like.  That is really one of the easier issues.  The more difficult ones are documenting everything the existing site does, and having viable replacements for all of that functionality.
> 
> ......
> 
> To replace the existing web site successfully, it must first be fully understood.  A lack of understanding of legacy systems is one reason so many IT projects fail.



Bulls eye.  From my view point and use: I think the site is pretty darn good as it is.  Please ask youselves, what is the problem you're trying to fix.  Might see like a silly question, but it can bring a lot of sanity to the discussion.


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## freethread (Nov 5, 2015)

From my point of view, the web site has a lot of informations about the project and developers, perhaps not all 'important' pages are accessible from a menu o sub menu (on the pages) but mingled with the text. The forums site is (at the time) a bit slow repect to phpBB and vBulletin (vBulletin was very fast). Nothing to blame to, the bandwidth grows and code follows (and I only use the 1% of the features).

Aestetically, it's another thing, I do not really see as it should, due to network filters. It's not attractive as someone would, it's an OS web site, after all.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 5, 2015)

PacketMan said:


> I think the site is pretty darn good as it is. Please ask youselves, what is the problem you're trying to fix.


I don't want to get into a point-by-point discussion of that now but there are a lot of design issues going on; some of them not so obvious unless you know what to look for. We had a local ice cream maker that used to advertise, "It's a subtle difference that makes all the difference."


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## wblock@ (Nov 5, 2015)

The top of my list would be organization/usability issues.  Things can be hard to find, and every so often people who have been using the site for years will discover a section they never knew existed.  It is also somewhat complex, with multiple ways to get to the same place.  The web2py page is an example of better organization and simplicity, in my opinion.


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## Beastie7 (Nov 5, 2015)

I don't think the website does a good job in the way it advertises what FreeBSD can do, what it offers, etc. This may sound dumb but I'd like to see more graphical representations than just a huge wall of text and libraries. If I were a new user, and I saw something like "hast(8) or jail(8)", then a bunch of uber-computer-science jargon, I wouldn't know what to think. It's easier to get a point across for the wider audience with "laymen" material. The Ubuntu website does this very well.


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## chrbr (Nov 6, 2015)

I think the FreeBSD website does it very well. On the Ubuntu page are lots of images and nice photos, the website looks consistant and so on. This is really advertisment. Many people will like it. On the other hand on the FreeBSD start page I have everything on one screen. Nothing is overloaded. It is clear. This is some consistency with FreeBSD - if I am allowed to say so as a newcomer. I do not write this to attack anybody.  Usually advertisment requires to define the target group. I think it can be a good idea not to follow the modern style. It can be better to be distinguished from others.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 6, 2015)

You have to think and measure why people come to any web site and who those people are. In the case of FreeBSD.org, they're technical people looking for information, whether they are new to FreeBSD or not. So information, not advertising the product, is key but some plug would be good such as "Why FreeBSD?" and "The Power to Serve!"

No. I haven't touched this yet. I may need to put it off for a couple of days.


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## beastDemian (Nov 6, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> You have to think and measure why people come to any web site and who those people are. In the case of FreeBSD.org, they're technical people looking for information, whether they are new to FreeBSD or not.


+1

Whenever I use the website is usually to look for technicall information (70% of the time, to download a new release). While I agree the site could use a makeover, the most important thing is being able to find those things easily.


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## protocelt (Nov 6, 2015)

The site could be organized a little better for easier access to information though I don't think it needs pretty graphics and a complete makeover in my opinion. It's a technical project, not a tech startup.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 6, 2015)

protocelt said:


> I don't think it needs pretty graphics and a complete makeover in my opinion. It's a technical project, not a tech startup.


Redoing a web site doesn't mean adding graphics, necessarily. If the graphic doesn't add meaning, then it serves no purpose.

After structuring the page, my first consideration is positioning of the content. The second would be the typography. Some of the most beautiful sites I've seen were nothing but nicely laid out typography.

But I said I would look into what changes could be made to the styling. A lot can be done but my hands will be tied down a bit if I'm not able to change the HTML. That would be a whole 'nother can of worms  so doing this first is easiest.


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## protocelt (Nov 6, 2015)

Certainly reasonable.


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## Beastie7 (Nov 7, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> You have to think and measure why people come to any web site and who those people are. In the case of FreeBSD.org, they're technical people looking for information, whether they are new to FreeBSD or not. So information, not advertising the product, is key but some plug would be good such as "Why FreeBSD?" and "The Power to Serve!"
> 
> No. I haven't touched this yet. I may need to put it off for a couple of days.



This type of preconceived judgement is why FreeBSD doesn't have the help and mind-share it deserves. Historical background and Bias side, FreeBSD is a general systems platform, It is not? As such, it should cater to the general audience, "technical"/"Professional" or not. Historical background should not restrain the Project to one facet of computing.

Advertising and information go hand-in-hand, so using at least some graphical representations to describe technological features or meaning won't take away from anything. It grabs attention, it makes user experience more aesthetically pleasing and easier to understand. This is important especially for younger audiences, adoption, etc.

You can't keep presenting the same crap over and over if you want more people using our software. I'm not saying to go all out with pretty ponies and such (Like Mozilla, for example) but a good mix is needed, because its presentation sucks. It needs to be "louder".


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 7, 2015)

Beastie7 You are confusing advertising with graphics. You are stating graphics are needed but why? What is the purpose of a graphic? You don't put graphics on a page just because. It must serve a purpose and not exist for the sole purpose of being there. Otherwise it's only a distraction.

Presentation also is no indicator that a graphic of any kind is needed. As I said earlier, some of the most beautiful sites I've seen, and books and magazines, too, have no images on them at all but are carefully laid out using type alone. Does that help their cause? Sure. Does that help our cause? Don't know yet. Does it need some imagery and graphics? Don't know yet. What should they be and what are they for?

As far as "preconceived judgement", I said it should be thought about and measured so there is no preconception except, perhaps, you meant when I said the people who come to this site are technical people. I really don't see how anyone would disagree that people who land here are technically inclined people coming here intentionally to learn about FreeBSD. I can't think of why anyone else would come here except by accident.

Of course I could be wrong, to some extent, but that's why you measure these things.

I'm in the entertainment industries and restaurants so I'm more than aware of entertaining visitors with silly explosions but also aware of who wants to just read the documentation. You have to be able to explain every item on each page and why it needs to be there. At least good sites do that.


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## Beastie7 (Nov 7, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Beastie7 You are confusing advertising with graphics. You are stating graphics are needed but why? What is the purpose of a graphic? You don't put graphics on a page just because. It must serve a purpose and not exist for the sole purpose of being there. Otherwise it's only a distraction.



I don't see the confusion here. What I've explained above is marketing 101. I'm not saying add graphics for the sake of graphics.



drhowarddrfine said:


> Presentation also is no indicator that a graphic of any kind is needed. As I said earlier, some of the most beautiful sites I've seen, and books and magazines, too, have no images on them at all but are carefully laid out using type alone. Does that help their cause? Sure. Does that help our cause? Don't know yet. Does it need some imagery and graphics? Don't know yet. What should they be and what are they for?



It's a relative process of presentation. The cause is to promote FreeBSD. What about FreeBSD specifically? That's a whole 'nother topic.



drhowarddrfine said:


> As far as "preconceived judgement", I said it should be thought about and measured so there is no preconception except, perhaps, you meant when I said the people who come to this site are technical people. I really don't see how anyone would disagree that people who land here are technically inclined people coming here intentionally to learn about FreeBSD. I can't think of why anyone else would come here except by accident.



Describe "technical" people. What does it mean to "Learn about FreeBSD"? FreeBSD encompasses many facets of computing. Anyone from any background can come to FreeBSD looking for information. That's hardly a measurement. The point is a more simplistic way of conveying information, it better illustrates value for the common Joe and helps with adoption. People like easy shit to read.

If all we're going to do is throw a wall of text at people; we might as well just give up, do it OpenBSD style and be done with it.



drhowarddrfine said:


> I'm in the entertainment industries and restaurants so I'm more than aware of entertaining visitors with silly explosions but also aware of who wants to just read the documentation. You have to be able to explain every item on each page and why it needs to be there. At least good sites do that.



I think you're misconstruing my reasoning and process of promotion. I take it you've never sold before.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 7, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> I take it you've never sold before.


Don't go there. I've owned my own restaurants for 30 years and four sales awards. I was on the regional advertising board for a national restaurant chain for five years. I was a systems engineer going out on sales calls with Pixar and SGI. I've owned my own web dev company for 11 years obviously selling my services. I worked in radio and television for 10 years.

I have some experience with this stuff.


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## freethread (Nov 7, 2015)

I interrupt your brainstorming for a while, sorry. As @wblock said, the web site should be done with a new framework (web2py) but the discussion is more about how it should looks. The two things are not related, however as of the MVC model the two things are separated, in my experience, for what is worth, yes the two things are separated except where they touch, when you will write the theme (or the equivalent of it) and start swearing, you reached the point where they touch. This has more than a solution each one has its effort (violating the MVC is the effortless solution, it depends on the framework, anyways). Once you have selected the framework (or CMS, most of the work is already done, if it fits), someone works on the framework (data organization, extension modules or plug-ins, etc.) and someone other on the mock-up and theme, as usual.

In my opinion, the actual content of the site does not need big changes, it should only be organized a bit with links to pages hard to find. As an example, using something like Bootstrap plus Awesome Icons (this is only an example, I never used Bootstrap, jQuery + jQueryUI are more or less the same and 99% the JavaScript library choosen is jQuery) with the actual content, layout and images, the result should not be bad: a menu bar and bottom page menu, a sidebar menu, a button here a button group there (with icons if you like), lists with icons ('<ul>' and '<dl>'), redesign background images (if needed) and the site seems it was whole redesigned.

The thing that get me paranoid is writing the content of the pages, yes, it's unusual perhaps, but writing content in HTML is not my sport, then for my local (LAN) website (and theme, Drupal 7 here) I created a specific configuration for AsciiDoc, it generates content from text files formatted for AsciiDoc in static pages with .php extension, however the content is HTML with only the content of the '<body>' tag (not included). So each Drupal page (inside the CMS) is a 3 lines PHP code that load the page from disk (the .php page created with AsciiDoc) from a directory. Part of the name of the directory (the final part) is the same as the URL alias of the page, that is

```
URL = http://example.com/path/to/page
File path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . $sOptionalSubdir . 'path/to/page.php'
```
and included like any other .php file.

This way, the website main menu (menu tree) has the same structure of the directory tree where load pages. That's for static pages, the only one I use, I'm the only user, so there is no forums, the comments are used as '@todo's  (reminders) on pages related to projects.

As someone stated, AsciiDoc cannot be used to generate a website, I agree, however Markdown, MarkdownExtra & co. can be good or not depending on the needs. A complex HTML structure, customized styles and perhaps some other things I forgot, can be done only inserting HTML in Markdown directly, but... HTML is not my sport, then AsciiDoc. The best, in my opinion, should be MarkdownExtra plus Doxygen macros, this way solve all cases (and can replace AsciiDoc).

Define all the styles and structures used in HTML (separated by regions: content, header, footer, sidebars, etc.), create the AsciiDoc configuration (with external .js and .css, no header, no footer), HTML structures as AsciiDoc macros (with hardcoded styles where needed). It took me a bit as I still have to understand the whole syntax of the AsciiDoc configuration files, but it's done. Also created a filter to change the code syntax highlight engine, from pygments to Syntax Highlighter by Alex Gorbatchev (I posted the filter configuration on AsciiDoc forum. One year ago?).


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 7, 2015)

Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. I want to remind anyone who reads this that I said I was going to look at the CSS, the styling, to see what could be done to improve the look and feel of the site cause that would be the easiest thing to experiment with. Any changes beyond that are more complicated and invasive and something I don't think the organization would want me to mess with right now cause I don't know the background, their interests, or how it all comes together.


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## freethread (Nov 7, 2015)

I agree with drhowarddrfine on this point. Starting with few changes like styles, already can give you 'another site' and the effort is at minimun, plus you cannot do big mistakes and cannot broke the site.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 7, 2015)

freethread said:


> plus you cannot do big mistakes and cannot broke the site.


So you've never seen my work.


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## protocelt (Nov 7, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> So you've never seen my work.


No, and the work better be good or the mob of beastie pitchforks at your door will make for a very unpleasant experience. 

In any case, I appreciate you offering the help.


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## wblock@ (Nov 7, 2015)

freethread said:


> As @wblock said, the web site should be done with a new framework (web2py) but the discussion is more about how it should looks.


What?  I did _not_ say that!

What I said was that the web2py web site was a good example of better organization and simplicity.  I think that our existing layout can be greatly improved without switching to a new framework, and possibly without modifying the existing one much.

drhowarddrfine, changes to the HTML are not ruled out.  If HTML changes are really needed, well, we will see.  The nice thing about the CSS is that it can be added without changing anything structural.

Beastie7, I encourage you (and anyone interested) to check out the website source and experiment with it.  As I said before, I like the idea of users picking out their own "theme" for the site.  Whether that is practical, I don't know.  If we had to pick only one, it would still be nice to have the choices.  And elements of multiple designs could be combined.

