VOTING [Openwrt.org relaunch] planned?

Site Feedback and Other Questions
1

According to the poll about the forum software, I would like to start another poll about the openwrt.org website design:

  • I like the current design of openwrt.org
  • I prefer a change of the design template (stay with DokuWiki) of openwrt.org

0 voters

Please vote and leave your comments ("I like/don't like it because...") in a reply to this posting

I am very curious about the openwrt.org relaunch. Is there anything on the schedule? Especially regarding the style? It might be possible to grab a low hanging fruit and change the layout with a few tweaks just to make it a bit more attractive. Is there a core team working on the web pages?
From my point of view, the project suffers because of the lack of being popular. There are nerds and "teckies" (german word) sitting next to me who do think that openwrt is a late 90s hard core developer thing.
As far as I learned and understand it is pretty much up to date in regard to the technology, device support, usability, developer skills and the community life itself. I would always recommend openwrt - even to non technical people.
But the website might let the people think that it is an oldie thing because is really looks like in the late 90s. Is this by purpose? If this is an often asked question, please ignore / I can delete it.

4 Likes
2

agreed! happy new year 2005!

3

Yes, this is by purpose. It was a prerequisite for the re-merge to go back to the OpenWrt look and feel.

4

I see. Okay. So you are back to the old look and feel.
In that case i would ask if it is planned to rework the old look and feel?
The logo can stay but it might be possible to give the web site a fresh paint with just a few changes - avoiding a big effort and big changes.
The site could look much more attractive to people younger than 50.
What do you think? I would volunteer and give it a try.

5

There is no dedicated team, just me and some occasional contributions.

Wouldn't mind a slight rebrush of the design but need a few specific pointers of what a "modern look and feel" would entail. I hope its not about adding screen filling hero images conveying pointless marketing slogens with little information and diluting the content thats there with overuse of margins and paddings.

5 Likes
6

lede-project.org before merge was a great example.

4 Likes
7

I don't remember lede-project before the merge.
Regarding the changes: Mostly, the color needs to be changed. Less blue-grey and more black / bold - non bold contrast and white.

  • adding screen filling hero images --> no
  • conveying pointless marketing slogens with little information --> no
  • and diluting the content thats there with overuse of margins and paddings --> no

In fact I would not even re-arrange the menu and content. Just some new CSS give a new style to the buttons, headers and the content. I would also give a new logo a try and fire up Gimp :slight_smile:

8

There aren't that many screenshot left, but here is link to one:
S/wiki/site/ in LEDE wiki - #15 by hnyman

That is how the LEDE web site looked before reverting back to the old Openwrt style.

9

that sucked anyway. this background in dark blue theme was quite fine http://luci.subsignal.org/trac/raw-attachment/ticket/76/screenshot_02.png

10

Since the site is generated in DokuWiki might be worth browsing some templates for ideas

https://www.dokuwiki.org/template

But even they look dated :frowning: Openwrt theme seems better as is.

11

I don’t want to judge the examples or the style before the merge.
Can someone give me FTP read access that I can mirror (parts of) OpenWrt and make a proposal?
Please keep in mind that I want to try to grab a low hanging fruit and do some simple changes. Just a try - and proposal.
No big redesign.

12

LEDE/OpenWrt wiki with bootstrap3 theme (the one used for the former LEDE wiki):

grafik
grafik1337×1089 64.6 KB

I have a demowiki on a raspi to play around with.

4 Likes
13

If the current version of the site fits to this structure (bootstrap CSS) it would actually be a good point to start with.
Another (new) logo, another (new) theme —> let’s go

14

I'm guilty of cheap talk and no action in that case but what's missing is IMHO some minimal brand identity

  • Some kind of color palette that can be reused across different websites - personally I'm not a fan of the current design and I also dislike bootstrap - the original static page for LEDE was nice, but YMMV.

  • Identical fonts, font-sizes (no webfonts IMHO - https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/system-font-stack/)

  • Identical sizes for <h1> etc.pp.

  • put this minimal identity into CSS for downloads, wiki, bugs, forum.. this is probably most of the work and quite a pita to adjust the CSS of all the themes.

  • similiar to archlinux have a small header that links to everything else.

2 Likes
15

I personally will go for consistency and traditional over new-age artsy. The way I look at it, this technology is difficult enough to keep up with without someone adding a new wrapper just because they thought the format looked "old". Information overload to the tenth power. To me, this level of change adds unnecessary confusion.

16

I took a deeper look at to possibilities to grap a low hanging fruit and given by the fact that there is DokuWiki in place, the only option is to use another template that supports the sidebar.
I have tried a couple of themes (also the better looking bootstrap3 template) and there is one that looks fine, but maybe a bit boring.
The other, maybe better - but more expensive - option is to rebuild it using a famous (and free) bootstrap theme. But I assume that there are no free resources for such a adventure.
I would vote for a new theme, without the blue grey background picture, and I am really afraid that there is not more I can bring into this game.
Samples...

starterbootstrap

bootstrap

1 Like
18

There is a poll at the top of the page and I asked the OpenWrt admins if it could be pinned to the top on the categories overview screen?

19

Great job! @tmomas, @jow -- can the theme be made user-selectable? I wouldn't even care what the default theme is, if I could select something along the lines of bootstrap3/@Frood42's theme.

1 Like
20

For me, apart from the outdated look, the Openwrt website does not seem very user friendly.

The front page is way to information heavy. Look at the text:
"The OpenWrt Project is a Linux operating system targeting embedded devices. Instead of trying to create a single, static firmware, OpenWrt provides a fully writable filesystem with package management. This frees you from the application selection and configuration provided by the vendor and allows you to customize the device through the use of packages to suit any application. For developers, OpenWrt is the framework to build an application without having to build a complete firmware around it; for users this means the ability for full customization, to use the device in ways never envisioned."

Now if I'm not a technical user, I might get through this long read (though I probably won't) and still not know, that Openwrt is software I can use to improve my router, because I don't know it qualifies as a "embedded device".

Simply putting a picture of a router or similar near the text will make sure everyone has a clear understanding of the context to begin with, and likewise putting a download icon next to "Download Firmware" will make my eyes jump there instantly, skipping the intro, if I already now what Openwrt is and I am just looking for the latest release.

Similarly the "Documentation" page seems very weighed down. In my view it should be split in to a two front page visible sections: "Quick Start Guide" with a step-by-step approach that a typical user might encounter for first use of Openwrt (can contain links for further reading or detailed instructions for individual steps), instead of the ramdom list of tutorials, that is shown now.

Another section could be "further documentation/for developers" with the remaining guides, and even those could have their categories optimized and "iconized" to make individual guides easier to locate.

The old LEDE website is still browsable on The Wayback Machine, and it did seem a little easier to navigate. Notice they actually did use a graphic here to illustrate the re-merger, which might be very interesting from a developers view, but not very relevant for a user that cares more about functionality than naming or development.

Now if the Openwrt logo instead was an image of a router, and the box read "LEDE Linux" instead of just LEDE, the graphic might actually have helped the same user to understand, that this site showed a way to put Linux software onto a router :slight_smile:

EDIT: Lol, forgot the link :blush: