Talk:Pending website changes

Specific suggestions

 * Facilitate funding of specific features. Tip cup towards features?  An "I'd give x dollars towards someone working on XYZ bit" kinda thing?


 * Add RSS and/or Atom web feed


 * Provide checksums for downloads to verify file integrity and security


 * Provide page modification dates in accordance with MLA style


 * Add Flattr button to accept micro-donations

Brand and user experience improvements

 * Pete: I'd like to draw attention to Audacity brand issues as well as the overall user experience and functionality. It seems that the most important benefit to get across about Audacity is that it's accurate, simple and professional. If so, why is the current site, not to mention logo and GUI, so rounded and fiddly? The software is about sharp, simple edits, so why use a confusing hierarchy and distracting fonts and colors for the website, and why position advertising so prominently? Unfortunately the design is amateurish, and gives the impression the product is the same. Have a look at what ableton live or traktor or touch osc websites and GUI's are like. These are professional tools for musicians, with websites and interfaces that truly are simple and accurate, and are examples of how design isn't anything to do with just style – it enhances the user experience and improves the product. How is Audacity any different?
 * Gale 17 June 2010: The logo was professionally designed by someone in the field, otherwise the web site was developed by people who volunteer for the project (not by professional web designers). If the products you mention were free and volunteer-run, perhaps their sites might look similar to ours? As it is, we need limited advertising to provide a small reserve of money to work with. In the situation we're in now (tens of million of users) we could survive in terms of attracting new users with a web site that looked like DOS 3.0 (as the sites for some open source projects do). A minimalist glitzy main site might be fun, but personally I don't think the Audacity software has that ethos at all. The one thing there is consensus about here is that we want to have consistency between icons, logos and web sites and not change appearances for the sake of it. Were you offering to help us make the visual elements of logo/icon, GUI and web sites "simpler" and "less fiddly", or have you already done so elsewhere?  PS: I for one think the TouchOSC "design" is truly awful, eight scrolls down with no side or top navigation and you wonder where it will end, in a font size and colour that hurt the eyes after a few seconds. Ah yes, I see the support link and the news items right at the bottom now.

Done

 * Prominent donations link, tab or button: "For everyone who has asked this, how many thought about donating, couldn't find a link so gave up?"


 * Add a link to this Wiki to the main audacity.sourceforge.net site's motif.