piskvorky / gensim

Topic Modelling for Humans
https://radimrehurek.com/gensim
GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1
15.65k stars 4.37k forks source link

RFC: New website design #2927

Closed piskvorky closed 4 years ago

piskvorky commented 4 years ago

I've hired a designer to redesign the Gensim website, give it a more modern & unified look for our 4.0 release.

I asked them to keep the same content + structure = static "plain HTML" pages for the "outside" website, plus auto-generated docs for the "inside" API ref. Just looking better than the current https://radimrehurek.com/gensim/.

The designer came up with the following options. They are generic templates, to be customized and filled with content, so it's only about the general look&feel at this point.

"Outside" pages

"Inner" API reference pages

@gojomo @mpenkov any preference? Your input and comments are welcome. Otherwise I'll go ahead and pick something, not critical. Cheers.

piskvorky commented 4 years ago

…my preference is large fonts, static content (nothing jumping/moving) and airy. So these three:

And for API docs, the recognizable https://sphinx-rtd-theme.readthedocs.io/en/stable/ .

mpenkov commented 4 years ago

Had a look, I agree with your picks and the readthedocs scheme.

piskvorky commented 4 years ago

@mpenkov @gojomo here's the close-to-finish draft of the new website: https://stage.friendlystudio.cz/gensim-doc

Any comments, suggestions? Now is the right time :)

Things that will still change for sure:

Things that will change only if we shout:

Otherwise the site structure, layout and content are complete. The switch should not require any changes to our deployment process: it's still static HTML generated by Sphinx.

gojomo commented 4 years ago

One key functional comment: On my retina MBP16", in Brave with page zoom at default, and browser width about 3/4 of my screen, the header navigations links ('Home Documentation Support API About`) were folded into the hamburger-menu. That made me think they were an inconvenient extra click away, until I noticed them appear when trying a smaller font. I'd suggest ensuring that the header links appear on any viewport that's 1024px or wider - so that it's only on truly mobile/constrained browsers that the drop-down menu is required.

Overall it looks very nice & the having the docs in a familiar read-the-docs layout, with permanent navigation links in the left margin, will be very beneficial.

If anything, the overall style/spacing of the main landing page may be a bit too slick, giving strong impression of a subscription SaaS product sales pitch for end-users, rather than a library for developers. This extends to some of the wording: "Try now for free" sounds like some sort of time-limited signup, rather than forever-free open-source. I tend to expect open-source stuff to be a bit more spartan, info-dense, and even rough-around-the-edges. For more info-density & 'developer feel' I'd suggest:

For the docs:

Finally, it'd be good if the landing page had some dedicated, near-the-top line for "latest news" and/or "latest release" - typically just a dated link of the form "Latest: gensim-X-Y-Z released, 2020-MM-DD" to the mailing-list-post or github-page detailing the most-recent release.

piskvorky commented 4 years ago

I'd like to keep several versions (releases) in the navigation too. It's not critical but nice-to-have.

I'm not sure how to do it with Sphinx, but I saw it in other projects, should be possible.

All good points, I'll either pass it on to the web devs (issues with design) or correct myself (wrong copy, typos, content). Thanks!

mpenkov commented 4 years ago

No comments from me, other than it looks good!