Website message overhaul

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg at gmx.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.937.1321304740.24802.digitalmars-d at puremagic.com...
> On Monday, November 14, 2011 11:45:58 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 11/14/11 1:10 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>> > On Mon, 14 Nov 2011 03:50:04 +0200, Andrei Alexandrescu
>> >
>> > <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>> >> Walter and I have been working on the website for a while. We want to
>> >> crystallize a clear message of what the D programming language is.
>> >
>> > It's way too cheesy in my opinion. Reads like a desperate sales pitch.
>> > Also, too much text - right now it looks like an unappealing wall of
>> > text. Also, ads? Really? Are we so cheap that we can't even afford web
>> > hosting without annoying the user with often embarrassingly-irrelevant
>> > advertisements?
>> >
>> > Compare with other programming language websites:
>> >
>> > http://golang.org/
>> > http://www.scala-lang.org/
>> > http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/
>> > http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/cambridge/projects/fsharp/
>>
>> There was more text on the page before, including a code example that
>> wasn't very illustrative.
>>
>> While working on the homepage I kept an eye on those websites and others
>> (Perl, Java) and my perception is that the proposed website compares
>> well with others.
>>
>> Regarding ads, this is my "I told you" moment. I am completely opposed
>> to ads anywhere on d-p-l.org, and I believe their presence hurts us in
>> ways that the cost savings doesn't even begin to cover. I see it as a
>> textbook case of "penny wise". That being said, Walter agreed with
>> removing ads from the homepage but not the other parts of the site. I
>> didn't get to that yet.
>
> d-programming-language.org has ads?! LOL. I have so much stuff blocked in 
> my
> hosts file that I didn't have a clue that that was the case. Yeah. I can
> understand wanting to recoup server costs and whatnot, but having ads on 
> the
> home page of programming language definitely strikes me as bad. Even if 
> it's
> just to recoup costs, it makes it look like we're trying to make money out 
> of
> the deal, which is _not_ a good impression to make.
>

I've never seen them either. I *hope* they're at least text-only. Animating 
ads are an evil scourge upon the internet. Not only are they almost always 
irritating, but I find it physically impossible to read a page that has 
anything animating on it (and I'm fairly young). That's the single main 
reason I installed AdBlock Plus in the first place - so I could actually 
*use* the web.