Create a home page that is more useful for the first-time visitor.

[ckjpn]

Create a home page that is more useful for the first-time visitor.

What follows are just a few ideas and not necessarily the best ideas. However, if we start brainstorming, perhaps we can come up with something better. Currently, if I send the website URL to someone and they arrive at the site, I don't think they have enough guidance to really understand what the website is all about.

\ The Problem **

The current home page for non-logged-in members ...

1. ... makes it look like registration is necessary.
2. ... always requires a lot of scrolling to see the main content for people not logged in.
3. ... has a link that says "How it works", but really only links to a quick-start guide for people who have already become members.
4. ... has an "About us" link that goes to an old video that doesn't really explain the Tatoeba Project very clearly.
5. ... doesn't really explain that much to the first-time visitor, even if they take the time to click the links on the right.

\ Some Suggested Solutions **

ONE: Include one sentence that concisely tells what the Tatoeba Project does.

The Tatoeba Project is a group of people working on creating a collection of sentences and their translations that can used by various projects under the Creative Commons - Attribution 2.0 license.

(Perhaps this could be re-worded.)

TWO: Clearly state what can be done without registering, and explain concisely what can be done after registering.

You can browse, search or download our data without becoming a member, or you can register and help us by translating from a foreign language you know into your own native language or by creating natural-sounding sentences in your own native language for others to translate into their native languages.

(Perhaps this could be re-worded.)

THREE: Possibly have this message dismissible like the blue "announcement" thing that has recently been introduced. This would mean a non-logged-in visitor is not constantly irritated by this message.

FOUR: Create new content for the "how it works" and "about us" links that is more useful for first-time visitors.

\ Sample Layouts **

Example 1 - same size buttons.png

Example 2 - smaller buttons - smaller fonts.png

Example 3 - text order reversed.png

Original for comparison.png

Additionally, the "log in" button is unnecessary. There is a "log in" link on the top navigation bar in a very obvious location, similar to any other website that requires logging in.

Even doing away with the "register" button may be a possibility, since there is also a "register" link in an obvious place on the top navigation bar. Not having the button may possibly help not encourage people with no intention of contributing from registering.

[trang]

My current view on how the homepage could be improved rather looks like this:

---

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1) I would strip as much description as possible. 2) I would make the search bar as big as possible, since this is the main feature. 3) I would display big buttons for users to understand what else they can do besides searching.

There are possibly some elements missing (some stats about the sentences and languages supported for instance), but the idea is to have as little content as possible, but with a clear organization. It should be just enough so that the user understands the core structure and features of the website.

[ckjpn]

I like your idea, assuming that the links go to good pages.

Perhaps you could have something similar to this on one of the sub-pages. http://prntscr.com/9hdsmd

(Added directly to this comment on 2020-03-04.)

\ Some additional comments **

I assume that perhaps you are considering going back to the special landing page for non-logged-in visitors and using this as the landing page. I think I like that idea, too. Casual users and first-time visitors perhaps would find this more useful that way.

Perhaps for a landing page, the button "Developers" may not be necessary if this is a link to a page for developers working on the Tatoeba Project. If it is a link to how other developers can use the data we produce, then perhaps it's not a bad idea to have it on the landing page.

I wonder about a "Community" button. I assume this will have a link to the Wall and maybe a list of active members or a list of all members who have added sentences. I sort of doubt this is needed for first-time visitorrs.

Perhaps limiting to just these 3 big buttons would be good, (I've included some ideas of what I think might be included on the pages that these links lead to.)

1. Explore -browsing and searching our data, explanation about indirect links.
2. Contribute -registering, guidelines, how to contribute sentences, invitation to leave comments suggesting corrections, recommendation to contribute in your own native language.
3. Developers -our license, what you are permitted to do with our data, link to downloads, link to the list of audio file contributors and their licenses.

[kamillel]

Hello! I would like to suggest a possible new homepage:

The main issues I'm trying to solve with this are:

• the main goal is currently not obvious enough (the search)
• the identity / hierarchy is not very clear (e.g. 'Register' being quite big, looks like it could be mandatory)

Identity I'm working with (correct me if I'm wrong!): Tatoeba is (1) a website where users can find translated sentences, (2) an open-source project, (3) ever-growing. Main user profiles: language learners, translators / helpers, developers.

Section 1

The top part is following what Trang already proposed: the search needs to be the main focus of the home page. I added tips below (optional).

Section 2

I kept the 'Random sentence' block because it gives a 'sneak peak' on how the website works, and it can also be used as a 'discovery' tool. The 'About' block: it gives a quick introduction on Tatoeba with the key statistics (at the moment the sentences stats don't have much context) and links for those who want to see the details.

Section 3

I wasn't sure how the buttons 'Community', 'Developers' and 'Explore' would work and I was afraid it would repeat the menu so I was thinking the following section could be more a list of 'useful links', where we would highlight the most useful ones, without repeating the menu items. I'm aware those are looking like a footer at the moment so it could be interesting working on those while working on the menu to make sure they are complementing each other.

This proposition is quite modular, but I would say as a quick win implementing the Section 1 would make the home page much clearer for first time visitors.

[trang]

Thanks a lot @kamillel!

I've mentioned your proposal on the Wall: https://tatoeba.org/eng/wall/show_message/25557#message_25557

I'll add my feedback later on today.

[ckjpn]

I'm not necessarily saying the above isn't good.

However, another possible approach to consider is making it clear on the main page that these options exist.

• Study \ Make it clear that people can freely use the site without registering. **Give suggestions on how people who aren't translating can use the website for study.
• Translate \ Maybe have the sub-page this goes to be the default main page for logged in members.
• Use the Exported Data under the CC License. * Link to the download page. * Link to the Wiki page aimed at people using the Tatoeba Corpus for other projects.

Personally, I'd like to see the Random Sentence block taken off the main page. One of the main problems with random content on the main page is that what a first-time visitor could see there might make him or her never come back. We have obscene sentences in the database. We have obviously incorrect sentences. We have sentences that might be considered offensive by certain people for other reasons, too.

Instead of having a random sentence on the main page, I'd suggest having a special "random sentence" page for those who want it.

@kamillel This might possibly give you some ideas, too. However, I created this specifically for those who are translating from English, or studying English, so it's not exactly what I would recommend.

http://a4esl.org/temporary/tatoeba/ (This also works nicely on mobiles. Try changing your window size.)

[sacredceltic]

@kamillel Thank you for the good proposal, which I'm all in favour. You obviously know how to focus a website on its actual targets. I suggest you probably are a precious ressource to drive the site's presentation to the public and make it more attractive. it's good to have a fresh sight on it.

@ckjpn We already discussed how to avoid incorrect sentences on the random section of the main page (filtering fresh newcomers and unadopted sentences). But I actually love the random section featuring on the main page. I think it's fun and subsequently attractive. Certainly, I do not have the same definition as yours of what is "obscene" or "offensive". But the public has neither YOUR definition nor MINE...Let them judge ! It's not because a sentence is judged "obscene" or "offensive" that it might repel interest in the service. It can be both "obscene" and linguistically interesting.

