It's time for long-since needed update of the home page. The current site and demo sites are in the vicinity of like 3 years old and badly needs an overhawl and an update to more recent bits. Rather than waiting until I have time to do the whole thing I'm reaching out for people willing to contribute their expertise and join this project.

This is the first version of a sitemap:

/
What is N2 and makes it different.
* Developer pitch
* Business pitch

/evaluate
Some great things in N2.
* Pictures
* Reviews
* References
* Features
* Stories
* Sites

/download
Collection and explanation of downloads
* Comparison
* Modules

/learn
Home of documentation wiki.
* Developer
* Beginner tutorials
* Concepts (e.g. editables, displayables)
* Topics (e.g. deployment, performance)

Manager
* Beginner tutorials
* Concepts

/business
Added value for the business (that would cost $$)
* Commercial modules
* Partners
* Open for ideas

/participate
* Information about the project
* Contributors
* How to contribute
* Module guidance
* Links

Based on this rough sitemap these are examples of tasks that are open for contribution:

Concept & Design:
 * Overall design
* Sitemap
* Comparison table
* Screenshots
* Success story

Development:
 * Implementation of design
* MVC wiki
* User section

Content: 
* Selling text for the home page
* USPs for the evalueate section
* Story about sites with screenshot
* Explanation of the different download
* Screenshots of N2
* Screenshots of sites
* Project information

Developer Documentation:
* Webform tempaltes tutorial
* MVC tempaltes tutorial
* Dinamico tutorial
* Integrate Webforms tutorial
* Integrate MVC tutorial
* Creating content classes webforms
* Creating content classes mvc
* Using tempalte-first
* Using editables and displayables
* Creating editables and displayables
* Integrate external systems
* Searching (sql)
* Searching (lucene)
* Performance guide
* Security guide
* Globalization guide
* Replacing core services
* How to contribute
* ...

Manager Documentation:
* Creating content
* Editing content
* Managing structure and navigation
* Using content types
* Managing and using templates
* Managing and using wizards
* Managing users
* Bulk operations
* Using parts
* Global configuration
* ...

If you want to share some of your success stories or help with any of these (or other) tasks please contact me. I will organize and invite during the coming weeks.

That's ... a LOT! :) I'll check if I have an opportunity to contribute anything.

Hey, good initiative... And, as you said, not a day too early, N2 needs to promote itself much more and try to be more friendly to people that are not necessarily experienced .net developers.

Also, I'd like to see a bit more complex section on themeing, with how-to's and best practices for non-developers/designers.

Maybe that's exactly what you meant by "Implementation of design"...

we would like to contribute, even more, we would like to offer to design & build the whole site.

@grimaceofdespair: great! there will be things big and small

@compito:

Theming, of course!

Friendly to non-.netters. What did you have in mind? I wouldn't want to repeat too many things explained elsewhere.

I meat the technical aspect of changing the appearence of n2cms.com

@martijn: great!

libardo wrote:

Friendly to non-.netters. What did you have in mind? I wouldn't want to repeat too many things explained elsewhere.

I meat the technical aspect of changing the appearence of n2cms.com

I'm not sure I follow compito, but I do have this remark: when you start with N2 without any Razor experience, you're never sure what you can thank N2 for and what to give credits to MS for. So regarding duplicating information from elsewhere, I do suggest having at least _some_ overlap.

Do you think links to good resources about razor/whatever followed by a summary of what N2 adds on top of that would be helpful?

libardo wrote:

Do you think links to good resources about razor/whatever followed by a summary of what N2 adds on top of that would be helpful?

I think that's exactly what's needed on those parts. In the summary, you probably also need to do some explaining on the Razor behaviour, but still, for the body of the explanation, you'd refer to the external resource.

Also happy to help with building the site (especially the web design/layout) per my earlier e-mail way back in December :-)

I am relatively new here, but from what I see the biggest value of N2 is integration with the existing MVC site without CMS usurping the whole site. With all other CMSs I looked at, you have to start with CMS site and add your non-CMS features, which often means that by the time you want to add content management to the already working site, you need to retrofit it complelty. I am still in process of integration of N2 with the existing site and I think it might work. At least I don't know of any other open-source CMS products that can do this. With all that I wonder isn't it a good point to bring up on the new site? I can contribute some bits that I played with, they are pretty simple though..

We would love to help you and all the other supporters of N2 to get it appreciated as much as it should. Documentation, success stories, code samples, best practices, etc. A good website with good information is exactly what will help sell the CMS to customers (managers).

So count us in!

Awesome! Just to show that things are happening, here is a conceptual design for the new N2 web site. Comments and feedback are welcome! Martijn is helping as well :-)

Above: The home page. The image on the left could be a random screenshot from the screenshot gallery.

Above: Layout of the documentation section with a sample code block. Syntax highlighting would be a nice addition!

