Re: [boost] [Website] Navigation and discoverability

Subject: Re: [boost] [Website] Navigation and discoverability
From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-11-10 17:42:56

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 5:23 PM, David Abrahams <dave_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I still have a hard time finding my way around the website since it was
> restructured.

Me too.

>  I'm having at least two problems:
>
> 1. I can pretty much guarantee that manually changing a URL in the
>   address bar of my browser will fail, I think because the URLs are
>   deep and relatively unforgiving.  Unfortunately I have little or no
>   insight into what would fix this problem.
>
> 2. Many files have version numbers in their URLs, and there doesn't seem
>   to be any way to link to "whatever the latest is."  Also, once we
>   have that shouldn't we try to encourage search engines to prioritize
>   that URL as opposed to any of the many near-duplicates (not that I
>   know how)?

Hum... There are at least some cases where "whatever the latest is."
works. For example, www.boost.org/libs/filesystem does forward to the
latest version's docs.

>
> 3. I can't get a good feeling for what's on the site and how it's
>   structured without hopping around all over the place.  For example,
>   if I'm looking for mailing lists, do I want "community" or "support?"
>   The answer isn't immediately obvious.

Yeah, I get "community" or "support?" wrong all the time.

>
>   http://www.boostpro.com has drop-down menus that are entirely done
>   with highly portable CSS; I got the base code from
>   http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menus/final_drop.html.  Something like that
>   would be an immense help in finding what I'm looking for.
>
> Thoughts?

Maybe someone could do some experimental rearranging on
beta.boost.org, and ask folks if it is an improvement?

--Beman