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Topic: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

LOL @ title

Anyway, several (okay, like, four) of us on #lsdev got overly frustrated at the slow crash of websites dying lately. Spurned on by rootrider, we've begun to take steps to resurrect ourselves.

In the past week, we've:

1) Resurrected the progress news ( http://lsp.litestep.info )
2) Fixed whatever was keeping http://lsdev.org from showing up.
3) This awesome-tastic forum! I personally tested out 4 or 5 opensource forum software, and I found this one to be the easiest to work with. It's nice and simple, and as it stands right now, we don't need an over-featured bloated forum to support our little community.

Also, I've looked at several wiki projects, but haven't been sold on any of them really. Does anyone out there have a favorite wiki software they like to use? If so, please discuss!

Additionally, I worked on a mockup website which will hopefully become the future litestep.(info|com|net)

Mockup of LiteStep website

Here's the mocked up website itself: http://roenfanz.info/litestep/

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

good stuff...

please also check out http://litestep.info/stateofthestep.php for a current status and for what we've been working on. We will likely be moving that discussion over to this forum, but any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011

3 (edited by Longtooth 2011-09-27 00:53:55 am)

Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

This new board is cookie-hungry. Thanks for breathing life back into Lite.

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

I take my last post back.. the-golem has done a great job on the new site, and the new forum can be easily integrated into the site

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

rootrider wrote:

I take my last post back.. the-golem has done a great job on the new site, and the new forum can be easily integrated into the site

Shouldn't this reply be on the other thread? big_smile

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

yeah, whoops. big_smile

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

Also, I've looked at several wiki projects, but haven't been sold on any of them really. Does anyone out there have a favorite wiki software they like to use? If so, please discuss!

MediaWiki.

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

no.. mediawiki is a pita to work with. I think most anyone here who's used it on the backend agrees that it's not really ideal for our needs.

the-golem has done some great stuff with the web site so far, and he's integrated dokuwiki in very nicely. Good stuff..

using LS since 1998. Old FPN site operator, owner of ShellFront, keeper of other LS domains
State of the Step 2011

9 (edited by jalist 2011-09-30 11:08:01 am)

Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

I'm posting this image of an alternative logo here in case anyone wants to use it in the redesign etc, I can't find the icon but this is a wallpaper I have from years back ...
https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-gqKqPrFxZFA/ToWQ1GJH44I/AAAAAAAAAMQ/NYXGTl-iBtg/s800/jalist1.png

The new site looks good btw, nice clean design.

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

This ? http://tnl.deviantart.com/art/Big-LiteStep-Logo-81838

11 (edited by Anomareh 2011-09-30 14:52:40 pm)

Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

That logo is pretty awesome.

Also nearly all wikis are horrible. Basically it's picking the best of the worst and hope it doesn't look like crap. Speaking of which, I think dokuwiki looks pretty horrid and straight out of the 90's.


As far as the mockup goes, it's pretty nice. Though I think dropping some of the 1px borders would help clean it up a lot.

http://f.cl.ly/items/0w1w1F3x1i2X0L1t1G0w/scrot.20110930.094949.png

12 (edited by Tobbe 2011-10-01 08:08:19 am)

Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

If we'll have some kind of news box on some page that aggregates news from some special forum section and/or LSP (which I think we should!) then we should also have a box with the latest forum posts, imo.

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

I've always seen latest forum posts type sections do more harm than good.

On the one side the forums might not have a lot of activity, and showing this on the front page is bad for a number of reasons.

On the other side if there is any noticeable amount of activity, the section becomes useless and detracts from the usability of the site. All you get is a bunch of random forum topics that someone just visiting the LiteStep page probably doesn't care or know anything about. The people that are interested in that info probably just have the forums bookmarked and will never see it in the first place.

Not to mention it now gives spammers an incentive to try and get spam through as now they have a quick and easy way to advertise on the front page.

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

I'm not sure we will have many actual news. The "latest forum posts" idea was to have something on the news page that is actually kind of new smile

Maybe we could also show commits on github on LS related projects (modules, themes, etc).