Was almost going to ask "how about some of those bigass drop down menus", and "what about all the current links and text and stuff". Then this came to mind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUXnJraKM3k

Anyway. I think it looks pretty slick. I'm curious about what anyone else think.

I started out a repo over here.

https://github.com/n2cms/n2cms_com

I'll start populating with the current project and some manageable chunks of TODOs.

That video actually made me laugh out loud XD

Can you activate the Github wiki? That might be a great place to start drafting documentation. Documents can be written in Markdown and eventually formatted and pasted into N2, perhaps using the Markdown add-in.

Or, if you want, we can use activeCollab, which provides a nice editor control and revision control with change tracking.

Or even better, we can use N2 wiki, although I do wish the wiki code was extracted more from the rest of N2. In all my deployments, I separate things by functionality and keep **all** the templates, views, code, and such for each add-on in its own distinct folder under Addons. Have you ever considered doing that for the N2 trunk? The big win here is that you can easily update the addons independently from the N2 files.

Knee-deep in N2CMS for the coming weeks, but with little time for constructive contributions. Still wanted to mention the following though. I've found it to be of invaluable help to be able to debug the sources. Let me stress that again: invaluable! Did I mention invaluable? Now that's pretty much impossible atm when you use the NuGet package. So in order to enable this, I've setup a local TeamCity build server which creates pdb's that link to the sources used to create the assemblies (can you still follow). I publish the build result on a local nuget server, while the pdb's are posted on a local symbol server and sources reside in TeamCity as build artifacts.

If you combine that with Visual Studio 2010 and Resharper, N2CMS discloses itself like melting snow in a microwave oven :) Stepping through code, CTRL + mouse clicking to declarations, CTRL + ENDing on interfaces. Code digging was never such a breeze. Good for me, huh? But bear with me.

With nuget, apparently, you can easily accomplish the same in public: http://blog.davidebbo.com/2011/04/easy-way-to-publish-nuget-packages-with.html And as we're already enjoying the nuget package, it shouldn't be too hard to add the symbol server in the mix.

You could even have this handled by some open-source minded CI service, so developers can pick any package version and retain debugging capabilities.

To conclude, some more info on the - actually rather obscure and largely underdocumented (no match for N2CMS in that regard ;) ) - pdb stuff. The nuspec solution from the link above automates the pdb processing and source uploading. You could either stick with that, so that both pdb and sources get fetched from symbolsource.org, or you could include the pdb's in the build result and have them point to GitHub. In the latter case, I wouldn't mind to contribute some scripts, because even after all these years of slowly improving debugging experience, it's still not very easy to get this right (at one point, I was sure everything was right, while automatic source downloading failed without a decent warning, just because there was a semi-colon in the web address).

What are your thoughts on this?

Edit: I see that N2CMS is already building on http://teamcity.codebetter.com/project.html?projectId=project16&tab=projectOverview , but no artifacts are published. Was that setup by you, Libardo?

Some comment on the design. While taste is very subjective and the design looks pretty neat to me, it also feels a bit generic. If you really want to stand out, you have to break from the straight design. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's bad. Not at all. Just to illustrate: I feel the same about the jQuery site, which still looks neat to me too.

But if I was a designer, I would add some curves to give a more outspoken identity. Now please note that I'm not a designer, so take that remark for what it's worth. Also note that I do realize that minor remarks sometimes mean hours of work :)

And 1 other thing. If you stick with the blue for the background, I would make the logo stand out more by using different colors for that. It's nice that the colors fit the logo, but it also contributes to the generic feel.

Again: these are the words of a programmer ;)

grimaceofdespair wrote:

Some comment on the design. While taste is very subjective and the design looks pretty neat to me, it also feels a bit generic. If you really want to stand out, you have to break from the straight design. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that it's bad. Not at all. Just to illustrate: I feel the same about the jQuery site, which still looks neat to me too.

But if I was a designer, I would add some curves to give a more outspoken identity. Now please note that I'm not a designer, so take that remark for what it's worth. Also note that I do realize that minor remarks sometimes mean hours of work :)

And 1 other thing. If you stick with the blue for the background, I would make the logo stand out more by using different colors for that. It's nice that the colors fit the logo, but it also contributes to the generic feel.

Again: these are the words of a programmer ;)

I think I know what you mean. Let me try a more monochromatic background and add a curve, and see what happens. What I really don't care for are those rounded corners everywhere that seem to be all the rage. I wanted to start out as clean/crisp/simple as possible and only add complexity where absolutely necessary. Stay tuned for an update soon!

