Sandbox

Hello...thanks for all of the good work you do. 

To me, the site's News section seems very confusing. There are too many menu links and the difference between them is unclear to the average user, though I know it probably seems very obvious from your perspective.

For example, in the menu I see:

News Menu

    * Submit your News
    * Official News
    * General News
    * Community News
    * Community Sites
    * Community Events
    * Articles
   
What is the difference between Official News, General News, and Community News? Couldn't Community Events be merged with Community News, as the events are also news? Are the articles different from the rest of the news sections? If the articles are not news, then perhaps they should not be listed in the news section and if they are news, they most likely will fit into one of the other news categories.

I know you are busy and this is not an emergency, but I wanted to let you know because the clearer and less complicated we can make this site, the better. We are working to do the same for the Help site in the doc team.



I am hoping this is the correct place to post this, but please feel free to move it if not.

Taking on board your suggestions, categories have been amalgamated, renamed and reorganized to hopefully make this area less confusing.

Thanks for the impetus, it was something that bugged me and at times I had trouble myself determing the deliniation between some of the categories

I understand some of the amalgamations but sad to se articles go. On the other hand were there ever many articles submitted. I dont remember but some of the items that now appear in general news I am sad to see not ctegorised furhter

brian wrote:I understand some of the amalgamations but sad to se articles go. On the other hand were there ever many articles submitted. I dont remember but some of the items that now appear in general news I am sad to see not ctegorised furhter

There werent really many articles submitted in the end - less then 10 if I remember correctly.
Thus why I decided to amalgmate into General News - if there had been more I wouldnt have taken this action.

And in the end, probably the best place for articles are on the Help Site

Perhaps, the help site is the right place, I'm not sure. However by removing the section i doubt people will be encouraged to write any.

Its been done now so cant be udone but I do urge you to reconsider the merging of things like community events and community news into general.

My 2c

Thank you for working on this. I appreciate you taking my suggestions and working with them. I do agree with Brian. When I was expressing my opinion that there were too many News categories earlier, I did not specify as I should have what my suggestion would be for a remedy. Here is what I recommend:

Rather than having:

* Submit your News
* Official News
* General News
* Community News
* Community Sites
* Community Events
* Articles

I recommend:

* Submit your News
* Official News
* Community News/Events
* Community Sites

My reasoning:
--I am not aware of any news that would not fit under either official news or community news, and those two areas are very important to keep separated so that people coming to the news section will be able to identify which news is from the Joomla! team and pertinent to Joomla! and which is news from the community (which would include general news as well).
--Community Events are actually news, but to make it obvious that they are included in the Community News section, you could show it as I noted above.
--Articles will either be one of the news areas, either official or communitiy news, or they belong on a different page, such as Help, Extensions, Developer, etc. depending on what the article is about.

I hope that is helpful. Thanks again for the good work (p.s. If you have the ability to do so, please move the ? right next to the ! in the first item of the Main Menu on the home page before it drives me batty...it should be "What is Joomla!?"

Thank you

The menu has been changed  to:
    * Submit your News
    * General News & Events
    * Joomla! Powered Sites
    * Community Sites
    * Free Addons
    * Free Templates
    * Commercial Addons
    * Commercial Templates
    * Commercial Offers
    * Search

`Official News` has been removed as the News area does state that it is:

The one place for all the latest Joomla! & OSM Community news and information.

And it makes it even more clear that Official Joomla! news/information will come from http://www.joomla.org

Have taken on board suggestion and renamed menu to:
'General News & Events'



`What is Joomla!?` menu item corrected

Thanks for listening and acting. As ever you are always open to sggestions and are willing to act on them. Thanks