Aggregating LSP, forum posts, github commits and actual proper news I thought we might actually get something that's updated semi-regularly.

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

I like the layout, its looks very professional.

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

Baron Bruce wrote:

I like the layout, its looks very professional.

Thanks for your comments Baron

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

Attention 'Steppers

I'm officially putting this out there. The layout for the new "core" website is pretty much finished. However, I'm severely lacking on content. I need content writers. You may view the mockup here: http://roenfanz.info/litestep/index.php

I'll go ahead and layout how *I* think the website should be organized. Please feel free to volunteer to fill content. Feel free to offer input on my proposed layout.

/
    Home/Index
        // Two sentence "teaser".
        // Download Link
        // Screenshot of a theme -- make it revolving?
        // What else could go here?
    Overview
        Introducing LiteStep 
            // This would be the "active" content when clicking "Overview"
        History
            // A more detailed write-up on what LiteStep is, how it evolved, etc
            // Is this necessary?
        Features
            // Maybe this could be part of "Introducing LiteStep"
            // Maybe a broad set of these features could exist on the index?
        FAQ
            // Broad questions, like "Does LiteStep change my filemanager?"
            // Does LiteStep change my windows?
            // I've had some issues, where do I go? etc.
            // This could be in lieu of "Introducing LiteStep"?
        Team Members (Dev team)
            // Picture and short bio of The LSDev team.
            // very few active developers. pointless?
    News
        ??? 
        // necessary?
        // Several different feeds
        // LSP          
        // Forum News
        // New Forum Posts
    Resources
        LOSI (Installer)
            // Convert the "LOSI" homepage into a "installing litestep" how-to? (my choice)
            // Brief explanation, and link to actual homepage?
        Source Code (Core)
            // Offer zips onsite? Point to lsdev website?
        Themes
            // Host on site? I'd like to, but unless we build up a huge userbase, pointless? (my choice)
            // Offer descriptions and point elsewhere (dA, Customize, PixelF'ers)?
        Modules
            // Integrate a browsable, searchable archive?
            // Explain them, and point elsewhere?
    Forum
        // Forum front-end             
    Community (Support)
        // Combine this with resources?
        IRC
            // embed webchat, point to channels and IRC software?
            // link to logs (atm, at: irclogs.roenfanz.info)
        Forum
            // This is just a link that redirects to the forum  
    Wiki / Docs
        // wiki front-end
        // Converted lsdocs.shellfront.com
        // Module documentation
        // Theme guides

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

About the webpage mockup:
I get a different style when clicking on the forums tab
I think the two vertical lines separating modules/themes/docs and "introducing litestep" should be as tall as whichever is taller, #content-sidebar or #content-body (i.e #content-sidebar in the current case)

19 (edited by brembs 2011-10-12 09:36:39 am)

Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

I think the mockup looks excellent!
In terms of content, I'd make sure it's not for everyone (at least for now), i.e. state that it's stable, but requires that the user knows what they're doing.
For instance, I'd start by saying what LS can do (e.g. let the user and not Microsoft decide when and how to change the look and feel of the computer's interface) and then a reasonably technical description of how it does that (e.g. replacing the desktop, start button, icons, taskbar, etc. provided by the 'MS Explorer' shell with a modular interface that allows for entirely custom and hence flexible use of the computer. This is accomplished by controlling the configurations both of LiteStep and of all installed modules using a simple text file). And then maybe a list of some advantages and disadvantages of using LS.

Or maybe that's too deterring (if that's possible, lol)?

LiteStep addict since b23. http://brembs.net

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

Another thing about the design: I think the download button should pop up, instead of the shadow dropping down, when moving the mouse over it.

21 (edited by the-golem 2011-10-13 05:58:19 am)

Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

Tobbe wrote:

About the webpage mockup:
I get a different style when clicking on the forums tab

Yes, I know. I altered the main design a bit, but haven't bothered to change the one for the forums yet.