So I've fussed around a bit and I really think the square edges are the way to go. Here are some things I've tried: 

• Different colors
• Different shape accents

Also, from a design and implementation perspective, my goals are thus: 

• Limited # of images in the layout (without the curve, everything can be implemented in pure CSS except the N2 logo)
• Grid alignment principles (hard to explain just in this post, but perhaps I will write an article later about the N2 web design process)
• Days of big/wide/thick headers are numbered as screen resolutions are shifting toward 16:9 and away from 16:10 and 4:3. 
• Modern (2012) look and feel (steer *away* from Windows XP look and feel ;-) )

I tried curving the top edge of the content region but I really don't think it looks as good. I tried a lot of different curve styles, including mirroring the curves of the N2 logo itself. 

Next, some more sketches. For the sake of not polluting this thread with too many images, I'm only going to include two here. But the last one - a dark blue - is currently my favorite. Any more thoughts and ideas, though, are certainly welcomed!

I do like the colors on the latter too.

Maybe the idea is again generic and borrowed, but I feel like a background image to fill up the upper blue space (with an average color of that blue) might help exposing an identity.

What I miss in general, and that's not even exclusively related to the design, is a metaphor that contributes to the identity. Again, take jQuery. They've always had that stack of red buttons (?) as a logo. Within the latest redesign, they kept that one, but just "designified" it. So even though they overhauled the design, they were able to stick to that identity. Of course, we already actually have a logo, so there might be not much you can do :) Still, a well-chosen metaphor may help convey the message on how awesome the CMS really is.

By the way libardo, is there a real story behind the name, or does it actually mean ".NET 2.0 CMS"? And where does the logo originate from?

Some last thing: I'm sorry but I'm going to refer to jQuery again, as it's close by hand. Some subsections of the site have their own identity, while still maintaining the jQuery's "corporate identity". Also note how http://jqueryui.com/ actually comes close to my remark on the background image, as does http://jquery.org/donate

Just want to bump this up. Any ideas for what we can use for an iconic background image? Gears? Text?

Not sure if you can make it look sexy, but a rubber would symbolize the flexibility of N2CMS :) er... by that: I mean a rubber band :D

Sorry for the silence. I've been trying to find something clever to add but design is a hard subject. Still thinking.

@grimace: Yes, I set up the build stuff on codebetter. Mostly to run the tests suite. The logo is a stylization of 1..3 with N2 stuck in the middle. I don't remember why that name, but at the time I started .NET 2 was the new cool thing. Also in swedish it reads one two.

I am just finding N2 and im still going through its wonderfully abstract code.  This being said I have some learning curve to get through before im going to be able to contribute much to the project.  However I would like to say I do like this last layout image it is very clean and as a rule of thumb for professional layout less is more.  If you need assistance on layout im more than willing to throw my hat in the ring.  

I'm going to write up the design in HTML and CSS tonight. If we want to introduce a subtle background image that can always be done later.

Ok, looking forward to that.

By the way, I've been thinking a lot about the metaphor. While I don't want to shove that through anyone's throat, I'm still convinced a metaphor helps spreading the brand. Now, one of N2CMS's USP's is the fact that you can easily plug it in existing sites. A bit like a wall plug that you just put in a hole in the wall to "enhance" that wall with some extra. So, a wall plug fits in nicely here, doens't it? :)

@grimace: Hahaha!

@ben: Please wait a moment. I asked Martijn to put his team to work on an overall concept and do a wireframe which might change things

@sitewizard: Is building a site too abstract?

How does this sound:

Do it with code (and a litle bit of N2)

We believe in creating sites with text. Not much, but expressive and definitely not in your face.

See for yourself >>

Too abstract?

Humbly brilliant?

Ah, no, wait, that is HTC :)

Any feedback on this tutorial (e.g. prioritization, more important topics, level of cheesyness)?

10 days (or hours) of N2:

1. What's rattling in the package (help picking a suitable template, or integrate)
2. Model looking for a view (how content is created, and how it fits with presentation) MVC/WF
3. It's not you, it's me (how data created via the UI is rendered on a page) MVC/WF
4. Crossing the invisible boundry (how N2 integrates with and adds vale to ASP.NET) MVC/WF
5. Dressed for success (on themes, image sizes, layouts all view related things) MVC/WF
6. Search and you shall find (different options for finding stuff) traverse/finder api/linq/lucene
7. Items all the way down (the role of pages, parts and details) MVC/WF
8. Depending, injecting and replacing (how services build up N2 and what you can do with them)
9. First make it fail then make it run (on unit testing)
10. Run site, run (on performance queries, indexes, caching)

@dejan: Coming up with those things is hard, isn't it?

I think that list will certainly help devvers not only get up to speed, but also provide them with an index for common tasks. Now the only thing we got to do, is write the actual content :D

Well, if I may say one think without being pathetic: I started learning N2 out of pure love of it, without any immediate benefit. Then, later on, it brought me job of my life plus a couple of dreams come true. Now, how I can put all of these into one sentence.....

