/home/nand

At last UDS, Nick Ali and I felt that really, some real news website was needed, and I won’t go again through the rationale (see this post). The matter was discussed (see blueprint page), and summary of the session can be found here. (Nick, could you link it on the blueprint page?)

I’ve started working on this, and reached the first step: basic templates, so that people can realizes what we have in mind, and getting feedback.

(You can click on the templates to have the real HTML page)

What are the differences I would see with the current Fridge?

• Obviously a new theme. (Theme creation is not my best area, so I’ll be happy to receive suggestions!)
• Highlighted stories will be chosen: some news are more important than others. Henri Bergius proposed me a voting system on my last post, but I don’t think it good: there may be not popular news needing attention (e.g. a call for testing).
• 3 target audience, so 3 main sections : “World” targeted at the average user, “LoCos” targeted as LoCos members and people interested in it, “Development” targeted at people with technical knowlegde, developers, contributors. You can look at the stories title to get an idea. (Disregard the images in the developer section screenshot, I was too lazy to change them)
• Multi lingual support: thanks to Drupal, it would be possible to have interfaces to translate stories into others languages. Stories displayed in front page of the website in others languages could also be changed, according to available translated stories.
• A new name for the Fridge. Well, I’d like it. A more obvious name. Even “Ubuntu news” would make it. A poll I made returned 25% of people not even aware of the Fridge!
• Anyone will be allowed to post stories directly on the website. They will then be reviewed by the staff before being posted.
• All blog posts from the planet will be automatically imported unposted. Staff may post them, or use them as quotes for stories.
• Comment support. Finally. With Launchpad support, so we can display your picture and such.
• Video and flash support. Finally. Especially for all these nices videos sitting in an apache directory listing on videos.ubuntu.com!!!
• Inter website navigation bar: the little bar at the top. That’s the thing I’d like to see on every Ubuntu website, even LoCos ones. See for example in Brainstorm. Without it, how can the huge number of nice Ubuntu websites, like the Ubuntu Hall of Fame, be accessed if not linked prominentely?? The menu scheme would be stored somewhere, and websites would regularly fetch it. This top bar would be available in form of plugins for the major CMS.

Now, if I got time, next step will be to change this template according to feedback, and implement the basic functionality on a Drupal instance.