I liked the older UI more

[maryamklabib]

The previous UI for the site was extremely easy to search and pleasing to the eye.

Please consider incorporating it back.

[jama22]

@maryamklabib could you be a bit more specific about the search aspects? We now have an actual search function on the site, which we think would have made things more accessible. What search tasks are you trying to execute that you cannot achieve in the current site?

Regarding the aesthetics, can you also be a bit more specific other than "pleasing to the eye"? If its purely aesthetics there isn't much we can do, but if there's genuine readability issues (e.g. font is too small, i'd prefer yellow text on blue backgrounds :P, etc) we can action on those pieces of feedback

[vito]

A good rule of thumb for feedback: actionable, specific, and kind.

As @jama-pivotal said, more specifics would help. Suggesting that we revert to the old website because you liked it more is not exactly actionable, and in fact is pretty rude in the absence of no other suggestions, no matter how politely it's worded.

Here's a good example of constructive feedback: https://github.com/concourse/docs/issues/37

[AnianZ]

I have to say I was also a little bit confused seeing the new site in contrast to the old one. I get the motivation to create an experience more focused on information and developers but I also liked the more branded design with more visualisation of the old site.

And that would be my point of actionable feedback: The new page seems to have fewer visualisations than the old one. The link to concourses own pipeline on the start page for example is gone. And I also miss the prominent description of the concepts and architecture of concourse at the beginning of the docs. They are mentioned in the first sentence of the page but the links go direct to the docs for how to use them. I liked the more abstract description at the start of the old page.

Also I can't seem to find the visualisation of the different parts of concourse like the TSA, Baggagclaim and the communication between worker nodes and web nodes, all the different ports etc. That graphic representation helped me a lot in understanding how I can set up and manage my concourse instance.

And a final note on the more basic appearance in general: As I said, I get where you are coming form and especially the search is really helpful. But I would not underestimate the value of a good design to attract new people to the project. Of course you don't want to sell a product but you want to "sell" it to interested developers and probably new contributors. The modern design with a nice logo, a clearly stated vision and also good documentation attracted me to the project. The current site looks more like its "just" documentation and not as much interested in attracting new people. Even if the content states otherwise.

[vito]

@AnianZ Thanks for the feedback!

And that would be my point of actionable feedback: The new page seems to have fewer visualisations than the old one. The link to concourses own pipeline on the start page for example is gone.

Yeah, we could totally use a tad more visualization on the front page to show what the user will be seeing. The only pipeline you can see right now is a tiny box on the front page. We could at least link to ours or some other real-world examples.

And I also miss the prominent description of the concepts and architecture of concourse at the beginning of the docs. They are mentioned in the first sentence of the page but the links go direct to the docs for how to use them. I liked the more abstract description at the start of the old page.

Also I can't seem to find the visualisation of the different parts of concourse like the TSA, Baggagclaim and the communication between worker nodes and web nodes, all the different ports etc. That graphic representation helped me a lot in understanding how I can set up and manage my concourse instance.

Yeah, we definitely sacrificed a lot of the higher-level conceptual content. Prior to the reorganization we had multiple pages for any given concept (Concepts > Task, Using Concourse > Running Tasks, Using Concourse > Configuring Tasks), so we tried to consolidate things into one toplevel section per topic, and center everything on code, assuming developers picking up Concourse would want to kick the tires first more often than invest in reading conceptual material.

The intent was to have the top-level page be able to introduce you to the concept quickly and then let you dig in to code as fast as possible, but it's not quite how we want it yet. We pushed early planning to iterate and improve the content over time.

I'm definitely hearing the need to reintroduce docs around higher-level concepts that help to build a mental model of Concourse. The component and architecture page still exists, but is kind of strangely under the Contributing section. Maybe we can move things around and have that be the starting content for a more high-level "how things work" section that ties all the config together?

And a final note on the more basic appearance in general: As I said, I get where you are coming form and especially the search is really helpful. But I would not underestimate the value of a good design to attract new people to the project. Of course you don't want to sell a product but you want to "sell" it to interested developers and probably new contributors. The modern design with a nice logo, a clearly stated vision and also good documentation attracted me to the project. The current site looks more like its "just" documentation and not as much interested in attracting new people. Even if the content states otherwise.