"N2 takes the friction off of your nuts (and bolts)" ;)

or

"The only CMS you shouldn't care about" - N2CMS imposes nothing, but offers a lot

libardo wrote:

@ben: Please wait a moment. I asked Martijn to put his team to work on an overall concept and do a wireframe which might change things

Okay, let me know if there is anything I can do to help in the meantime. I'm not sure I'd make a very good documentation writer as my level of expertise with N2 is not much more than "get it working" :-)

Howdy...

Just a thought (or few) on design/architecture.

Being 2012 and all, I think the N2 site definitely has to be built with HTML5 and CSS3 and be fully responsive, or even better do it "mobile first" with 320up framework or similar. We need some good cases of a great website designs built with N2 cms and this is a chance to create the best one. I would love to be able to browse that site on my smartphone and read some use cases and tutorials.

I'd like to learn N2 and start using it myself, but it takes time to get into it. What I would be very happy about is a template package with for example 51degrees component integrated and ready to use together with modules like blog/news and few page templates to start with... A nice theme done with mediaqueries and best practices for building a mobile-friendly site would be a great starting point. Then we can build our sites and learn to expand them when we have time for that. The important thing is that people need to be able to create great "starter" sites easily.

We could even present the building of n2cms.com site in a project/tutorial form and describe the whole process. It'd probably be nice for people wanting to learn N2 to be able to see a complete build up of a great, modern site.

There is lot going on for Metro UX these days and I'd love to see N2 site built on those design principals... There are some themes out there that could be used for the site design with some modifications. Touchality for wordpress contest is a good example of what can be done, check out the rest of the screens there. Beautiful type-based layout with content in focus and it's very easy to read and navigate.

When it comes to design, I' could easily live with something like this. It's a windows desktop concept, but the principle  is  the same. Especially this screen sums up very well how the interface could be built.

I guess there is no particular reason to use blue color for N2 site? I don't  think the boring corporate feeling is the way to go. Also, big and bold background images... I don't know if it really fits main N2 site so well. There's more need for an uncluttered learning experience I think.

Anyway, those are few things I think should be considered before starting a design for the new N2 main site... People who visit the site really have to be impressed so they can stay and learn more about it.

Have a good one...

@libardo,  I was not being negative when I said "wonderfully abstract".   Building a basic site with n2 seems extremely easy.  But looking at extending and creating plugins with the available documentation has me tracing through the source code.  As popularity and documentation grow for N2 im sure this will become easier for new users. 

I have been researching many different CMS systems and N2 seems to be the most flexible.   

I'm sorry, but I'm just throwing in my blurps here: "Freedom of development"

compito wrote:

There is lot going on for Metro UX these days and I'd love to see N2 site built on those design principals... There are some themes out there that could be used for the site design with some modifications. Touchality for wordpress contest is a good example of what can be done, check out the rest of the screens there. Beautiful type-based layout with content in focus and it's very easy to read and navigate.

When it comes to design, I' could easily live with something like this. It's a windows desktop concept, but the principle  is  the same. Especially this screen sums up very well how the interface could be built.

Great feedback, compito! Thanks :-)

My proposed design above is, in fact, based on Metro design principles. What I think it needs is a bold background image as you say. The problem with those is twofold: 

1. They don't tend to scale well on really big screens. 

2. They don't tend to work well on really small screens. 

I agree that it looks a little too corporate. In the proposed home page design, there are a few silk icons (the same set used by the N2 admin panel) in place of flat Metro style icons. However, don't be too quick to blame the blue color. There are plenty of more fun-feeling sites that are also blue... Skype, for one. 

I also agree that the site should look and work great on mobile devices, however do keep in mind that most people investigating a CMS or using its documentation probably aren't going to be on a mobile device. On the contrary, they're going to be on a desktop, working with N2 on their 2nd screen, or on a laptop, working with N2 in another browser tab.

Cheers,
Ben 

@ben: Sure will!

@compito: Good suggestions and links. I think we definitely should try to fit mobile into the mix although helping people new to N2 feel comfortable is 1st priority. Seeing that UI concept makes me want to revamp the managment UI as well.

@grimace: I like that. How do you feel about this cachy phrase on the theme? Our passion is empowering creative people to build great websites with the best tools. Try N2 as your CMS tools.

Here is the subset of that which I think is perfect:
Empowering creative people to build great websites

However, I do also like parts of the original title page. Merging... (still don't love this:)

N2 enables creative people to build great web sites that anyone can update, empowering developers with a state-of-the-art CMS framework for limitless possibilities.

For a background, how about a photo of a high-rise construction crane silhouetted against a sky (as in "the sky's the limit")? Not sure what kind of sky - starry night, white puffy clouds, etc. 

@libardo, have you heard from Martijn recently?

> Seeing that UI concept makes me want to revamp the managment UI as well.

Want me to put something together?