[ckjpn]

The point isn't what you or I consider incorrect, obscene or offensive. The point it what visitors think of the website if they see such content, especially if it's their first visit.

[sacredceltic]

But you shouldn't suppose they will react like you. Maybe they will like me or somebody else, who knows ?

[ckjpn]

The sentences don't offend me personally. I think it doesn't hurt to err on the side of caution if it means we potentially get more people working on the project. Ultimately, it's TRANG's decision. I'm just sharing an opinion for her to consider.

[sacredceltic]

I urge you to renounce this idea. Because then, we would need to define what is "obscene" and "offending". And you have no idea what this entails...

[kamillel]

Many thank for your comments!

• Study: Make it clear that people can freely use the site without registering. / Give suggestions on how people who aren't translating can use the website for study.

I think those two should be resolved by removing the big 'Log in' and 'Register' buttons and making the search more central. I wouldn't necessarily add any written explanations that people are likely to skip and may make the page heavier, I looked at other websites for which the search is the main feature and they don't give much explanations, other that making it obvious (https://uk.pinterest.com/kamillelm/tatoeba-search/). If the registration is needed they indicate it but if it's not then no need to explain it.

Translate I didn't think yet of the homepage for logged users but it sounds like a good idea to make the 'Translate' options more important for logged users

Use the Exported Data under the CC License. It can definitely be added to one of the lists! Those can be re-jiggled, I'm not sure if the Community list is very meaningful at the moment.

Random sentences I find the concept interesting but if some content can be bad publicity (offensive/wrong/...), we need to see if it's really so bad it could scare people of, if so, could this be curated? If not, can we live with it (depends on the chances to get a bad random sentence that the user can read) or should we lose it for now.

[jiru]

About censoring potential offensive content on the home page. Languages are used to transmit emotions, be it love or hate. Trying to hide offensive content means denying a part of languages, so it conflicts with Tatoeba’s mission. And as sacredceltic said, it’s just impossible to define what an offensive content is (especially on Tatoeba since cultures vary a lot).

Wikipedia has that policy that offensive words and offensive images should not be included unless they are treated in an encyclopedic manner. That might be a better approach: taking distance from sentences, making it clear that they are separate from the actual website, showing them as quotes or something.

[trang]

Note that we already had a discussion regarding the random sentence before: https://tatoeba.org/eng/wall/show_message/21147#message_21147

The result was pretty clear to me: we don't want to remove it.

If you ask me personally, I wouldn't mind removing it, I wouldn't miss it. But that's only me. When I created that thread on the Wall, I thought there were a lot of other people like CK, who would rather see other information instead of a random sentence. But the discussion showed it was not the case at all. The random sentence seems to be part of Tatoeba's identity. It's something that a lot of people are attached too, and enjoy.

The fact that "bad"/"offensive" sentences might show up is not a strong enough reason to remove it. We have no evidence that the presence of the random sentence has more negative impact than positive impact. If we're going to question again the display of the random sentences, I would like to have actual facts (things that really happened), rather than theories about how it can scare people away from Tatoeba. Until then, we will continue displaying random sentences.

[jiru]

@kamillel Thank you again for this great mockup. It’s way better than anything we came up with so far.

That search bar looks good and efficient. Not that punctuation should no longer be a problem once #1008 is solved.

I like the way you’re reorganizing the menu. The More menu always bugged me because we’re just stuffing items that don’t fit other sections in there. For instance, it’s not obvious where to go if I want to donate to the project, because the menu title isn’t telling me it’s in there. So I suggest we just remove that More menu and move its contents to other sections, possibly in the footer only. Tools, Downloads can go into Developers. Show activity timeline can go into Community. Donate can go into Contribute/Want to help?.

What about the other links we currently have in our home page footer? Namely: Terms of use, Contact us, Blog, Twitter, Facebook, GitHub.

We could also have a Latest things page (that wording is terrible, but you see what I mean) in the Community section that would display what the current home page shows: latest sentences, latest comments and latest wall posts.

I feel like the total number of sentences and languages don’t have enough visibility. It’s something we can be proud of and it serves as a “selling point”.

[ghost]

Here is the layout I'm working on:

[trang]

Thanks for sharing your work @billoliver! Here's my feedback for both you and @kamillel.

Menu

I like what @billoliver is suggesting for the menu. I think it's important to have the name and the logo of Tatoeba in the top left corner. One thing that's missing however is the dropdown to change the interface of the language.

Regarding the items in the menu, I'm not sure if "Home" will be necessary if we have the Tatoeba logo. But that's just a minor detail. The main challenge is to think of a way to reorganize our current structure. I think the first iteration should be about moving stuff around, and renaming some items (e.g. "Browse" -> "Explore"?), to slowly move towards our ideal structure. But we can't afford to add new items yet, because we would then need to create the content related to that item, and that's a whole other discussion.

I summarized how our content is currently structured: https://gist.github.com/trang/68f07c0f9b8e21b5bd3a

Just like @jiru, the "More" item bothers me. We just have it because there are items that we don't know where to put. We also have the problem that the "More" link is hidden for some users (cf. #735).

Search

I like better what @kamillel's version. I really like the tips.

I feel it would be more intuitive and self-explanatory for users if we had the "from" and "to" dropdown blended into a sentence (search sentences in translated into ). That's why I suggested it in the first place. I feel our current search bar may not be clear enough for new users.

Content

@kamillel,

I wasn't sure how the buttons 'Community', 'Developers' and 'Explore' would work

I only had a very rough idea for these categories. This was basically what I had in mind:

• "Explore" would be more or less like our current "Browse" section.
• "Community" would contain "Wall" + "Members".
• "Developers" would contain the "Downloads" and the link to GitHub.

For me the buttons were more like a small block, that would reflect the menu structure, but would contain maybe tag line to explain shortly what we provide for that category.

I like however the way you organized it. There are some items we won't be able to introduce at first, but there are good ideas.

Regarding what @jiru said:

We could also have a Latest things page (that wording is terrible, but you see what I mean)

I was just thinking for the wording, maybe "Activity stream"?

I feel like the total number of sentences and languages don’t have enough visibility. It’s something we can be proud of and it serves as a “selling point”.

That's somewhat true. Although I would also like to find a way to avoid false publicity. I don't want users to be tricked into believing that we have an equal number of sentences in each language, and get disappointed when they search something in a less popular language and can't find any sentence.

[ghost]

This is the new layout that I built. As you guys can see I haven't worked on the footer yet. So, please leave your comments below.

P.S. I wish I could write a detailed comment, but my writing skills are far from perfect. Thanks for your feedback, @Trang.

[kamillel]

I also made some changes on my wireframe :)

Menu: Option 1 The menu would follow what @Trang proposed and the 'More' section content would be redistribute between Developers ('Downloads') and the footer ('Donate' + 'Help' links)

Menu: Option 2 While I was working on the menu I was almost wondering if 'Developers' should be part of the menu, I think it may be more effective as a list of quick links in the footer (and later on it could be nice to have a 'Developers' page within the Community menu). In this case we could have something like this:

Statistics About the sentences and languages numbers I think having the numbers visible from the first screen is a good way of advertising it without overselling it so people don't get disappointed (and they should be links so users can click to know more).

