Nodejs.org redesign meeting refresh

[hackygolucky]

Since I've been at the Foundation(March 2016), I've heard from many parts of the project, members, and Board directors that the current nodejs.org needs some love. I was pointed to the discussions and work happening for the prior plan of redesign(such as #1074) and asked to hold off to let that work be seen through.

I think it has been along enough that it would be good for relevant parties to get together in a meeting, check-in, and see if it is time for iterating on the plan in place.

@nodejs/website @nodejs/community-committee @leo

Please indicate your availability HERE.

Agenda TBD

• Review the prior plan(can someone link this please?)
• list an item here that you think is vital to this meeting
• another item here

[Trott]

I wonder if it would make sense to spend some Foundation money to get some professional UX research done to improve the site. No disrespect to the wonderful people who voluntarily maintain the site, but collecting usable data about UX can be difficult and is often costly.

[hackygolucky]

@Trott Yeah I think this is definitely something we should talk about in the session. We have -so- many users, and if we look at the amount of traffic we get, I think we owe it to them to get a quality dataset from which we base future decisions. If we determine this could be helpful, we can discuss it with the Board.

[raphaelokon]

@Trott Totally agree. @hackygolucky Absolutely!

[bnb]

@hackygolucky AFAIK there was no published plan - it was mostly context between Mikeal and Leo. This is the repo that was used to begin feedback intake:

https://github.com/nodejs/nodejs.org-new

Additionally, these are the relevant issues from that repo:
nodejs/nodejs.org-new#4
nodejs/nodejs.org-new#5

And feature request issues:
nodejs/nodejs.org-new#1
nodejs/nodejs.org-new#2

[bnb]

Also, from nodejs/nodejs.org-new#4 it seems @evilrabbit is involved, and should be welcomed and invited to the meeting as well, if they can make it :)

[nebrius]

I'm going to be off the grid during this time and so I cannot attend. That said, I don't think it's all that necessary for me to be there?

[bnb]

@nebrius Don't thing you're required. We'll have at least two members from the CommComm (probably more), so I think we should be set 👍

[hackygolucky]

@bnb @pup @pierreneter @Trott I haven't scheduled this yet because I'm still waiting on a few of the folks who were working on the redesign to chime in on availability.

@bnb could you @ them here to boost?

[Fishrock123]

I should have time to do work on this on a technical / implementation end, when it becomes a thing. I have filled out the doodle.

[bnb]

@hackygolucky The people working on the redesign were @leo and @evilrabbit - hopefully this message gets to them 🙏

[leo]

I'd also love to work on writing it in Next.js. Talking to @evilrabbit regarding the design... 😊

[fhemberger]

@leo Why would we need server side rendered react.js for a entirely static website? 🤔

I'd love to keep our technical setup with metalsmith, the website content needs to be easily translatable also for non-technical contributors.

[leo]

Every website nowadays needs its first load to be rendered on the server. Otherwise you're causing a white screen until the client side assets are downloaded (read more here). After that has happend, the client side will pick up.

It's should be just as easy to translate and much cleaner (because of the React components).

[leo]

Also Next.js is not just about SSR, it's about providing the cleanest, most straight-forward and future-proof toolchain for building websites and apps in 2017.

https://zeit.co/docs/examples/next

[fhemberger]

We are already rendering everything on the server. As static HTML. The page size is so small that you don't get any benefit from client side rendering afterwards. It's a website. Not a web application.

Also I bet HTML is still the cleanest, most straight-forward and future-proof way to create a website.

[pierreneter]

So, we just need to redesign the template as well as problems with UX for the site or do it and create a new source code for this site with NEXT.js or react.js?

My vote for react.js, we can solve the problem of a white screen with a loading screen page if necessary.

[hackygolucky]

Okay I'm the worst and had waited for some folks to schedule in the doodle, and then the days passed that we had chimed in for. So!

If y'all could chime in again HERE, I promise I'll schedule it this go round. cc @pierreneter @Fishrock123 @bnb @leo @nebrius @raphaelokon @leo

[fhemberger]

Closing in favor of #1534.