What would be really amazing, though, is an update to the rich text editor. Have you seen the Confluence RTE? It's nothing short of amazing. Awesome RTEs seem to be all the rage these days: 

• Confluence has basically the best rich text editor. Ever. http://www.atlassian.com/confluence-content-collaboration#brilliant
• activeCollab has a new rich text editor: http://www.activecollab.com/forums/post/34406/

Just having the ability to paste images, or "insert/upload and embed" single-use images in the database along with the page (so that the image file doesn't have to be managed/maintained/uploaded/edited)... would be brilliant.

Another thing that would be really cool is a built-in image editor. The custom CMS I deploy for my clients uses Radactive i-Load (a commercial component) to enable in-browser rotation, scaling, cropping, and thumbnail generation for uploaded images. 

Ben, not bad. Maybe a tad too long a sentence. And perhaps this is too bland "N2 CMS enables creative people to build great web sites that anyone can update".

About backgrounds I'm thinking it could take away the thing I like the most from your design. It's lightness.

I got a teasing email from Martijn about a surprising twist which I'm very eager to see.

Put something together: YES =)

Those editors both have the drawback of being commercial. Do you think people would consider buying a commercial bundle with things like that, and e.g. raven db support?

@compito: what do you think of this html framework?

http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

Tad too long - When I get home I'll typeset our tad-too-long sentence into my design and we can see how it looks. Arranged properly, it might not be too long. 

Lightness of new design proposal - Yes, I do like that aspect of it. I bet the entire layout -- which is currently image-free -- would fit in less than 4 KB of CSS and XHTML. It also will work great on phones and mobile devices with smaller screens and less bandwidth.

Editor Theme - I can put something together tonight, but I would also like to know where the N2 homepage design is going so that I can follow a similar/compatible direction. Namely, I want to see what Martijn is putting together, and what parts of each of our designs is going to make the final cut. I would imagine that Martijn's design proposal will have benefits and tradeoffs compared with my design, and we will eventually arrive at some compromise that will incorporate the best of both. 

Editor - would I, as a solution provider, pay for a better editor? Probably not, because it's actually self-limiting when I think about it. With a bad editor I can just charge my clients to do updates for them when they can't figure out how to do it themselves (not that N2's current editor is bad, it's just not luxurious as Confluence's is). 

I think a more luxurious editor would help convert users of other CMS products to N2, though. 

RavenDB - not something I've been personally interested in pursuing, since the existing DB platforms really are fine IMHO. Based on the way that you store data in SQLite (key/value pairs), I might suggest moving to a NoSQL DB like Mongo or even the Amazon AWS one. However, NHibernate provides a nice layer of flexibility and I wouldn't want to give up the ability to easily change DBMS platforms. I have, for example, taken SQLite databases and migrated them to MySQL when needed. I think it would be hard to do the same between AWS <-> Mongo <-> RavenDB <-> db4o because they are more fundamentally different.

@bherila: I'm not yet grasping the persistence layer of N2 end-to-end, but with what I know, wouldn't N2 abstract away the differences you mention? In that case, wouldn't it also be possible to do an export from N2-SQLite and an import in N2-RavenDB? Maybe I'm being too optimistic?

grimaceofdespair wrote:

@bherila: I'm not yet grasping the persistence layer of N2 end-to-end, but with what I know, wouldn't N2 abstract away the differences you mention? In that case, wouldn't it also be possible to do an export from N2-SQLite and an import in N2-RavenDB? Maybe I'm being too optimistic?

Yes, N2 would abstract away the difference. However, I manage a couple of sites with several hundred MBs of "content" that would need to be exported. It's not really practical to deal with that through the web UI. What is nice is dumping a sqlite DB to a .sql script, fixing the resulting file up a bit, and then importing it directly to MySQL. 

@ben

too long: True. Let me rephrase. I think while it has good components the I think the sentence is too complex and would benefit from punctuation =) 

design: I don't think the management ui and the site necessarily needs to fit although some common thread would be nice. I'll make sure to involve you in the process.

@grimace

In the current release there are multiple connection points between N2 and NHibernate which forms the "persistence layer". For the version after the idea is to push this into "content sources" which can collaborate to provide items. There's a branch called contentsources and a spike branch called ravendb if you want to take a look.

libardo wrote:

@compito: what do you think of this html framework?

http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

Oh, I  see lots of new thing happened here while I was away ;)

Great, will get back into UI discussion again soon (especially on management bits), but just a quick answer to this one...

Yes, Twitter bootstrap is really nice. It's pretty lightweight and easy to get  into. People behind it know what they are doing and they are working actively on making it even leaner and smaller. Also, there were some comments on different forums that it's pity it doesn't include any js stuff, but it does... It's just under a separate link and is included in download.
So don't miss out on http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/javascript.html

It's all there, 12 jQuery plugins that cover pretty much everything you need in you interface. The only thing I miss right now is some kind of @mentions plugin, but it's not really needed in most of the projects.