[jiru]

@billoliver Thank you for your layout. It feels fresh. However, I can see the following problems:

1. We want to keep the random sentence block (see previous discussions).
2. I think it’s better to keep the introduction text about what Tatoeba is, otherwise new visitors just will have even more trouble figuring out what our project is about.
3. I really don’t like the categories Students and Translators. We don’t really make this distinction on Tatoeba. I believe translators are constantly studying languages and many language students are aiming at becoming translators. More often than not, the barrier is unclear so visitors may have trouble applying these categories to themselves. Besides, Tatoeba gather people interested in languages in general, from various other fields like teachers, researchers… or just language enthusiasts not translating for a living. Or even dubbers. So I think it’s better to name these categories after actions, like you did in your first design. The Developers category seems less of a problem to me, because they are not directly participating into the project.
4. Your design is oversized. Tatoeba’s current design isn’t responsive, we use a fixed width. So, you want to stick with the current’s site width for the time being.

[ckjpn]

I'd suggest considering the priority of what most visitors are looking for, and listing them right to left in that priority for the links at the bottom of the screen, and in each list either list alphabetically or in a prioritized order with the most likely to be frequently used at the top.

The "Tatoeba" list, for example, might be better placed on the right, since people don't read the Terms, Contact Us, Blog, etc. every day.

In the activity stream, perhaps people more often would access the latest contributions than the other 2 items.

Note that "Developers" is sort of a mix of 2 different things -- Developers of Tatoeba Code and Developers Who Use the Tatoeba Corpus data. Maybe this is OK, but it might also get confusing.

Additionally, you may want to consider that eventually Tatoeba.org will possibly not use a fixed-width layout, but something that resizes nicely to mobiles, like Bootstrap. If you can design a page the will work with the current fixed-width and will also work with something like Bootstrap, it would mean that what you create may be usable for a longer period of time.

[ckjpn]

@billoliver has some nice ideas, too.

It definitely has the "web app" look.

Some of the white space could be removed and the random sentence block could be just under the 3 major "buttons" that have the brief explanation in them. The buttons might need to be renamed, or an additional button might be needed, but as a mock-up layout, it looks good.

Perhaps utilizing ideas from both of these layouts would be good. For example, have the 3 (or 4) big buttons just under the search, but also have the lists of links after the random sentence block.

Perhaps we could change the tag line "It's collaborative ... even addictive" to something more descriptive - perhaps including the fact that it's a collection of sentences and the sentences are being translated by members who volunteer their time. Possibly, also include something saying that what is being produced can be used by developers and researchers under the CC-BY license. However, maybe that would make the tag line too long.

[kamillel]

@ckjpn Many thanks for the feedback on the developer mix-up! Maybe the footer links could be for the 'Developers Who Use the Tatoeba Corpus data' and the links for the 'Developers of Tatoeba Code' could go in the Community menu

I agree for the links, there are not in any particular order yet, this could be reviewed.

I used the current fixed size layout but I think it could be easily made responsive / converted to a grid (the search can squeeze, the random sentence too and the link lists can float)

Maybe we can keep the tagline short as it is but we can add a more detailed explanation in the 'About us' block.

[ckjpn]

Note to both @kamillel and @billoliver,

If you know basic HTML, perhaps you might want to experiment with doing your mockups using Bootstrap.

http://getbootstrap.com/

While tatoeba.org may not use this particular way to make their site mobile-friendly, it's a popular framework and likely to not be too much different than what tatoeba.org will eventually use. (That's my guess, anyway.) I personally would highly recommend using Bootstrap.

I'm fairly certain that you can use just the CSS grid without needing to use all of BootStrap. http://getbootstrap.com/css/#grid

For one of my projects, I was doing that, but I can't remember if I had to make any changes or not.

[ckjpn]

If you would like to experiment with bootstrap, I have a rough template set up that I did last year.

You can download this and play with it if you want to. Please make sure you read the ABOUT file. Only a few pages in the folder have been bootstrapped.

http://www.manythings.orgl/tatoeba/bootstrap-quick-mockup-of-tatoeba-org.zip

Here are a few screen shots of what could be the "home" page with the window resized so you see how it might look on different devices. Note that I did this back when tatoeba.org had an "index" page for non-logged in visitors, and a "home" page for logged-in visitors.

This is the _tatoeba-template-MAIN-INDEX.html page.

[jiru]

kamillel, thanks for the update. I prefer option 2 because I think it’s a wise idea to remove the developers section from the top menu. I believe developers account for a really low percentage of our visitors, and all of them are confident enough with browsing websites to find the information they are looking for. However, I miss the Want to help? section with Register as first link, because I thought it was a smart way to suggest that one needs to register in order to contribute. (This was one of our initial problem.) That said, people can browse the whole site and are just redirected to the login page whenever they click on a page that requires registration. This might be just enough.

About the stats, Trang said

I don't want users to be tricked into believing that we have an equal number of sentences in each language

Maybe we can solve this problem by including the numbers into a more precise sentence, like So far, we’ve gathered a total of X sentences divided in Y languages. (With some emphasis on X sentences and Y languages.) @kamillel Speaking of which, any particular reason you removed the top-five language stats? Showing them might be another way to avoid the "false publicity".

I wonder if that Activity stream section is very useful. This is mainly useful for contributors, like the Recent changes page of Wikipedia. It could as well be reduced to a single link to a page similar to the current home page, that gathers these 3 informations.

[ckjpn]

Re: Speaking of which, any particular reason you removed the top-five language stats?

This is a related issue. https://github.com/Tatoeba/tatoeba2/issues/842

When thinking about this a little, though, perhaps it's better to keep the page simple and clutter-free.

It's a fine balance between having too much information and not enough information on the main page, I think.

[kamillel]

@jiru I left the top 5 out because I think the current layout is lacking of context and I'm not sure if that's useful for a first time visitor (especially if his/her language is not on the top 5). However if it's important for contributors we could have it for logged users (if they already know how it works they can get through more information).

@ckjpn as far as I understand the mobile version is still a work in progress so I wouldn't convert the home page without knowing how the rest of the website will work, but it looks like both propositions could be easily made responsive (and mixed together). And I'll be happy to work on the mobile version when it comes! (love making stuff responsive and working on mobile usability :) )

I amended the previous wireframe:

I added the information about the license on the About (but it would be good to have a better wording from a native speaker :) ) and I shuffled the links so 'Developers' is more for the 'Developers who use the corpus', the 'Quick Start Guide' is in the 'Want to help/Contribute' list and I pulled some links that should be more general for the 'Need some help' list.

[ckjpn]

If the random sentence block is going to be kept on the main page, then designers need to take into account that this block is not always the same size.

I would suggest putting the random sentence block below the main parts of the page that members and visitors will always be accessing. That way visitors to the page will always see the content they want and need, and the way the page looks won't constantly be changing. If it's at the bottom, then everything will always be in the same location.

Examples:

• Sometimes there is only one sentence, so the block is smaller.