A note of caution: this is one of those topics that encourages people to _bikeshed_: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikeshed.  Be prepared to have a thick skin if you actually produce something to show to people.  If you are just commenting on others' work, please be constructive and considerate of their effort.


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## freethread (Nov 8, 2015)

wblock@


wblock@ said:


> What? I did _not_ say that!
> 
> What I said was that the web2py web site was a good example of better organization and simplicity. I think that our existing layout can be greatly improved without switching to a new framework, and possibly without modifying the existing one much.


I misunderstood you. In this case what I said about the changing framework must be ignored, however my previous post was not about choosing a framework or a CMS, it was a 'warning, someone said the framework should be changed!'.
I still quote what drhowarddrfine said that modified in the right way what I said about Bootstrap + Awesome Icons. With Bootstrap the HTML must be modified, while playing with CSS avoid this.

drhowarddrfine


drhowarddrfine said:


> So you've never seen my work.


No, I'm curious to see it.


I'm not read all the words in all posts (last 5/6 before mine), I miss something important that hidden me the big picture. I still have troubles with verbs in the subjunctive, conditional, and similar devilry (in iatalian : too).


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## scottro (Nov 8, 2015)

freethread, drhowarddrfine was making a joke.  If you're not a native English speaker, it can be a little hard to catch.  His meaning, in this case, was that even though such a thing couldn't break a site, he would break the site. It's self-deprecating humor, but again, if English isn't your first language, it's not that easy to catch.


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## freethread (Nov 8, 2015)

scottro you are right and I should stay away from threads of this kind, or at least wait for the time things will be more clear. Now I caught the joke, in italian is the same joke, perhaps if I hear the tone of the voice and see it in face I can understand.


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## Beastie7 (Nov 8, 2015)

wblock@ said:


> Beastie7, I encourage you (and anyone interested) to check out the website source and experiment with it. As I said before, I like the idea of users picking out their own "theme" for the site. Whether that is practical, I don't know. If we had to pick only one, it would still be nice to have the choices. And elements of multiple designs could be combined.



I intend to. It's on my list of things to play with. If the project ends up settling on a python based framework, that'll be even better.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 8, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> If the project ends up settling on a python based framework, that'll be even better.


I won't be any part of that. This need for people to use interpreted languages on the the latest framework-of -the-day is a blunder of the highest order that prevails on the web today.

Side note: Despite my intention to work on the CSS while my wife was gone, I've failed and only given it a passing glance. Not that I've given up trying. I'm just more occupied with other projects that won't go away. One day out of the blue, though, I'll give it a burst of activity and see where we are then.


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## hitest (Nov 8, 2015)

I like the fact that the FreeBSD forum loads quickly on my dual core FreeBSD box.  The page organization and layout meets my needs.


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## protocelt (Nov 8, 2015)

hitest said:


> I like the fact that the FreeBSD forum loads quickly on my dual core FreeBSD box.  The page organization and layout meets my needs.


While connected, the Forums are separate from the main FreeBSD website. It's the main website being discussed here.


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## hitest (Nov 8, 2015)

protocelt said:


> While connected, the Forums are separate from the main FreeBSD website. It's the main website being discussed here.



Thanks, mate.  My mistake.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 9, 2015)

I actually found some time to look at this for a bit. There is going to be a bit of an effort involved beyond minor improvements. It's definitely not a weekend project.


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## protocelt (Nov 9, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> I actually found some time to look at this for a bit. There is going to be a bit of an effort involved beyond minor improvements. It's definitely not a weekend project.


So more than just some CSS improvements in your opinion?


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 9, 2015)

I was only going to do CSS for now. Warren said the HTML is available for change but that's throwing more irons in the fire and I don't know how deep that rabbit hole goes or how much time I'd have to give to that. Quite frankly, I'd rewrite the whole thing.

Maybe rather than going all in, I could suggest small, incremental changes that would be easy to implement now and just as easy to revert. In fact, I think I'll do that.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 9, 2015)

Something I scribbled together as I'm going to bed so I don't forget in the morning. Top of the home page if I could rewrite it. Incomplete. Forgot to put Beastie in there.
http://imgur.com/6WhBh1c


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## protocelt (Nov 10, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Something I scribbled together as I'm going to bed so I don't forget in the morning. Top of the home page if I could rewrite it. Incomplete. Forgot to put Beastie in there.
> http://imgur.com/6WhBh1c


FWIW, I like it. I might take away a few points for lack of ponies though.


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