So, yes, go crazy on Bootstrap! ;)

bherila wrote:

grimaceofdespair wrote:

@bherila: I'm not yet grasping the persistence layer of N2 end-to-end, but with what I know, wouldn't N2 abstract away the differences you mention? In that case, wouldn't it also be possible to do an export from N2-SQLite and an import in N2-RavenDB? Maybe I'm being too optimistic?

Yes, N2 would abstract away the difference. However, I manage a couple of sites with several hundred MBs of "content" that would need to be exported. It's not really practical to deal with that through the web UI. What is nice is dumping a sqlite DB to a .sql script, fixing the resulting file up a bit, and then importing it directly to MySQL. 

@Cristian- since you mentioned, I thought about it more, and I've changed my mind -- this does seem rather cohesive to a commercial module. The way I see it, there are really two parties that would be interested in moving to an "alternative" (commercial) DB. However, I'm not sure that the RavenDB licensing model would be compatible with a commerical module for N2, since (IIRC) RavenDB is only free to open source initiatives. 

I'll have to think a little more about a more advanced editor. This may be something I can work on and contribute back to the project, especially since I've gotten stuck on my little "Schema management" project anyhow :-\

*kick*

Curious if anyone made any progress on this. I personally consider it a prerequisite for N2CMS's growth to have a decent website with decent documentation. Decision makers are scared of choosing stuff that's obscure with outdated documentation. On top of that, N2 should be its own dogfood, so best-case scenario, every major update would be used on its own website.

There are some ideas flying around but I've been too busy to push this properly. The site currently runs on 2.2.2.1.

Documentation:

Some work has been going on behind the scenes and right now we're trying to determine the best way to document N2. There are basically two options to pick from: 

1. Markdown files in a Git repo, either:
   • displayed in N2 via a content plugin, or
   • converted to native N2 objects via some sort of import functionality
2. Developed natively in N2, probably as pages. 

I think we were going to go route #1 to make it easier for people to contribute to documentation. I had offered to help do a push there (and in fact I already have some stuff drafted such as http://elixtech.com/n2-documentation/developer-guide/getting-started/the-n2-domain-model.aspx (feedback welcome)

Website:

I think there is one competing offer still possibly in the running however my offer to build the website still stands. 

/Ben

bherila wrote:

I think we were going to go route #1 to make it easier for people to contribute to documentation. I had offered to help do a push there (and in fact I already have some stuff drafted such as http://elixtech.com/n2-documentation/developer-guide/getting-started/the-n2-domain-model.aspx (feedback welcome)

To me, that very page is how I personally like my documentation: by just glancing over that image, you get a lot of information and an impression of what it is about. I did not even read the text yet, just because the visual is so strong. Not sure how other people feel about it, but that's my feedback.

In an attempt to setup a new N2CMS.com website we have started @ the bottom, the structure.

In some disussions with Cristian (libardo) and based on information provided here we have created a proposal for a new setup/structure of the website, taken in to account as much as possible and making sure the site will have a lasting value for some years to come. One of the items being a commercial proposition supporting the open source N2 CMS (which will remain open source!).

Here is the proposal, I would like your feedback!

http://goo.gl/6XNLY

Likewise, here is our proposal, open for feedback.

http://www.elixtech.com/upload/n2cms.pdf

I asked martijn på prepare a concept for a new site and it's interesting to now see no less than two proposals! I don't want to turn this into a competition, but I'm curious what elements others believe should be on the site.

It doesn't have to be a competition. I'm perfectly happy to work alongside Martijn, as I hope he would be willing to work with me :-)

With Cristian's support, I am now working on improved documentation for N2, combining the best of what we have today into a new HTML based system that we will be able to easily convert into N2 ContentItems. The documentation, when complete, will be merged into the N2 repository so that it can be updated going forward alongside the N2 codebase. Any help offers would be greatly appreciated!

Here is the repo: https://github.com/bherila/n2cms_docs

As for the website, we're still working. Here is another design idea incorporating some more graphical (in this case, construction-themed) elements in the background. Feedback is much appreciated as usual!

Great initiative! I forked the documenation and will start writing today.

And thanks for the design idea. Is the crane a photo from your vicinity? It looks cool although I feel it steals focus from the content. I'm going to include this in a poll among a few people around here to get more opinions.

I'll also include a test where I've stolen from your and martijns concepts, experimented with lightness, using the fold and content in the menus.

I'll probably have time to write another chapter or two this evening. Let me know what you're working on and i'll pick something else so as not to duplicate efforts. 

