[drupal-docs] Drupal screenshots + sites list

[Charlie Lowe]

Steven Wittens wrote:
> 
> I agree that mambo's gallery page is a theme showcase... but we have the 
> theme garden for that, we don't need it on drupal.org. I would simply 
> like to enhance the case studies list and add thumbnails to make it more 
> sexy, and on the front age, link to that instead of the ugly sites list.

I don't think that Mambo's gallery page is a theme garden. Those don't 
look like downloadable themes (maybe I'm wrong). It's definitely a 
design showcase. Meanwhile, the Drupal theme garden doesn't include many 
of the nifty designs out there.
> 
> A site does not have to have a great design to be featured (but of 
> course, it is a plus). A simple thumbnail, no matter of what, makes the 
> site more tangible. But really, most 'decent' Drupal sites look quite 
> nice anyway. It's only the really basic bluemarine blogs that are ugly.

I would say then that it's time to update the case studies page. But I 
would still have a separate gallery page. It's purely about the visual 
(there's almost no text)--it attracts attention, encouraging people to 
click and click just to see--whereas the case studies, as I've mentioned 
before, are aimed at demonstrating purpose and is useful for a different 
audience. Each has a different marketing use. A gallery like that is the 
kind of thing to show off right away on drupal.org to someone who is a 
first time visitor, so they will go "WOW!" and want to dig deeper.

> 
> I agree that the sites list can still be useful, but it's really been a 
> problem child for a long time. It used to be sorted in alphabetical 
> order, with the result that sites near the top would get a lot of 
> traffic, while everything else would be ignored. Some people started 
> adding low ascii characters to their site name to be listed higher. 
> Adding a pager would've only worsened this.
> 
> So we changed it to what we have now, which is list sites in the order 
> they are pinged in. This gives sites an equal chance at being listed at 
> the top. But in its current form it would be hard to add a pager, 
> because the list changes order constantly.
> 
> Perhaps instead, we can change it around to be more portal like. A bit 
> like this:
> http://www.acko.net/dumpx/sites.png
> 
> We list N random Drupal sites and provide a simple keyword search. The 
> "browse more sites" link takes you to the full list, which is alphabetic 
> and has a pager. We could even add a "Drupal sites" tab to the search 
> page. This portal site would be linked to from the case studies list, 
> inviting people to check out Drupal-powered sites "in the wild".

That definitely all makes sense and these are good suggestions. Here's 
another way: What about adding a pull down field to admin->settings 
where someone tags their site for a particular primary purpose: 
commercial, educational, personal, community, civic action, etc. (one 
selection only). Then that term is sent to Drupal so that multiple site 
listing pages could be created based on category. These categories might 
even corresepond to the one's in the case studies and be provided there 
as links. Eliminate the master listing all together. That would be very 
useful for those looking for site examples for a particular purpose.

Another way to also keep that list fresh, more current, and to cut it 
back a little in the long run is if each site could pass the Drupal 
version number. Then once Drupal reaches 4.7 (assuming this feature was 
added to Drupal 4.6), when the number of site listings is likely to have 
grown much more, the various site pages could start listing only those 
sites using the two most recent versions (better for premiering what 
Drupal can do if only recent versions are listed; also encourages people 
that want to be featured to upgrade).

Charlie