• Sometimes the sentences are long, so even with just a few translations, the block is larger.

• Sometimes sentences have furigana or other types of transcriptions which make the block larger.

• Sometimes there are many sentences.

\ Collapsed view:

\ Expanded view: (I think you should make sure your page design looks good in this case, too.)

• There are times when there are so many sentences in the expanded view, that it's not easy to capture them all in a screenshot. (Sentences such as "Thank you" and "I love you.")

[ckjpn]

I'm not sure how others feel about this, but I don't like "Tatoeba" used this way.

"Tatoeba is a collection of sentences and translations."

It should be "Tatoeba.org" or "The Tatoeba Corpus" or something like that, I think. Or, possibly "The Tatoeba Project is a group of people creating a collection ...."

Part of my dislike for just the single word is that "tatoeba" is a Japanese word meaning "for example", "for instance", "like in the following cases", etc.

It's sounds as strange to me as saying "Interestingly is a collection of ..." , or using some other part of speech out of place.

I think Trang's original naming of the website, The Tateoba Project, sounds much better than just "Tatoeba."

I do understand that over time, members of the project have started using the shorthand name "Tatoeba".

[ghost]

Thanks for the feedback guys! I’ve changed a few things in my last mockup, and here is the result:

• Size: Now the layout is smaller, therefore I have less space to organize the menu. Maybe we should move the link to change tatoeba’s language to the footer. I don’t know if the menu will work properly in other languages.
• Sign up: Should I remove the “sign up” button? If the users click the “join the community” button they will be redirect to the registration page as well.

P.S. When you all approve the header I’m going to start working on the rest of the page. Sorry for my mistakes! As I said before my writing skills are far from perfect.

[trang]

​ Since I'd like to start implementing something next Tatoeba Day (March 6th) if possible, I'm going to summarize my current vision of the solution and the remaining problems.

The menu

I am not sure how much we want to change the menu since changing it will affect not only new visitors, but also current users.

1. Do we want to rename "Home" into "Tatoeba"? This is what I did some time ago, and @jiru expressed to me that he felt confused by it (cf. his comment).
2. Do we want to keep the "More" category in the menu for now? Or do we want to move it to the footer? If we do move it to the footer, then we should definitely use @kamillel's footer design.
3. Do we want to rename "Browse" to "Explore"? If so, we probably should rename the sub-items in that category, therefore how should we rename them?
4. Do we want to merge "Members" and "Wall" into a same category ("Community")?
5. Do we want to display "Contribute" in the menu for non-logged in users? The content of "Contribute" is rather targeted to people who already registered. It can give an idea to new users how they can contribute, but it may be taking space in the menu for little purpose in the end.
6. @billoliver, in your mockup you changed the language dropdown position. Any reason for this?
7. If we get rid of the "More" item, where would we place the "Show activity timeline" item that is currently found under "More"? I could find all the other items in @kamillel's footer, but not the "Show activity timeline".
8. "Register" link could maybe be removed?

The footer

Same as the menu, the footer will affect not only the new visitors but also the current members. I'm personally in favor of having an expanded footer that looks like what @kamillel suggested in her wireframe but I still have no clear idea of how we should organize the categories and elements in the footer.

1. "Want to help?"
   • The title is good.
   • The register link would be displayed only for non-logged in users. Maybe we rename it into "Join the community"?
   • The "Translate sentences" and "Add sentences" items will be redundant with the sub-items of "Contribute" in the menu so I would remove them.
   • "Record audio" is definitely a link that we're missing currently, but then again, it could in the "Contribute" category in the menu.
   • "Quick start guide" makes a lot of sense in this category, especially right after "Register".
   • The "Donate" button makes a lot of sense here too (a lot more than in the "More" category).
2. "Need some help?"
   • Title is good.
   • The FAQ fits completely in this category.
   • "How to search for text" could be rephrased. I'm afraid users will think they can search for comments, or wall messages. It's redundant with the "More" link in the search tips so it may not be necessary to have it in the footer, but I don't think it hurts to have there either.
   • The link to the wiki fits in there too. I would rename it to "Tatoeba Wiki".
   • The "Help" page fits in there, but my problem with the Help page is that its content feels messy. It's mostly targeted to contributors and probably has duplicate information with the "Quick start guide". We can leave it there for now since I don't know who's relying on it, but someday I'd really like to revamp that page.
   • The "Tools" probably doesn't fit much here. The tools could actually be a whole category on its own. Each link on the Tools page would be an item in the category.
   • It feels like "Contact us" would also fit in this category but we probably don't want to have it duplicated.
3. "Developers"
   • Title is good.
   • I'm not sure what "Using Tatoeba Corpus" would link to.
   • We still have no official API, so we cannot yet have a "Tatoeba API" link.
   • The "Downloads" might be equivalent of "Using Tatoeba Corpus".
   • Should we add the link to GitHub here?
4. "Tatoeba"
   • Title is good.
   • Is there a reason to have "Blog" as a link rather than an icon? Or to have Facebook and Twitter as icons rather than have them as a link?

The content

1. I think we agree that the search bar should have a more central place on the homepage and that it should be redesigned. I'm in favor of what @kamillel suggested and I wouldn't change anything in what she did except maybe the placeholder.
2. What placeholder should we have in the search input? @kamillel suggested "Nice to meet you". Should we instead have some sort of instructions, more like "You can enter a word, a phrase or a sentence"?
3. Where should the search bar be placed? Before the tag line (@billovliver's mockup), or after the tag line (@kamillel's mockup)?
4. Where do we place the logo? I think @kamillel's suggestion is fine. But we could also just have a smaller logo next to the "Tatoeba" in the menu.
5. I actually like the "Join the community" button that @billolivier suggested. I think it's a possible solution for the problem that @ckjpn mentioned, about users registering because they think registration is necessary in order to use Tatoeba. Here it's clearer that registering means that you want to be more than just a lambda user, you want to be part of the community. I think it would be unnecessary to have "Sign up"/"Register" in the menu if we have the "Join the community" button.
6. I'm unsure whether or not we should have the "About us" section that @kamillel's suggested.
   • The beginning part sort of repeats what we have in the tag line.
   • The end part sort of repeats what is in the "Developers" category in the footer.
   • The "How it works" link is actually not so useful (even in our current page) because it links to the same page as the "Quick Start Guide". So we can just remove it.
   • In the end the main useful information are the stats. I would personally be just find if we just have a block with no title that says "So far we've gathered X sentences spread between Y languages" (I think "spread" sounds better than "divided"). But maybe someone will have a better idea.
7. The random sentence should definitely be displayed below the search bar and the tag line.
8. I don't know if we need to have more content than this (search bar, tag line, random sentence, stats). It seems to me it'll be enough.

Other topics

(1)

If you would like to experiment with bootstrap

I can say that we won't. For this issue, introducing a new framework into the code is out of scope. I would rather we take the time to evaluate which framework we want to go with since once we go with a certain framework, it will be difficult to change. As @kamillel pointed out, we're not trying to make a mobile version yet. But we definitely have to take into consideration that the new homepage has to be organized in a way that can easily be made mobile-friendly in the future.