Tobbe wrote:

I think the two vertical lines separating modules/themes/docs and "introducing litestep" should be as tall as whichever is taller, #content-sidebar or #content-body (i.e #content-sidebar in the current case)

Good point. This requires me figuring out a full-height fix. I'll look into it. Thanks.

Tobbe wrote:

Another thing about the design: I think the download button should pop up, instead of the shadow dropping down, when moving the mouse over it.

I'm not sure what you mean by "pop-up"

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

By pop-up I mean the download button should move a few pixels towards the top, and a few pixels to the left, revealing the shadow under it. Does that make sense?

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

Tobbe wrote:

By pop-up I mean the download button should move a few pixels towards the top, and a few pixels to the left, revealing the shadow under it. Does that make sense?

Made some tweaks to the download button. Not sure how I feel about them yet.

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

Some of this I've sent to individuals, but here is my take on this effort.

First, it is great to see motivation and energy being put into a LiteStep related effort.  Since we lost the mailing list, it is good that we have another medium to communicate - these forums.

Looking at the landscape of what we have now is:

1. Landing/splash/link page - litestep.net
2. News site - lsp.litestep.info
3. Themes - general sites like DA
4. Development - lsdev.org and LOSI
5. Chat - irc

All that is missing from that list from a availability stand point is a user run module archive, which we've lacked since ls-themes.org went offline.  There are other nice-to-haves that a thriving community could bring to the table, but need wise - it is a module site.  After that the first nice to have would be a user run/published tutorial/howto site.

So, while it is great to see this activity, I'm afraid the signs are already there that it is too big of an effort.  Requests for help are already being made for people to help write content.  This website attempt is very much a central content supplied approach, rather than a framework for a user run site, like LSP is.

The LiteStep community has always been about people having a platform to do their own thing.  We rarely have success with asking people to help with doing legwork.  It takes building the tools/platforms for others to use.  So if you have to ask for help, then likely the effort is already doomed - I don't want to be a nay sayer, and hope I'm wrong.  But my point is the following.

So, please, in my humble opinion, go make a modules.litestep.whatever website that users can add modules to and leave it at that.  If that goes well, then maybe we can start looking at making an aggregation site that starts pulling from these sites the latest forum posts, themes, modules, news and stick it at planet.litestep.whatever.  Integrated login/OAuth at some point might be nice.

If you want to help on documentation, I suggest taking the manual.txt from the source code and converting it to Markdown syntax and we can publish online.  If you'd like to improve the overview/description on what is on litestep.net, just grab the html and send me an update (it is a static html file).

But if this new effort continues and we don't even get a simple, user driven module archive out of it, I'm afraid I won't see the point, because everything else already exists, or could be improved on without being replaced.  Reinventing the wheel is another thing that has produced a lot of nothing in the LiteStep community.

If this de-motivates anyone, then better now than later.  But I hope it doesn't do that, I hope it helps direct the energy along productive lines.

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Re: LiteStep Unified: The Community Website

Pretty sure the biggest hindrance for a while has been all of the links in your list. Everything is somewhere else and it's stupid and annoying. The entire purpose of this site was to unify everything under 1 domain so things are easy to find.

Also, I don't really see why a user run module site is so important when 1) there are barely any users and 2) I'm pretty sure there isn't one active module developer right now. If there are any it isn't anywhere near a double digit number.

Docs wise, LS docs really haven't ever been all that useful. Basically all anyone ever needed in the way of LS docs was a list of build in bangs and some general syntax explanations. It's the module docs, the x module docs in particular, that were the most useful and currently can't be found anywhere right now except a txt copy from '09.

Your links should be:

1) litestep.tld
2) litestep.tld/news/
3) links at litestep.tld/resources/ or litestep.tld/theming/
4) likely a subdomain to better namespace the various dev resources dev.litestep.tld
5) link to the freenode web chat client litestep.tld/(chat|irc)/

Until everything is under 1 domain there's no point in really doing anything. The project will remain extremely fractured and stay in the same state it was in before.