Sections

The current PHP.net site has no less than 12 top-level menu items plus search. This is intimidating, confusing, and slow to use. The primary can and should be drastically reduced. 6 or possibly 7 might be a realistic goal?

  1. Home
    • Heavily featured search
    • Very concise introduction to PHP leading to tutorials and documentation
    • Action-orientated “Get Involved” introduction.
    • List major announcements. Temporary feature area only used when something 'really important' happens?
    • List upcoming conferences? There are many... maybe have a link to the whole Conference section instead?
    • News headlines. Headlines only, not complete stories. Link to the News section.
    • I like the idea of having a different (larger) header on the homepage than all other places... a front door if you will. This is reflected in my mocks.
    • Ideas (jordi, creds to johannes/philip):
      1. Three fat icons with enough whitespace around them on the home would be good, with labels: Download, Documentation, Get Involved
      2. below that list the latest announcements
      3. don't list all calendar entries, it's long and hard to read, make it a fancy js calendar or something along those lines, with location filters ?
  2. Documentation
    • Default to English with clear menu for other languages? (Jump the interstitial step)
    • Otherwise keep this basically the same?
      1. Preface
      2. Getting started + subsections
      3. Installation and Configuration + subsections
      4. Language Reference + subsections
      5. Security + subsections
      6. Features + subsections
      7. Function Reference + subsections
      8. FAQ + subsections
      9. PHP Core: A Hacker's Guide to the Zend Engine + subsections
      10. Appendices
  3. Download
    • Simplify and emphasize the current most popular option.
    • Otherwise keep this basically the same?
      1. Main downloads page
      2. Older releases
      3. Licenses (moved)
  4. Help (new)
    • Currently help is liberally dispersed around the site. Consolidating this section would make sense?
    • Even consolidated, this should interleave with the Documentation as obviously much info is contained there.
      1. FAQ. Also include a website (www.php.net) FAQ for questions that are asked at webmaster@php.net. There are many.
      2. Getting Help
  5. Bugs
    • Does this belong as a top-level option? If not, where does it live?
  6. Community
    • What's the deal with Links? Does it belong as its own section? Link in the footer perhaps?
      1. Get Involved (new)
      2. Conferences (moved)
      3. News (moved)
      4. Wiki (moved)
      5. Mailing Lists (moved)
      6. Links? (moved)
      7. Logos
  7. Login (aka My PHP.net)
    • I think My PHP should go to the footer, and it is NOT a login page btw, but it should have a login form that points to master.php.net imo (Jordi)

Components

  1. Search
    • Remove the select dropdown? It is limiting/confusing but it's also useful.
    • Have results-as-you-type? Especially useful for function or other documentation searches.
    • If no dropdown have segmented results? Or do a faceted search results page (my preference)?
    • More clearly indicate tips for searching? I've heard from numerous developers that they didn't discover things like function shortcuts for years.
  2. Footer
    • A large footer used as a catch-all for universal links that do not belong in the primary navigation would likely make sense.
    • Footer links also give the opportunity to be verbose if necessary where in the header you want to be very concise.
      1. My PHP.net (moved, by jordi, see note above, it's present in the Community dropdown though)
      2. Contact
      3. Mirrors
      4. Copyright
      5. Other PHP.net sites (moved)
        • This may be too important for the footer, but I think it could make sense here. (jordi agrees, a link has also been added in the community tab of the megadropdown)
      6. (Deleted)
        • Credits
          1. Should this just be killed? I could go either way on it.
          2. It should be linked somewhere, but need not be here (philip)
          3. It is now linked in Community and can also be linked on the copyright page imo (jordi)
        • Advertising
          1. Kill it? Does this head off a lot of inquiries?
          2. I think killing is fine (philip, jordi)
        • Show source (jordi, since it wasn't mentionned before and philip agrees)
        • Stats (jordi, after checking with others)
  3. Menu Systems
    • TBD: We should determine a nice consistent secondary + tertiary nav system. Likely vertical as it's super scalable.