[Members] jabber.org website mandate

[Bart van Bragt]

Ulrich Staudinger wrote:
> a) more tech savy people ? This includes linux developers, linux users, 
> producers, developers, supporters, gurus, decision makers, professional 
> it people, tech affine people of any age.
> * As information rich as possible
> * As concise as possible
> * As deep information as possible
Sounds great for xmpp.org, jabber.org should contain some links to 
xmpp.org but besides that it would probably be smart to keep the really 
technical stuff on xmpp.org

> b) more windows end users ?  This includes grandmas, teens, people at 
> home, pupils at school, non-tech affine people of any age.
> * As little complexity on the site as possible
> * As service and feature rich as necessary
> * As user friendly and usable as possible
Yup. IMO this is _the_ thing missing for Jabber (and a killer 
app/feature :D). There just isn't a site to get people started.

jabber.org contains some of the basics but it's way too confusing and 
bland for your average enduser. The first news post on jabber.org: 
"IETF: XMPP URI Specification" 3 scary abbreviations in one title :)

the current jabber.org content is pretty suitable for xmpp.org though.

Jabber.org should be something like:

http://get.live.com/messenger/overview
http://messenger.yahoo.com/ (cool, it even points me to a Mac client :D)

or even:
http://www.aim.com/

Not a lot of text on the first page, slick graphics, the main advantages 
of the protocol and a big button to get started. People don't read so 
make sure that they don't have to if they just want to get down and dirty ;)

'Get Jabber'

-> Pick a client
-> Pick a server
-> Point to JID creation page

Maybe we can even create custom client install packages that include the 
JID and other settings. That way the user doesn't have to go through 
annoying setup screens in the client, they just have to enter their 
password. Or we can try to improve the clients out there to make them a 
bit more friendly to new users...

One thing that we shouldn't do is trying to be politically correct. Some 
  clients are just better suited for your average user than others, we 
should just point the users to a very limited number of clients that we 
know work well and are easy to use. Please don't try to be 'correct' and 
show them a list with a zillion half functional Jabber clients :\

I think that it's smart to first focus on the basics. Don't make a 
'feature rich' site, start with something simple. See how that works, if 
we have the time to manage it and go from there. IMO it's not 
jabber.org's job to provide things like webchats, qunu, etc, etc.

I can setup a vserver with Drupal on jabbercentral.net so we can play 
around with possible setups. That way Peter doesn't have to worry about 
sysadmin/account stuff and we'll be able to move everything to 
jabber.org when the time is right.

BTW does anyone know of a decent tutorial for Drupal? I tried to create 
a site with it some time ago but I really couldn't figure out how to do 
that properly with that weird taxonomy stuff :) At that time there 
didn't seem to be any decent documentation to get you going. Lots of 
docs about setup and making modules or changing settings but no 'how to 
make a site in 10 minutes' kind of walk through. Please ping me on 
jabber at vanbragt com if you have some usable pointers :)

Bart