The Product & Playground Home Page

[amilica]

Hello everyone! I’m here to discuss the current default homepage of the product and the Playground.

Both of them offer some information about XWiki, but they don’t lead the user to take action or try out some commonly asked things.

Playground Home Page

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This is what a user sees first when entering the XWiki Playground.

​Current look

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Redesign

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See the live version

Changes

#1 The main point of my rewrite/restructure was to keep the content more digestible. That means breaking down big paragraphs into small items.

#2 We highlight the most important things about the Playground:

• first box = it’s not a full trial

• second box = there exists a full trial and a paid offer

• third box = explore the features

#3 The XWiki Features section splits the most important features into 2:

• the ones that can be tried out in Playground - main features non-admin related

• the ones that cannot be tried out in Playground - most important from administration

We also include a link to see the full page of Features that we have on xwiki.org

#4 The links in the XWiki Features section can lead to xwiki.org documentation pages.

• Another idea would be to have light versions of those documentation pages directly in the Playground. Something easier to read, like a TL;DR.

#5 We use more emojis to make the pages more interesting visually and more friendly.

#6 The whole page uses more types of formatting, showcasing better what an XWiki page can look like.

Product Home Page

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​This is what a user sees first when try out XWiki Cloud or after installing XWiki On-Premises

Current look

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Redesign

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See the live version

Changes

#1 We introduce the user in the product and we also underline the product value from the perspective of being open source - add

#2 We add the main features of XWiki as concise as possible as the page is longer than the one of the Playground.

• The links can lead to xwiki.org documentation, even though I’d very much like them to point to a shorter documentation directly in the product.

• We also add a link to the the entire Features page where user can dive into other features.

#3 We create a Quick links section with the most important actions the user would like to discover. All of these links are relative links, leading to parts of the user’s specific instance.

#4 After these, we add a lists of quests / tasks for the user as a suggestion to try out certain basic features.

#5 At the end, we list our some important links.

What do you think about these changes?

• Design page
• JIRA issue

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[vmassol]

Thanks @amilica for working on this.

@amilica

Playground Home Page

I’m sorry, but I prefer the old look to the new proposal.

It was supposed to look the same as the version of XWiki you download, thus the content should be the same as much as possible so that users can get a feel of the home page of XS. I had put an info box to explain the restrictions and how to use the playground but if I could, I’d have chosen a ligthbox or something that you could dismiss to show 100% of what you get when you install XWiki.

So we need to decide if what we want to show is XS or not. I think I prefer to show XS for several reasons:

1. This is what users are expecting
2. It’s less work since we only need to work on the XS Home page
3. We need XS to be self-explanatory

As I said above, I’m very fine to have a lightbox or anything that can be dismissed, that explains the context of playground though.

Let’s see what others think.

@amilica

Product Home Page

I’m really sorry but I don’t like the new proposal too much. We had discussed it in the past (actually the home page in the past was more like the one you did. See for example on https://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/Dodo%20Skin ). Did you check the old discussion threads about the home page redesign? Did you interview some devs? or discuss ideas on the xwiki.org chat? That’s a general good practice, as otherwise there’s always the risk of not going in the right direction. Anyway, maybe it’s just me not liking it, we’ll see what others say!

So the reasons I don’t like it that much is:

• Basically the home page is not meant to be a user guide to XWiki. It’s meant to be the home page of the wiki, so it needs to look like content that the user want to change/must change, that looks similar to what he/she’d use.
• It also needs to be the most simple possible when editing the page, which is clearly not the case in your screenshot. Implementing what you proposed will lead to complex markup, even in wysiwyg editing (using the containers macro for example for which we don’t have a dedicated wysiwyg editor to give one example).
• The home needs is the first thing newcomers will need/want to change and they’ll also use it as a learning ground.
• What you’ve proposed feels like some doc page for XS. We already have pages on xwiki.org for documenting XS. We can link to it. We can link to getting started guides. It’d avoid both duplication and make sure it’s always up to date.
• I feel that a lot of what you put on the home page could be put in the onbarding app discussed on the other thread.

Let’s see what others think.

General remark: it would be nice to start with WHY you want to change it, list what you are trying to fix (i.e. what are the problems with the current XS home page)?

I think this is the first step: agreeing on the problem to fix.

Thx!

PS: Let’s hope I’m the only one not liking the 2 proposals that much as I feel sad that you worked so much on this (thanks again for your work, I really appreciate that you’re trying to improve XS and playground).

[tkrieck]

Hi Adina, thanks for the proposal. We talked a bit before on the design page, but I fell I must also provide my feedback here for better visibility.

Overall I like both very much, the text tone is much more approachable and personal. The different boxes and divisions make the text easier to follow and more on point.

Regarding the text links in both pages:

• in the playground I think we are safe to point to the docs,
• in the homepage the user might be behind a proxy, so I wouldn’t put too much stuff behind external links.

Playground Home

@amilica

#1 The main point of my rewrite/restructure was to keep the content more digestible. That means breaking down big paragraphs into small items.

+1

@amilica

#2 We highlight the most important things about the Playground:

• first box = it’s not a full trial
• second box = there exists a full trial and a paid offer
• third box = explore the features

+1

@amilica

#3 The XWiki Features section splits the most important features into 2:

• the ones that can be tried out in Playground - main features non-admin related
• the ones that cannot be tried out in Playground - most important from administration

@amilica

#4 The links in the XWiki Features section can lead to xwiki.org documentation pages.

