Wow, so there are folks interested!  Great discussion, and good point:
projects that span projects or are working on broader community aspects
need clear definitions to keep disparate volunteers focused.

There are two things *I* would be interested in helping with:


1- (Small concept) Super easy to use and maintain search widget and
portal for apache.org and community.a.o sites, focused on helping
newcomers find their way to the right "how do I do X" pages.  Value:
Make ComDev efforts more useful by ensuring new users - who might not
know what terminology we use, or where our docs are traditionally stored
- to find the how to information they need.

In terms of structure: it feels like there might be three general kinds
of people searching on a.o/c.a.o:

- General information about Apache (what it is, structure, donate, etc.)
- How To information, like where SVN is, how to change websites, where
different email lists are, etc.
- Project information: either about a specific project, or more likely
"Which projects might I want to contribute to".


2- (Big concept) Creating a simple, drop-in, Apache branded search
widget that we encourage projects to consider adopting on their
homepages.  Value: better search for individual project's users; plus
showcasing some cross-project links and interest.

Obviously, there are several existing setups that provide a lot of this
functionality already (more than I realized).  But it would be really
nice to have a solution that is:

-- Super easy to drop into any existing site's design.
Maven/Forrest/ghpages style sites would be the obvious targets.  (Do we
have stats as to how many projects use each site builder tool?)

-- Branded (primarily) as an Apache Lucene/Solr powered search tool.
The Lucidworks site looks pretty powerful, and does cross-project stuff,
but for me, the interest is providing something that is primarily
powered by Apache tools (even if it uses someone's hosting or extra
code, as a secondary thing).

The search results/refinement pages in particular should match Apache
site designs in general.  The Google custom search results are kinda
ugly, now that I look at them.  The Lucidworks site is nice, but if
we're going to feature this prominently, it would be nice to use Apache
site design, with a text note "powered by LucidWorks Fusion, more
details here" or the like.

-- Maintenance documented.  ComDev already has a lot of code this PMC
owns, and since we're not focused on code daily, we need to ensure
whatever maintenance is easy to do.


Is that a good focus for now?

- Shane


-- 

- Shane
  https://www.apache.org/foundation/marks/resources

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