[OT] Re: Redesign of dlang.org

[Gary Willoughby via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 18:13:50 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> On 7/28/14, 10:25 AM, Gary Willoughby wrote:
>> On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 10:38:12 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
>>> "completely the wrong way to design anything.", "current 
>>> design look
>>> ridiculous", "poor amateurish design", "i wish you would stop 
>>> right
>>> now" - all of those comments look pretty destructive to me.
>>
>> No, that's the truth! You can sugar coat it all you want but at
>> the end of the day you have to be blunt and honest if you want
>> professional results.
>
> No, if you want professional results you have to do 
> professional work.
>
> Andrei

Of course, but you have to be honest when things are not going 
well!

On Monday, 28 July 2014 at 18:51:45 UTC, Sönke Ludwig wrote:
> Also, and this needs to be stressed, the major part of w0rp's 
> work so far is about the technical basis. You dismissed that as 
> a minor detail, but it is not.

The design is *the* most important part of the web site. Period! 
No one cares how it works, only the user experience of the site 
matters. Do you think users give a hoot how facebook works?

Yes someone does have to do the 'technical stuff' behind the 
scenes. I do it on a daily basis but users don't care about the 
backend. Even if the case was made that *this* site is for 
engineers, the design will do. Well, systems engineers are 
sticking with C/C++ and app devs are sticking with Java/C# so we 
must make this site as accessible for everyone. We need to 'sell' 
D, not make it look amateurish.

In andreis Quo vadis talk i found it inspiring that he said in 
order to be considered a player we need to start acting like a 
player (paraphrasing). We need to start upping our game at this 
stuff!

The whole reason for this site's existence is to 'sell' D as much 
as possible _including_ being used as a repository of knowledge. 
It will sell better if the design is good, easy on the eye and 
easy to find what you need. The w0rp design is none of those, 
stop pretending it is.

Also who starts a project without designing it first? I mean 
honestly, why start such a major piece of work without even a 
vague spec? Has w0rp even asked users here what the site needs to 
encompass? Has the question been asked what content must exist, 
who needs what info and where, colour schemes, for mobile 
devices?  etc.

</flogging dead horse>