(2)

I'm not sure how others feel about this, but I don't like "Tatoeba" used this way.

[...]

Part of my dislike for just the single word is that "tatoeba" is a Japanese word meaning "for example", "for instance", "like in the following cases", etc.

For me "Tatoeba" is fine. There are many names that have a meaning and are words that are used in everyday life. For instance for people, you have names like Christian, Clementine, Olive. Or for newspapers, you have the Times, the Guardian, etc. I don't really see why "Tatoeba" would be a problem for naming a website/application.

(3)

@billoliver, regarding your mockups, I'm not sure if you're also working on the graphics design or if you're just using some templates, but in case you're also doing some work on the graphics design, one thing you will need to take into consideration is that we don't want to change too much the design of the homepage. It still needs to be coherent with the rest of the website. We don't want users to feel like they're navigating between two completely different websites.

(4)

@billoliver, @kamillel, it would be good if somehow you could join your efforts. It would be a lot easier for me, since I would not have to look at two different propositions and try to pick the best of both. I'll initiate an email with you two so that you can continue discussing together in private and once you've agreed on a common result, one of you can publish it in this issue. Along with the mockup/wireframe, it would be great if you could provide a small report that would explain your choices for the various points where I raised a question. As you've noticed I have many many questions and I could just personally just choose randomly but it's better if the choice is justified :)

[jiru]

The menu

Do we want to merge "Members" and "Wall" into a same category ("Community")?

I do.

Do we want to display "Contribute" in the menu for non-logged in users? The content of "Contribute" is rather targeted to people who already registered. It can give an idea to new users how they can contribute, but it may be taking space in the menu for little purpose in the end.

I think that giving an idea to new users how they can contribute worth the extra space.

If we get rid of the "More" item, where would we place the "Show activity timeline" item that is currently found under "More"?

I don’t know. Which tells me there might be something wrong with that page. I personally never visit it. Maybe it’s fine to remove that link from the home page and add it somewhere else, like on the activity stream page (equivalent of the current home page).

"Register" link could maybe be removed?

Since most popular website have log in/register links on the top-right, I think that most visitors will expect a register link there.

The footer

"Need some help?" The "Tools" probably doesn't fit much here. The tools could actually be a whole category on its own. Each link on the Tools page would be an item in the category.

I agree. I’d make the same comment as for Show activity timeline. These tools kinda feel out of place for the homepage because they don’t serve Tatoeba’s main goals. They would be better linked from somewhere else. I doubt anyone actually uses them by the way. Besides, the name Tools doesn’t tell much. It’s like having a link called "page" or "website". It could actually be renamed to "Transcription tools" or similar because that’s all the tools we have.

"Developers" Should we add the link to GitHub here?

Yes, move it there.

"Tatoeba" Title is good.

I disagree, it’s too generic. Any of the other categories could be named "Tatoeba". They would be harder to understand, but you’d still understand them thanks to their content. That’s exactly what I feel for this category. I have no better idea however. If we had a structure name, like "Tatoeba Foundation", that would better fit.

Is there a reason to have "Blog" as a link rather than an icon?

What icon are you thinking about? Is there any icon that would suggest "Blog" to most people?

The content

Where should the search bar be placed? Before the tag line (@billovliver's mockup), or after the tag line (@kamillel's mockup)?

I think it’s better to have the tag line on the top because it acts like a title and that’s the very first thing new visitors will see.

Where do we place the logo? I think @kamillel's suggestion is fine. But we could also just have a smaller logo next to the "Tatoeba" in the menu.

I think kamillel’s suggestion is fine. A smaller logo next to the "Tatoeba" link of the menu would not fit in other pages because they already include the logo in the search bar.

I actually like the "Join the community" button that @billolivier suggested.

I like that wording too.

I'm unsure whether or not we should have the "About us" section that @kamillel's suggested.

I agree with everything you said. The text is now way too long. How about something like

The corpus: • X sentences spread into Y languages • Licensed under CC-BY • Z audio recordings licensed under various CC licences (I added this line because a list with only 2 items makes me feels like something’s missing)

Or we may as well stick with the stats block of the current home page. Speaking of which, I think the removal of the stats block, if it happens, should be mentioned on the Wall. Some people may miss it and complain.

I don't know if we need to have more content than this (search bar, tag line, random sentence, stats). It seems to me it'll be enough.

I agree.

[ckjpn]

Do we want to rename "Home" into "Tatoeba"? This is what I did some time ago, and @jiru expressed to me that he felt confused by it (cf. his comment).

I'd suggest "Tatoeba.org". That makes it obvious that it's the "home" and also reminds everybody it's not a ".com".

Do we want to keep the "More" category in the menu for now? Or do we want to move it to the footer?

I think putting links only in the footer is not such a good idea.

Personally, I see no problem with the title "More". I'm pretty sure I've seen it a lot on the Web, and I think people can easily understand that these are just other things that don't fit in the other menus.

Do we want to rename "Browse" to "Explore"? If so, we probably should rename the sub-items in that category, therefore how should we rename them?

I don't like the term "Explore" so much since it implies looking around the website, and not looking through sentences.

I've seen the term "Explore" on other websites, but I don't think it's appropriate for the Tatoeba Project.

I have no objection to changing the word from "Browse" if we can come up with a better word, but until then I think we should stay with "Browse."

Do we want to merge "Members" and "Wall" into a same category ("Community")?

To me, the term "Community" is perhaps just a less exact word meaning "Members". I suppose a community could have non-members, too.

Do we want to display "Contribute" in the menu for non-logged in users? The content of "Contribute" is rather targeted to people who already registered. It can give an idea to new users how they can contribute, but it may be taking space in the menu for little purpose in the end.

Either way if fine. One idea would be to leave it off the menu, but have a message on the page that only shows to non-logged in members, or an item in the "More" menu, that says something like "Register to add sentences or leave comments."

If we get rid of the "More" item, where would we place the "Show activity timeline" item that is currently found under "More"?

I wonder if the "Show activity timeline" is necessary for first-time visitors, or any non-logged in visitor. It does give people an idea of how much is going on, though, if they look at the page. The activity timeline doesn't, however, show how much linking is going on or the number of comments being added, so it's only a partial timeline.

"Register" link could maybe be removed?

I think leaving it as one link, "Register / Log in", would be a good idea.

The footer The register link would be displayed only for non-logged in users. Maybe we rename it into "Join the community"?

I think a simple "Register" is better. If it's already in the menu bar, then it's sort of redundant.

The "Help" page fits in there, but my problem with the Help page is that its content feels messy.

I agree. We should eventually merge the Wiki and the Help together, I think. Maybe the Wiki should be renamed "Help", though I'm not sure.

The "Tools" probably doesn't fit much here.

The "tools" seem to be something that could almost be totally dropped from the website.

These seem to be things people connected to the website have developed, but are not directly related to the purpose of the website. If they are going to remain on the site, they should be mainly hidden from the average visitor and only linked from a page designed for geeky developer types.

It feels like "Contact us" would also fit in this category but we probably don't want to have it duplicated.

