New website

[obfuscurity]

I'd like to resume work on this Pages site that was introduced by @mleinart a couple years ago. I envision this as something similar to the new Sensu site, which is beautifully done in both design and simplicity.

I have registered the graphiteapp.org domain, which I think would be suitable for the project. This can be CNAME'd to the GitHub Pages name (graphite-project.github.io).

All of our current project documentation (i.e. content found at http://graphite.readthedocs.org/) should be linked directly from this site. It should be easy to find, and each version should be linked independently.

There should be support information available on the site, including:

• link to Launchpad Answers
• link(s) to the documentation
• irc channel details
• mailing list details (assuming we wish to continue using this in addition to LP answers)

If there are any other requirements for the new site, please include them below. There will be a separate issue for decommissioning the old wikidot site and tracking any dependencies for that task (e.g. filling in missing content at RTD), so let's focus only on the new site here.

/cc @graphite-project/committers

[obfuscurity]

@mleinart reminded me that we have a Librelist for Graphite.

[jssjr]

Might want to ping @torkelo too. He offered to help with a new site design.

[torkelo]

Already noticed this repo :)

I would love to help.

[obfuscurity]

I've started on a basic framework with Bootstrap (of course). Once I have something even remotely structured I'll push the branch up and mention it here.

[obfuscurity]

We might also want to mention the StackOverflow tag for Graphite under the support section.

[obfuscurity]

I'd also like to add some quickstart guides. Perhaps a really easy mechanism (e.g. Docker) for just getting Graphite deployed for testing. And others (videos?) for demonstrating some of the more common use cases for creating charts in the composer.

[SEJeff]

I quite strongly support this and am happy to help with whatever. Personally, I always gush over how beautiful just about any of the hashicorp project websites are such as terraform, consul, or serf

[obfuscurity]

@SEJeff I totally agree, the Hashicorp stuff is very nice. They also (iirc) have a full-time designer on staff. Unfortunately, as an OSS project, we don't have this luxury. There is no company like Hashicorp (Vagrant) or HeavyWater LLC (Sensu) sponsoring development of the Graphite project via support service revenues, etc., so there are no real finances to even farm this out to somewhere like 99designs.

That said, if you know of any designers who would be willing to donate their time and expertise, that would be awesome. :smile_cat:

[SEJeff]

Wasn't aware of that, makes sense. Note that for the docker bits, I snagged the graphiteproject org name awhile ago. I'm happy to add you or any other graphite maintainer to it who wants to maintain things on the graphite hub. I think it is a super obvious way to get started.

[obfuscurity]

Can you elaborate wrt the "docker bits" and that domain? Not sure what you mean.

[esc]

I would suggest to get a new site with design up and running ASAP and treat things like a quickstart as an additional feature that we can iterate on. IIRC currently there isn't a simple straight-forward way to setup a demo environment, so perhaps some additional work needs to go into simplifying that.

[torkelo]

@esc maybe not 100% what you mean by demo, or setup a demo environment.

I will soon try to work more on http://play.grafana.org, specifically add dashboards that go through most of the graphite functions, how they work, use cases etc. Could be a good compliment to the graphite function docs to see the functions live and also to play with them.

[obfuscurity]

@esc I agree, getting the new site up with the bare essentials is the primary goal. Any new content will appear in an iteration.

@torkelo I really like the idea of incorporating Grafana's play environment at some point. Good stuff.

[obfuscurity]

At some point I'd also like to use cases based on http://graphite.readthedocs.org/en/latest/who-is-using.html on the new site, e.g. customer stories.

Also perhaps a gallery based on http://graphite.readthedocs.org/en/latest/tools.html.

[obfuscurity]

FWIW I'm finally digging into the new website. I have the basic wireframes for the SPA home page and am coding the bits as we speak.

[SEJeff]

Any specific tech you're using? For SPA, I really dig react and found that angular seems to make things harder for no great reason.

[obfuscurity]

Sorry, I made that sound way more exciting than it really is. It's mostly going to be static with maybe a little JS thrown in just to manage customer stories and tools. It's all hosted on GitHub Pages and there are no (planned) external calls.

[SEJeff]

Static html? Sounds very web scale. How does it get those kickass benchmarks?

[obfuscurity]

I'm not even sure where the real questions ended and the trolling began.

[bulletfactory]

Quick Shopping List:

Features Section

• Overview explaining what Graphite is
• Official documentation will live on raeadthedocs.org

Quickstart for getting metrics in Quickstart for getting metrics out

• Quickstart Guide for installation
  • synthesize
• Something similar to play.grafana.org?

Customer Stories

• Use Cases

Download

Support details

• read the docs
• launchpad answers
• irc
• github projects

Integrations Gallery

• http://graphite.readthedocs.org/en/latest/tools.html

[bulletfactory]

Initial Page Load

Scrolling Down the Site

Case Studies Page Concept

[JeanFred]

Wow, these are pretty cool mockups @bulletfactory!

[deniszh]

:+1: IMO we could leave motto as is - "Graphite. Kicks ass. Chew bubblegum." :D

[bulletfactory]

Haha - thanks all - Also, all of your feedback is really appreciated, so please don't hesitate to comment (good, bad, or otherwise). I'm working on some tweaks now to make it feel a bit less 'corporatey'.

On Mon, Nov 16, 2015 at 8:45 AM Denis Zhdanov notifications@github.com wrote:

[image: :+1:] IMO we could leave motto as is - "Graphite. Kicks ass. Chew bubblegum." :D

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/graphite-project/graphite-project.github.io/issues/3#issuecomment-157030389 .

[bulletfactory]

I took some time to update the mockup. The current version felt a little too mechanical and read more like a white-paper than a website. I wanted to re-examine the color palette, and shuffle the sections around some. I thought some bigger blocks of color might help it feel less dry. Open to using different colors, but wanted to illustrate what large gradient block might look like. I wasn't convinced that the type needed rethinking at this point, but if this still doesn't hit the feeling we're going for, I'm more than happy to swap out the type for headlines at the very least.

Added: Case study buttons on various logos (need to identify which companies/users to highlight) Quickstart Guide buttons w/ link to other guides Integrations Section with logos (need to identify which integrations to highlight) Larger CTAs to launchpad and docs.

I think we're close, but am looking for feedback. How does this feel? Are we closer or further away from the vision?

[drawks]

Bad Ass :+1:

[obfuscurity]

That looks amazing. I love the color treatment in the logo and the backgrounds. The only nit (and an easy fix) would be the spacing in the arch section, but I acknowledge this is just a mockup.

[torkelo]

@bulletfactory looks great!

[mattttt]

@bulletfactory Really liking this. I think there's a good opportunity to animate the paths on the hero image using Vivus: https://maxwellito.github.io/vivus/

Just a bit of motion in the background, on pageload, but not so much that it's annoying. Further, only on the first one - not the rest (it'd get super annoying).

[pyr]

@bulletfactory awesome work

[bitprophet]

@bulletfactory Flippin' awesome!

[deniszh]

Very cool! Love that hexagonal themes everywhere. :+1:

[obfuscurity]

https://github.com/graphite-project/graphite-project.github.io/pull/16

[obfuscurity]

Marking this complete. There are still some items left to ship but we're tracking them as separate issues. If there's something I've missed please let me know.