It totally makes sense that the new design would feel like a step back. Our lust for a pretty website got ahead of the product itself when we launched it with v1.0, and we literally need to take a step back. :) The old site set the wrong tone: rather than attracting contributors, we attracted customers, who would then be disappointed with the features we were lacking because we didn't have enough contributors to help push it forward. The project was not self-sustaining, but the website sure made it look like it was. There have been plenty of OSS projects that launch with a pretty face but then rot on the inside.

When I run into an OSS project with a super productized website, I don't think they need contributors. I think they can afford to hire designers, they've got a business model, they're funded by a large company, and they aren't reliant on help from people like me. Concourse is indeed sponsored by Pivotal and has full-time engineers, but the scale of the project is so large that it isn't enough.

So the balance we're trying to strike now is somewhere between "grassroots OSS project in need of contributors" and "polished self-sustaining product that happens to be OSS and has a big marketing engine behind it" (like Pivotal/Hashicorp/Docker).

To be honest I think the prettiness of an OSS website's appearance for attracting contributors is very overstated. Contributors are developers, and developers care about the merits of the tool itself. Most actual grassroots OSS projects have a very spartan design: Django, React, and Rust are a few examples. It's only the ones that "make it" that go for the fancy designs later. Even Docker started simple.

The new design makes it easier to change direction and move the content around. It's focused on teaching, not selling. It makes more sense for a project that's growing.

So in 2018 with us focusing on community health, we've swung the pendulum in the other direction. That's not to say we won't go back to having a fancy schmancy design in the future. It's just not helping us right now.

(For what it's worth, I also just like the new design more. It feels less dense and gets out of my way. It has room for examples everywhere. It's focused on content, not flair. It shows me code, not a pamphlet.)

[maryamklabib]

Hey everyone,

I wanted to take a step back and recognize the incredible work you all have put in the design of your website, your pipelines, your yaml, your discord, stack overflow, slack channels, etc.

I wanted to convey a feeling and didn't know where to. The context was that I was in a coding session with other devs and we wanted to reference the docs. We hadn't seen the new site and we expressed unanimous "first impressions" that we missed how pretty it used to be. I made this issue on the spot with the intent that it was a group of voices in a sea of many more, so please do take it with a grain of salt.

I can't reference the older site right now but a lot of what @AnianZ pointed out above resonates with me. I liked having a physically large search functionality (like literally the search box is now smaller). I liked the branding and the aerospace metaphors. I liked seeing more sample manifest snippets. It feels like it's harder to find manifest dos and donts. You've all made some excellent points about how purposeful this recent design is, and you've thought about it longer than I have.

[jhamon]

I have really enjoyed the new search functionality but am slightly put off by the non-standard monospace font. When I first loaded this page with the new styles I actually went into my browser developer console tools to see if the fonts had loaded properly because I thought maybe I was seeing some kind of weird system font as a fallback. Perhaps it will grow on me but for now my reaction to Iosevka's tall-and-narrow aesthetic is that it is definitely harder for me to read than Source Code Pro, Inconsolata, Menlo, Monaco, or really any other commonly used monospace font.

[vito]

@jhamon I hear ya. We've received similar feedback in the past. We'll take a look at others, or possibly try some tweaks to Iosevka (i.e. character spacing) that we've done before and received positive feedback.

I'm gonna close this issue before it turns into a grab-bag of feedback with a bunch of parallel discussions that all can't really be "closed". We should be using the Site Feedback forum for this instead.

Thanks everyone!

[AnianZ]

Thanks for your detailed response @vito . These are some very valid points about sustainability and contributions you brought up there. Great that you are communicating that so open.

And I see you added the architecture back in prominently. Great!

I won't bother this thread with more discussion and look to the forum instead :wink: I don't have a lot of time at the moment but maybe I can invest some to get a little deeper into concourse and the the docs and help out somewhere in the next month.