It only needs to appear once on the page. People expect to find this either in the menu or at the very bottom of webpages. If the menu isn't too cluttered with it there, I would suggest having it in the menu.

"Developers" I'm not sure what "Using Tatoeba Corpus" would link to.

"Things for Developers Using the Tatoeba Corpus" might be a better title.

• A link to the downloads page.
• A link to the wiki page related to this. It's brief now, but could be expanded to further help people who want to use the Tatoeba Corpus for research or for creating other projects.

(Actually just one link "Things for Developers Using the Tatoeba Corpus" would be all that is needed on the main page. Once a person clicks to that link, they can find everything they need.)

Should we add the link to GitHub here?

• This would be a link for tatoeba.org developers, not developers using the corpus.

Perhaps the "Developers" set of links on the main page only needs to be these 2. Everything else could be linked to from these 2 sub-pages.

"Things for Developers Using the Tatoeba Corpus" "Things for Developers Working on Tatoeba.org"

"Tatoeba" Title is good.

I don't think I agree. It's OK, perhaps, but isn't everything on the website "Tatoeba?"

Is there a reason to have "Blog" as a link rather than an icon? Or to have Facebook and Twitter as icons rather than have them as a link?

Even though the Tatoeba Project has all 3 of these, they seem to be seldom used or updated. Perhaps they don't need to be prominently displayed on the page. It doesn't matter to me that much, but if someone looks at those pages, they will perhaps get the idea that not much is happening at tatoeba.org, which isn't the case.

What placeholder should we have in the search input? @kamillel suggested "Nice to meet you". Should we instead have some sort of instructions, more like "You can enter a word, a phrase or a sentence"?

Trang's idea here is a good one.

Perhaps, shorter is better.

"Enter a word, a phrase or a sentence."

Or, even shorter, drop the "sentence" part.

"Enter a word or a phrase."

Where should the search bar be placed? Before the tag line (@billovliver's mockup), or after the tag line (@kamillel's mockup)?

Either is OK. For now, I would suggest putting it under the site name and tag line to see how people like it. You can always change it later.

Eventually, you will want to consider making the search bar on all sub-pages look similar to the one on the main page.

Where do we place the logo? I think @kamillel's suggestion is fine. But we could also just have a smaller logo next to the "Tatoeba" in the menu.

I wonder if a logo is really necessary. If it fits into the design well, then there is no problem having one, but if it clutters up the design, then dropping it would be OK.

I'm unsure whether or not we should have the "About us" section that @kamillel's suggested.

I agree with what TRANG said on this one.

In the end the main useful information are the stats. I would personally be just fine if we just have a block with no title that says "So far we've gathered X sentences spread between Y languages" (I think "spread" sounds better than "divided"). But maybe someone will have a better idea.

I don't like either "spread" or "divided".

Remember that we used to have this on the non-logged in "index" page.

Some stats

157 contributions today 24490 members so far 179 supported languages

Perhaps doing something like this would work. However, I'd suggest not saying how many members are registered. That is sort of deceptive, since people may think that's how many contributors we have.

Perhaps something like the following would be appropriate

Some stats

Number of sentences: 3333333 Supported languages: 179 Contributions today: 157

You could possibly drop the "Contributions today" part, since nobody will know how many hours that represents.

You could possibly do something like this that was mentioned in another issue. https://github.com/Tatoeba/tatoeba2/issues/842

[ckjpn]

Here's one additional idea.

Instead of having the suggested extra links at the bottom of the page, we could put them to the right side of the random sentence block.

This is easy to do with a grid system, and pushes the right side to the bottom of the page on narrow screens like mobile phones.

Even though Trang says she doesn't think she'll use a grid-like framework like Bootstrap, I think perhaps she means she won't use a grid system developed and tested by some other group, but wants to create her own. Most people developing and designing webpages nowadays seem to be using a mobile-friendly grid-system like Bootstrap.

This type of layout has the advantage of always being able to see these links on a standard computer screen, even if the random sentence has lots of translations.

You can try resizing the window to see what happens on this sample page.

http://aitech.ac.jp/~itesls/tatoeba/index-page-idea-001.html

• I just grabbed the search block and the random sentence block off of tatoeba.org. I think from what Trang has said, she plans to redo these a little.
• Note that there are apparently some conflicts with the tatoeba.org CSS and the CSS I have. This type of thing can be corrected. Remember that this is just a mock-up.
• I also just left in my nav bar that I was already using, it's just a placeholder and doesn't look much different than what tatoeba.org is likely to use. The menu itself is not being discussed here.

Here are some screenshots.

Standard Computer

Narrower Screen - the nav menu items disappear and the standard 3-line "menu" icon that we're seeing of lot of these days appears.

It looks sort of like this on a mobile phone.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/?url=http%3A%2F%2Faitech.ac.jp%2F~itesls%2F%2Ftatoeba%2Findex-page-idea-001.html The search block could likely be updated to make it look better on a mobile.

[jiru]

Personally, I see no problem with the title "More". I'm pretty sure I've seen it a lot on the Web, and I think people can easily understand that these are just other things that don't fit in the other menus.

The problem is not that people won’t understand what "More" means. It’s that items are harder to find under such a generic category. It’s fine if you’re just looking around, but when you’re looking for something specific, you’re going through each category to check where it might be, and then through each item of the category, so it’s not efficient and it doesn’t feel well organized.

It’s not uncommon to see More menus on the web because that’s a quick and dirty way to solve the (very) hard problem of organizing content. Besides, removing the More menu forces us to think hard about organizing our menus in a better way.

What placeholder should we have in the search input? @kamillel suggested "Nice to meet you". Should we instead have some sort of instructions, more like "You can enter a word, a phrase or a sentence"?

Trang's idea here is a good one. Perhaps, shorter is better. "Enter a word, a phrase or a sentence." Or, even shorter, drop the "sentence" part. "Enter a word or a phrase."

I, too, think that it’s better not to suggest entering a sentence, because it would return no results in 99.9% of the cases.

Some stats

Number of sentences: 3333333 Supported languages: 179 Contributions today: 157

You could possibly drop the "Contributions today" part, since nobody will know how many hours that represents.

I like that way of displaying stats. We may as well add the number of audio recordings. I would like having a "contributions today" line. It may mean "contributions made in the past 24 hours". Or we could avoid the hour problem by having a "contributions this week". But some people start weeks on sunday and others on monday. So we may go for a "contributions this month". Dates are always such a difficult topic…

[ghost]

@billoliver, @kamillel, it would be good if somehow you could join your efforts

• That would be great, but I don't know if she is available.

She is available. I sent both of you an email and she replied she'll start sending her comments this weekend. If you haven't received it, then please contact me at trang@tatoeba.org.

• I think my writing skills might be a problem.

Don't worry too much about your writing skills. Just express your thoughts in the best way you can. If language is the problem, you can always write in your native language (better than nothing!). Maybe @RyckRichards or someone else on Tatoeba can help us understand you.

• She is a professional designer and I'm not; therefore she might be able to come up with better ideas.