I took some local photos the other day and used Adobe Illustrator to trace them to a vector. The scaffold on the left actually tiles seamlessly in a vertical stack. There is a few hundred MB worth of assets here including the camera RAW files so I am sticking them on SkyDrive temporarily: 

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=6fddb3326c64ce5b&resid=6FDDB3326C64CE5B!10971&parid=6FDDB3326C64CE5B!112

I agree that the crane steals focus from the content. What if we just kept the scaffold and removed the other frame? I will also take a look at your other ideas in the repo when I get home this evening and see if we can combine them somehow. 

I agree on loosing the otherwise very cool crane ;)

I'm also no sure on the scaffold, but that might change when design gets tweaked. Funny how this weekend I started wondering what the status on this was and wanted to poke around in this thread again :D

Ben, I can see you started writing documentation directly in HTML (do I recognize Dreamweaver tags there?). Is there any chance we could write documentation in markdown directly on github? You have visual feedback immediately, markdown is perfect for its simplicity and it is rather easy to generate HTML or PDF from it later on. Not to mention ease of contribution.

And I continued. We discussed markdown vs html and they both have their (dis)advantages.

• Can be edited locally and branched with the code (both)
• Can be exported/integrated on the website (both)

• Better tooling support (HTML)
• Express more complex structures such as parts and metadata (HTML)

• Write xml examples (markdown)
• Minimal syntax (markdown)

It's the ones I considered. I think the advantages you mention are applicable to both formats. Markdown is cleaner in notepad, but can't express some things you could in xml.

Personally I prefer writing the documentation offline along witht he code.

Is it completely off-putting to contribute documentation in html format? We could support both formats side-by-side I guess. The goal is to actually write something. It's going to be transformed into the site.

The nicest thing on markdown is that fact that Github can automatically parse it. So all content is immediately available in a comfortable visually pleasing format.

I'm not a visionary guru or something, but sometimes these little things can make a huge difference in adoption, because it means you can always easily point someone to the correct documentation without any more hassle. Note that I'm making the assumption here that you can have Github layout any markdown file, while I've only seen that happen with Readme.md files. So you can proof me wrong here.

On top of that: if you point someone to a documentation file, it's easy to directly view the latest version and to see even _that_ there are alternate versions.

(and I know this discussion was done before, but I do take the liberty to open it back up together with milicicd ;) )

@grimace: This is what I'm aiming for.

To write documentation in a text format along with new features. The documenatation is transformed and exposed on n2cms.com as a new version is released. People will be able to modify and comment documentation on the website and changes can be merged back to text format. In the download a copy of the documentation is included and is browsable from the downloaded web site.

Also it would be nice to add a "documentation chat" feature on pages marked with TODO. This would open a chat window and the log would be posted to the page as documenation.

I am more than delighted to see documentation kick-off. Already looking at raw html (https://github.com/libardo/n2cms_docs/commit/2977e0a178169c9450bc433c2c78d27e5130181d#diff-0) I figured out you can write plugin that will be embedded in context-menu options!

Bits of information like this one are pure gems - finally revealing fantastic features that are existing in N2 for years, but most of us developers are completely unaware of it (at least myself :)

Regarding discussion on markdown vs html, I think there are two aspects

1. Documentation writers - I do not think there will be more than 4 or 5 of us in total who will contribute to the documentation. I personally would prefer markdown, but in the end it really does not matter, I can adopt to anything you choose and will be happy to give my part

2. Documentation users - we need to automate documentation publishing from GitHub. That way we will have centralized place where all developers could be directed. It is important to automate it so it can always be up-to-date without any manual efforts. I guess workflow could go something like this

* Cristian writes/updates pages
* Cristian merges pull requests
* once per day developer documentation is published

I guess subdomain like http://developer.n2cms.com would be good idea

NB: I noticed there is option for GitHub to create site automatically from repository, anyone with experience/oppinion on that?

@milicicd: Is this what you mean? (and no, I have no experience)

Yes!

In general, I am pretty satisfied with any solution Cristian and you guys are comfortable with as long as we have 

1. way of contributing to the documentation in an easy way (as little work as possible on the infrastructure, concentrate on generating content)

2. automatic way of making that content visible from the browser

I think we have #1 at the moment. However, we need #2 as soon as possible. Every minute without proper developer documentation is probably one developer lost. What is so sad here is that Cristian invested something like 5 or 6 years of almost daily work in N2. Architecture of N2 is ingenious, and unlike some systems claiming to be Enterprise, actual Enterprise is N2 - adaptable to any solution, applicable to even existing projects, etc. And yet, at least half of those built in gems are hidden due to lack of documentation.

So, I am very eager to give my contribution to the documentation. Lets complete infrastructure, make necessary decisions and start contributing! 

I am planning on writing a parser for this particular HTML structure this weekend. There is also a cron job to dump the main git repo to here for now: http://n2docs.vxcv.com/

I'm going to pull in Cristian's recent changes now.

Hope that's helpful!

Basic parser for the help format has been posted to the git repo :-)

Nice. I'm going to give it a spin tomorrow.