• Another idea would be to have light versions of those documentation pages directly in the Playground. Something easier to read, like a TL;DR.

“The full version of XWiki" and “XWiki features (in short)" could be the same topic IMO.

@amilica

#5 We use more emojis to make the pages more interesting visually and more friendly.

+0 I think they are ok to make the text assume a lighter tone, but I wouldn’t abuse them. On your proposal, only the clock on “in short" feels off to me.

@amilica

#6 The whole page uses more types of formatting, showcasing better what an XWiki page can look like.

+0 I’m divided on this one since @vmassol feedback. I kind of agree with both, we want to show what XWiki is capable of in terms of layout controls, but we also want to make it easy for the user to change everything. So I guess I’m on +1 for the playground and -1 for the homepage.

Homepage

@amilica

#1 We introduce the user in the product and we also underline the product value from the perspective of being open source - add

+1

@amilica

#2 We add the main features of XWiki as concise as possible as the page is longer than the one of the Playground.

• The links can lead to xwiki.org documentation, even though I’d very much like them to point to a shorter documentation directly in the product.
• We also add a link to the the entire Features page where user can dive into other features.

+0 I’d like to keep some sort of feature set. But a condensed one since users can indeed be having their first contact with XWiki from here. But the external links and added complexity of layout can be troublesome

@amilica

#3 We create a Quick links section with the most important actions the user would like to discover. All of these links are relative links, leading to parts of the user’s specific instance.

+0 Also, it’s nice to have somewhere as a reference point to the user. But I see, after @vmassol feedback, that this kind of content of falls short because we encourage the user to modify this page.

@amilica

#4 After these, we add a lists of quests / tasks for the user as a suggestion to try out certain basic features.

Big +1 I would even promote it above the features.

@amilica

#5 At the end, we list our some important links.

Paradoxal +1 (because it’s the same situation with Quick Links) but since this box is more like suggestions and shorter I think we’d be ok keeping it.

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Regarding the difference of layout between playground and homepage, I think they are valid. My reasoning is that these tools are, in fact, different. Both offer a “type” of onboarding. But the playground, from my POV is much more geared to entice the user to try the full XWiki, with extension support, admin controls and all that. IMO, we want the user of the playground to feel welcomed, guided and confident to try some sort of full XWiki. Also, because the Playground’s home page is not modifiable, it’s a good reference point for the user (just go back to home if you feel lost).

But maintain both is added work, I agree.

@vmassol

Basically the home page is not meant to be a user guide to XWiki. It’s meant to be the home page of the wiki, so it needs to look like content that the user want to change/must change, that looks similar to what he/she’d use.

IMO the current home page is already a user guide, just a smaller, text heavy one. That’s why I liked the proposal, it’s easier to follow with a quick glance.

@vmassol

It also needs to be the most simple possible when editing the page, which is clearly not the case in your screenshot. Implementing what you proposed will lead to complex markup, even in wysiwyg editing (using the containers macro for example for which we don’t have a dedicated wysiwyg editor to give one example).

This is an interesting point. Personally, if I needed to slash something from the Home it would be (in the proposal) ”Some of XWiki’s features" and “Quick links" since indeed they are duplicated from other resources. “Welcome…“, “Get accostumed…” and “Extra resources" I’d keep since they are driving the user to action and provide help for that.

I also think the new layout helps by showing up front what’s possible (and how to do it, when editing) in terms of page layout in XWiki.

@vmassol

The home needs is the first thing newcomers will need/want to change and they’ll also use it as a learning ground.

Yeah, I see your point here. For me, it’s a fine balance between showing baby steps and letting new users delete the source of guidance.

@vmassol

I feel that a lot of what you put on the home page could be put in the onbarding app discussed on the other thread.

Personally, I don’t mind a bit of redundancy for things like “Welcome to XWiki” and “Some extra resources". The other topics “Some of XWiki’s Features", “Quick links”, “Get accostumed…" would not be good for the Onboarding wizard IMO.

Anyways, thanks for the proposal Adina! Looking forward to the new versions.

[vmassol]

@tkrieck

• in the homepage the user might be behind a proxy, so I wouldn’t put too much stuff behind external links.

So you’re saying that we should bring the whole xwiki.org doc to XS?

If the users can’t access the doc then it’s their problem IMO and they need to fix this. I don’t think it’s expected to not have internet access nowadays, so I wouldn’t do that.

Note that we already have a Help Application in XS for exactly this reason of providing doc pointers! So we could always link to the Help… and it’s supposed to be already the case…

[tkrieck]

@vmassol

So you’re saying that we should bring the whole xwiki.org doc to XS?

No, I’m not advocating for that.

@vmassol

If the users can’t access the doc then it’s their problem IMO and they need to fix this. I don’t think it’s expected to not have internet access nowadays, so I wouldn’t do that.

Note that we already have a Help Application in XS for exactly this reason of providing doc pointers! So we could always link to the Help… and it’s supposed to be already the case…

Well, in that case my point is indeed moot, and it makes things easier for Adina’s proposal . Thanks for clarifying.