She's not a professional designer but a frontend developer. She happens to also like doing UX Design.

[ckjpn]

Here is another idea for those of you working on a new home page design. I was actually thinking of something like this for regular contributors. This shows both new contributions and new comments, but more than just the few we get now.

Features:

• There is a simple search in the nav bar.
  This perhaps isn't ideal, but just gives an idea of one way to do this.
• There are a few sample ideas for things in the nav bar. I'm not necessarily recommending all of these. It's just for ideas.
• Uses a grid system that gracefully resizes for mobiles.
• There is a button at the top of the page, so first time visitors have something to look at that is likely to be interesting to them. (I limited this to a selection of sentences with audio, since people will less likely see bad sentences this way.)

There is a working version of this here.

http://www.manythings.org/tatoeba/home.php

When this site has a lot of traffic, if may be slow, so please be patient. This also grabs content from the "contributions" page and "comments" page from tatoeba.org, so this takes a bit of time, too.

Screenshots

Big Screen

Medium Screen or less than full screen windows on desktop computers

Mobile Screen

Disadvantages

• The random sentence block that some people desire didn't seem to easily fit in.
• There is no big search bar at the top, but that could easily be inserted.

[sacredceltic]

The "Latest contributions" are of no interest to first time visitors, and they can even be a deterrent. Latest contributions are the most prone to be wrong. The random sentence (extracted from OK sentences or sentences by natives) is far more interesting. If the point is to value the diversity of languages available, it's better to show stats (I liked the idea of showing : n sentences in m languages are available), because it might be that the latest contributions are, at times, not so diverse as showed above. I think we should definitely split home page requirements between already logged users and first time visitors. They're entirely different.

[ghost]

New Homepage Here is the new homepage to first time visitors. Thank you all for the feedback! Camille is going to post the explanations in the comment below.

[kamillel]

As you can see we mixed things for the different interfaces and suggestions and I think we arrived to something rather stable and which makes sense, and this should answer the questions/points previously raised (hopefully we didn't miss anything!). Here are the details:

Menu:

• Tatoeba with the logo is the new Home button. Adding the logo should make it clear that it's the website name and not a word in romaji. It's also a standard way of accessing the homepage, that users should be familiar with. We had to increase the menu height but it's good to make it breath a bit and it's quite common on many websites (for example, Memrise, italki, forvo...).
• 'Browse' stays the same (it works as it is).
• 'Contribute' stays the same.
• 'Community' = Members + Wall. We could also add 'Activity timeline' here (or in 'Stats', see below).
• 'More' disappeared, as it wasn't a very meaningful grouping it was quite difficult to know what to expect here. We redistributed the content in more relevant sections (in the footer, expect for 'Activity timeline' which is going to Contribute and 'Tools' which has been dropped as ckjpn/jiru suggested).
• Register / Log in: we kept those here because that's a very standard placement and wording so if someone wants to register or log in they are likely to look to the top right .

Content

• Tagline: we put it first, to introduce the website briefly.
• Search: main focus of the home page, we changed the placeholder to something more self-explanatory, as suggested (and looking around in other searches, it's a common practice).
• 'Random Sentence:' has the space to expand if needs to.

We removed the latest contributions, comments and messages blocks as they are quite overwhelming and not useful for new (non-logged) users.

Side bar

• 'Want to help?' is here to invite people to join the community and to explain for what registering is needed for (in a concise way, no need to be too wordy here).
• 'Stats': we grouped the global figures and the language sentences numbers as they are all statistics.

Footer

• 'Need some help?' is listing all help links previously in the 'More' menu, same order. If the pages are reworked later we could rearrange the links but for now there is not much more to do.
• 'Developers' is listing links for all kind of developers to make it simpler (and there are only 3 links).
• 'About' is grouping the 'About us' link (renamed into 'What is Tatoeba' -current page title-) and the links from the current footer. We're using the icons for facebook and twitter because it's taking less space and they are a standard way of displaying social media links (whereas the blog icon isn't as easy to understand).
• We added a line about the license as it's also useful to introduce the 'donate' link.

[lagleki]

Is the random sentence really random or limited to certain tags or authors somehow proved to be native speakers?

2016-03-05 22:08 GMT+03:00 kamillel notifications@github.com:

We focused on the home page for new visitors. As you can see we mixed things for the different interfaces and suggestions and I think we arrive to something rather stable and which makes sense, and this should answer the questions/points previously raised (hopefully we didn't miss anything!). Here are the details:

Menu:

• Tatoeba with the logo is the new Home button. Adding the logo should make it clear that it's the website name and not a word in romaji. It's also a standard way of accessing the homepage, that users should be familiar with. We had to increase the menu height but it's good to make it breath a bit and it's quite common on many websites (for example, Memrise, italki, forvo...).
• 'Browse' stays the same (it works as it is).
• 'Contribute' stays the same.

• 'Community' = Members + Wall. We could also add 'Activity timeline'

  here (or in 'Stats', see below).

  'More' disappeared, as it wasn't a very meaningful grouping it was quite difficult to know what to expect here. We redistributed the content in more relevant sections (in the footer, expect for 'Activity timeline' which is going to Contribute and 'Tools' which has been dropped as

  ckjpn/jiru suggested).

  Register / Log in: we kept those here because that's a very standard placement and wording so if someone wants to register or log in they are likely to look to the top right .

Content

• Tagline: we put it first, to introduce the website briefly.
• Search: main focus of the home page, we changed the placeholder to something more self-explanatory, as suggested (and looking around in other searches, it's a common practice).
• 'Random Sentence:' has the space to expand if needs too.

We removed the latest contributions, comments and messages blocks as they are quite overwhelming and not useful for new (non-logged) users.

Side bar

• 'Want to help?' is here to invite people to join the community and to explain for what registering is needed for (in a concise way, no need to be too wordy here).
• 'Stats': we grouped the global figures and the language sentences numbers as they are all statistics.

Footer -'Need some help?' is listing all help links previously in the 'More' menu, same order. If the pages are reworked later we could rearrange the links but for now there is not much more to do. -'Developers' is listing links for all kind of developers to make it simpler (and there are only 3 links). -'About' is grouping the 'About us' link (renamed into 'What is Tatoeba' -current page title-) and the links from the current footer. We're using the icons for facebook and twitter because it's taking less space and they are a standard way of displaying social media links (whereas the blog icon isn't as easy to understand).

• We added a line about the license as it's also useful to introduce the 'donate' link.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/Tatoeba/tatoeba2/issues/947#issuecomment-192709166.

[sacredceltic]

I like it ! It's straightforward, engaging and simple.

Just a little remark : I think flags are not that obvious for newcomers. Next to them (or without them...), we should read : 529.567 sentences in English ...

