[zeromq-dev] Website -- separating newbies from the community

[Martin Sustrik]

Hi all,

Please check the proposal below.

The problem
===========

Newbie stuff is mixed with community stuff. Web pages have to take both 
use cases into account which makes them complex. See current 
www.zeromq.org page that has tremendous amount of links, some of them 
intended to make life easy for newbies, some of them, on the other hand, 
are to be used only by experienced users or 0MQ developers.

The use cases
=============

The newbie
----------

Newbie is trying to solve a problem. He does a google search that 
returns a list of products. Among them is 0MQ. However, the link points 
to www.zeromq.org. Newbie has ~30 secs to evaluate whether particular 
product can solve his problem. He clicks on the link and gets to a 
www.zeromq.org. There are ~100 links on the page and a lot of expert 
content. Newbie is confused and moves to another product in the google 
resultlist.

Note: www.zeromq.com is made to help a newbie, however, it doesn't show 
as a primary link for 0MQ in search engines. Newbie will get to 
www.zeromq.org. Website statistics show that there's almost no traffic 
on www.zeromq.com directly from the search engines. Instead, newbies get 
there by clicking through www.zeromq.org

The expert
----------

The expert uses www.zeromq.org site and ignores www.zeromq.com. However, 
given that all the newbies click through www.zeromq.org, there's a lot 
of annoying newbie-related stuff on www.zeromq.org: A big clickable 
picture that points to www.zeromq.com, random marketing texts explaining 
what 0MQ is and why it's better than competing products, user quotes etc.

The solution
============

Move the newbie page (current www.zeromq.com) to www.zeromq.org. Move 
current www.zeromq.org to www.zeromq.org/community.

The impact
==========

All search engine accesses would lead to the newbie page. The newbie 
page would allow for 30 sec evaluation of the project + easy access to 
the download.

Community members would have to click through the newbie page. Nothing 
would prevent them to bookmark the community page though.

The community page could be greatly simplified, given there will no more 
newbies hanging around there.

Martin