Let me start by saying that I know how hard it is to build up a site's traffic and user base. You guys did a great job with that. However, I'm of the opinion that we need to make some big changes in a very short timeline. It's part of the change from Citrix / Cloud.com to ASF.
On Wed, Oct 3, 2012 at 4:46 PM, Mark Hinkle <mark.hin...@citrix.com> wrote: > I think it's a good idea however I think there are a few things you might > want to consider: > > CloudStack.org<http://CloudStack.org> gets about 500,000 unique visits a > month though that's also partially because of the content on the current > pages e.g. forums, blog, videos, directory. etc. > Also CloudStack.org<http://CloudStack.org> as it stands get's about 125,000 > visits a month from organic search and tens of thousands of links to direct > pages, you should 301 redirect the old to the new so all the search and hard > link folks don't get 404'd. You'll need someone to map all the redirects and > it's not trivial. > Also If you break all those links traffic will drop pretty significantly IMHO > until Google re-indexes and all the old content and then the number of people > that would normally find out about CloudStack.org<http://CloudStack.org> > through search wouldn't. Also the content on the incubator site is pretty > good for the hard-hitting sysadmin or open source guys but new users might be > a little intimidated. You are describing 2 issues here: SEO optimization for certain terms that leads people to CloudStack, and content that is considered to be valuable being transitioned. I think that we should consider this an opportunity to clean up a bit. While there is certainly lots of content on cloudstack.org, it's actually pretty hard to navigate IMO. I'd rather see us cut over, and have an organized plan to review and migrate content into a newer / simpler structure. To make sure that we don't completely fail the users, we could setup a redirect page instead of the default 404 on the ASF web servers, that points to the project's new index page. Personally, SEO optimization isn't at the top of my list of considerations right now. If we take the time to move content over cleanly, the search engines will sort themselves out. > I think we should also answer the following questions: > > - What should we do with the old content is do you want to keep it or move > it to something like CloudStackUsers.org<http://CloudStackUsers.org> or the > like? > - Apache Incubator doesn't have forums so do you abandon the forums? (There > are over 11,000 registered forum users) I don't believe that a forum is the right method of managing user interaction with the project. It adds to the confusion about how to engage with the project community, and frankly isn't that active with project members these days. We should point people to the cloudstack-users@i.a.o list, and perhaps to an archive search service (markmail.org). > - Do you want to have a blog, move it to a new place or give it up? I think we should consider doing 2 things here. First, the project needs a news page (which is has). Second, the work to get a planet server going for the CS community can really serve as a much more open alternative. Perhaps the Citrix community managers that post to the current cloudstack.org blog should have a home somewhere else, that gets aggregated into the CS planet? We should also consider adding an RSS feed version of the new site's news page. > - Should we still announce events and do sign-ups (we have thousands of > historical sign-ups for Build a Cloud Days and user conferences and the > capability to send invites to past attendees based on geography etc. baked > into the site). Announcements of community events are best done via the users and dev lists. Perhaps an email blast explaining the changes, and pointing users to instructions for how to signup for the lists would be a good way to force the transition? > - There are 30,000+ people signed up for a newsletter on > CloudStack.org<http://CloudStack.org> when we donated the project to the ASF > I stopped sending updates. Do you want to start doing that to help promote > the project, migrate to some new system or some other option. Same suggestion as above. It's time to point them to either (1) Citrix commercial information sources or (2) ACS information sources. > My suggestion would be: > > - Alias a new community approved domain to the existing site eg > CloudStackUsers.org<http://CloudStackUsers.org>. test it to make sure it > works and nothing's hard-coded or broken. I think that this adds to the confusion really... We should instead migrate the content over time, leaving behind content that's out of date. > - Really make sure that the incubator site experience is good (my pet peeve > is that there is no common navigation to get from bugs to docs to the main > site) I'd love if we could get someone to help make the current ASF site better, but that can happen in time. > - Then point CloudStack.org<http://CloudStack.org> to the Incubator site - > http://incubator.apache.org/cloudstack/ I think that should be done almost immediately... after dealing with the 404 fix noted above. > - Divide content for Apache CloudStack development to > CloudStack.org<http://CloudStack.org> and really work on the user experience > for developers and start migrating content systematically to Apache. > - Come to consensus on what to do with the old content on CloudStack (i'll > volunteer to keep it maintained and collaborate with whomever the PPMC wants > to give access to is cool with me) until we decide. > > Thoughts, flames, etc.? > > Regards, Mark > > > > Mark R. Hinkle > Senior Director, Cloud Computing Community > Citrix Systems > p: 919.228.8049 > m: 919.522.3520 > e: mark.hin...@citrix.com<mailto:mark.hin...@citrix.com> > twitter: @mrhinkle > > > > > On Oct 3, 2012, at 1:26 PM, Chip Childers > <chip.child...@sungard.com<mailto:chip.child...@sungard.com>> wrote: > > All, > > I'd like to propose that Citrix (if willing) redirect > cloudstack.org<http://cloudstack.org> > to http://incubator.apache.org/cloudstack/ and > docs.cloudstack.org<http://docs.cloudstack.org> to > the appropriate sub-page of the ASF site. > > Specifically, I'd like to propose that this happens as fast as > possible. The impact will be a simplified experience for users, once > we get through our first official ASF release. > > I don't see any reason to wait... > > Any concerns? Can someone make this happen? > > -chip >