By the way, we've seen so far that many contributors, out of sheer nationalism, just want to see their flag the highest possible (as is obvious, recently, with the turkish/russian competition that just mirrors their countries' recent enmity...). That is definitely not a guarantee of quality of the sentences they produce, so I think we should get rid of flags altogether and just keep the language names : x sentences in

On 5 March 2016 at 20:27, Gleki Arxokuna notifications@github.com wrote: > Is the random sentence really random or limited to certain tags or authors > somehow proved to be native speakers? > > 2016-03-05 22:08 GMT+03:00 kamillel notifications@github.com: > > > We focused on the home page for new visitors. As you can see we mixed > > things for the different interfaces and suggestions and I think we arrive > > to something rather stable and which makes sense, and this should answer > > the questions/points previously raised (hopefully we didn't miss > > anything!). Here are the details: > > > > _Menu:_ > > - Tatoeba with the logo is the new Home button. Adding the logo should > > make it clear that it's the website name and not a word in romaji. It's > > also a standard way of accessing the homepage, that users should be > > familiar with. We had to increase the menu height but it's good to make > > it > > breath a bit and it's quite common on many websites (for example, > > Memrise, > > italki, forvo...). > > - 'Browse' stays the same (it works as it is). > > - 'Contribute' stays the same. > > - 'Community' = Members + Wall. We could also add 'Activity timeline' > > here (or in 'Stats', see below). > > - > > > > 'More' disappeared, as it wasn't a very meaningful grouping it was > > quite difficult to know what to expect here. We redistributed the content > > in more relevant sections (in the footer, expect for 'Activity timeline' > > which is going to Contribute and 'Tools' which has been dropped as > > > > ## ckjpn/jiru suggested). > > > > Register / Log in: we kept those here because that's a very standard > > placement and wording so if someone wants to register or log in they are > > likely to look to the top right . > > > > _Content_ > > - Tagline: we put it first, to introduce the website briefly. > > - Search: main focus of the home page, we changed the placeholder to > > something more self-explanatory, as suggested (and looking around in > > other > > searches, it's a common practice). > > - 'Random Sentence:' has the space to expand if needs too. > > > > We removed the latest contributions, comments and messages blocks as they > > are quite overwhelming and not useful for new (non-logged) users. > > > > _Side bar_ > > - 'Want to help?' is here to invite people to join the community and > > to explain for what registering is needed for (in a concise way, no need > > to > > be too wordy here). > > - 'Stats': we grouped the global figures and the language sentences > > numbers as they are all statistics. > > > > _Footer_ > > -'Need some help?' is listing all help links previously in the 'More' > > menu, same order. If the pages are reworked later we could rearrange the > > links but for now there is not much more to do. > > -'Developers' is listing links for all kind of developers to make it > > simpler (and there are only 3 links). > > -'About' is grouping the 'About us' link (renamed into 'What is Tatoeba' > > -current page title-) and the links from the current footer. We're using > > the icons for facebook and twitter because it's taking less space and > > they > > are a standard way of displaying social media links (whereas the blog > > icon > > isn't as easy to understand). > > - We added a line about the license as it's also useful to introduce > > the 'donate' link. > > > > — > > Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub > > https://github.com/Tatoeba/tatoeba2/issues/947#issuecomment-192709166. > > — > Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub > https://github.com/Tatoeba/tatoeba2/issues/947#issuecomment-192713044.

[trang]

Thanks a lot @billoliver and @kamillel! I think I should be able to implement it before the end of Tatoeba Day and I'll deploy it on the dev server so that it can be tested.

@lagleki, since a couple of weeks, the random sentence excludes orphan sentences and sentences that are unapproved (cf. https://tatoeba.org/eng/wall/show_message/25552#message_25552 and e8053910ccce2106593431c08b14918dfca73bd8)

@sacredceltic

Just a little remark : I think flags are not that obvious for newcomers. Next to them (or without them...), we should read : 529.567 sentences in English

That's noted.

[ckjpn]

I would like to see these 2 items at the top of the right column, in this order.

• Need Help?

Something that has some basic help for new visitors that haven't yet registered. Perhaps, this can be more or different than what I suggested below.

• Want to Help?

It could be a simple "join the community" button, but if a little more detail were there, it's easier to see what can be done by "joining the community". The way I put it also sort of reminds people that it's a good idea to contribute in your own native language. Perhaps the "donate money" and "record audio" parts could be dropped.

This is an excerpt from a previous suggestion of mine.

[ckjpn]

Is the random sentence really random or limited to certain tags or authors somehow proved to be native speakers?

At this time, I'm pretty sure it's totally random, except unowned sentences and red sentences are filtered out.

Here are some possible ideas to consider to help lower the possibility of the sentence being bad.

• Limit to sentences with audio. -- It's very hard for a native speaker to record a sentence without noticing errors. -- This would likely be easy to implement. -- The disadvantage is that there are only audio files in a few languages, and some of the languages with audio don't have many. However, there are enough sentences with audio that the base for selecting sentences is large enough.
• Limit to sentences with more than 5 linked translations. -- If a number of people have read the sentence and felt it was good enough to translate, then perhaps it's less likely to have errors.
• Limit to sentences by selected native speakers. -- This would likely be easier to implement if only a select number of native speakers were chosen.
• Pre-select a subset of the Tatoeba Corpus to use for the random sentence block. -- This could be created by using some of the ideas above, plus whatever other filtering out or adding in that was felt necessary.

[ghost]

It could be a simple "join the community" button, but if a little more detail were there, it's easier to see what can be done by "joining the community". The way I put it also sort of reminds people that it's a good idea to contribute in your own native language. Perhaps the "donate money" and "record audio" parts could be dropped.

I've been designing a new homepage for logged users and I think it will solve all these problems. But I still need to talk to Trang about this. :+1:

[alanfgh]

It looks good. My comments are minor:

(1) Instead of this:

Search sentences in [Any] Translated into [Any] Containing:

capitalize it as follows:

Search sentences in [Any] translated into [Any] containing:

Using this standard sentence capitalization makes it clear that this is a single description. You could either capitalize "Any" (to show that it represents a language name, which will be capitalized in English) or not.

(2) For this line:

Tip: =word will search for an exact match

I would italicize "word" and possibly repeat it:

Tip: =_word_ will search for an exact match on _word_

The "on word" at the end makes it slightly longer, but also slightly clearer.

(3) There is a lot of whitespace around the elements. While I understand that some might find that aesthetically appealing, it's going to be hard for some users to see everything they want at once, especially on a mobile device. It's worth remembering that we have no separate non-desktop GUI.

[trang]

As mentioned on the Wall, the new homepage is now testable on the dev.

I skipped certain things because of lack of time:

• the Twitter and Facebook icons
• the number of sentences with audio

I skipped some other things because I didn't want redesign core design elements in the scope of this issue:

• the design of the dropdowns
• the design of the modules in the content (there's no bottom border)
• the fonts

I'll probably leave it like this for this first iteration. The main modifications are there and it feels quite refreshing :)

[ghost]

I skipped certain things because of lack of time

Don't forget to change the search bar for users that are not logged-in. :+1: The new layout is looking great, good job!

Edit: Actually, I'm talking about this one https://dev.tatoeba.org/eng/sentences_lists/index

[kamillel]

Looking gorgeous!

@trang The social networks links are working fine as they are (actually the blue icons may contrast a bit too much with the rest), and it's best to keep the dropdowns / modules and fonts aligned with the rest of the website. Thank you!