I'm sorry to kick again, but anyone made any progress on any level? If contribution is needed to get something done, try me :)

Yep, we have! :-)

I'll post more tonight.

I have set up a confluence wiki here for documentation: 

http://184.168.90.12:8090/display/N2CMS/Getting+Started

I'll buy a 10 user license when the trial ends if it works out well.  And if we want to move it to N2 in the future, it's easy to export everything to XML. Here's what it looks like when it's exported: http://pastebin.com/rkqfncMk (I'll even volunteer to write the converter)

Feel free to contribute!

/Ben

Actually, it looks like we could even get a free Confluence license if we wanted: http://www.atlassian.com/software/views/open-source-license-request

Nice job.

About the free license: what are you waiting for?! :P I assume N2CMS is currently not OSI? I think it would definitely contribute to its legitimacy and "sellability".

Btw, just for my own perception: is this the result of your discussions with Libardo, or is it "just" your shot at the docs?

License.txt in the download is the LGPL, that would be OSI approved. We don't qualify for the free license until it is running as a part of n2cms.com. Not to worry, that should be taken care of relatively soon :-)

Unless anyone objects, I am going to build the design dated March 8/9 above, with the understanding that we can make some modifications if anyone comes up with a better idea for the background.

Cristian's vote was for an offline documentation in a Git repo which could be edited alongside the code (even offline). If he still wants to move towards that I fully support it but Confluence is useful at least as an **initial** editor to get the docs off the ground. Confluence has rich export functionality so the docs could be moved to Git in the future with relatively little effort. Of course, if Confluence works well then we can keep that going.

BTW please e-mail me at bherila@bherila.net if you want a Confluence account.

Hi Ben

I do object to start with building a new site, just for now anyway.
And I only object for the reason that it is my opinion that only Cristian can make a decision as to what to do with N2 and all surrouding information, design, tools etc.

As you have seen, Cristian was busy with the setup and a new design, it would be a bit strange if you would go ahead and built the design you created, right?

Altough it is most probbably welcome that anybody who want's to contribute contributes, it is up to Cristian to make decisions since N2 is his product. 

I was wondering where you had gone, Martijn. Anyways, you're right - we should let Cristian decide. I didn't want this project to get too stale, and perhaps I was being a little over-zealous :-)

I was waiting for a decision before taking more action.

Let's hope Cristian will be able to put things in perspective, have a brainwave where he want's the site / N2 to go and setup a project for completing the website.

There is the github project - https://github.com/n2cms/n2cms_com

Hi, First of all. Thanks for all the good contributions and ideas. It's has really helped to clarify the approach, the message and also what's not important.

I tried to distill into something that I feel fits with N2 and you can see that if you sroll down on https://github.com/n2cms/n2cms_com/tree/master/proj It's still not there. Two examples are that it's too pale and I'm leaning towards working more vertically on the start page, perhaps making it more into the getting started page.

I see some interesting features to be done and I'll define better and ask for help.

I do like the lighter colors, but one thing that worries me is the mouseovers due to the abundance of touch devices (with more on the way) and also has accessibility implications.

I think the goal of the home page should be to provide a launchpad such that every important part of the site can be reached with a single click. Before we design, then, let's brainstorm what we acutally want to put on the home page.

Some ideas:

• Demo
• Download N2
• Community (source/forums/etc.)

Just one remark on the touch devices. Not sure how other touch devices deal with it, but my iPhone has no problems with properly designed hover menus, like the one I think you mention. A touch somehow emulates a hover in that case.

I have seen problems with some hover menus where the hover element also contains a link, and it is ambiguous whether pressing the element should follow the link or show the menu. You also end up with a huge test matrix if you want to cover Android, Windows Phone, Win8 tablet devices, etc. in addition to iPhones and iPads.

On another note, here is a revision that I think brings together some elements of Cristian's design with my design. It is lighter and showcases more features upfront. It also adheres more to the Metro style design principles, which had a positive mention somewhere above in this thread :-)

Feedback welcome :-)

Now you are willingly provoking by mentioning Metro :P

My remarks - I will not try to be nice ;)

• The light bulb gives me a Microsoft Clip-Art feeling
• The color scheme is a bit boring to me
• I'm not really fond of the current logo, but to me your redesign of it is a bit of its little brother (probably on purpose)

Structurally, I think it makes sens :D

So far for kicking you in the head after all your efforts ;)

Btw, to give a better impression of the end result, I would actually fill in the icon images with good samples.

the lightbulb didn't come across that well, I was going for thought bubbles coming out of the n2 logo... maybe a nice colorful paint splat would be good?

Here's that paint splat. Boy am I building up my own personal design gallery :-)

While I don't like this actual instance, I _do_ think it speaks a lot more! The colors bring much more life into it. It says: "we live", while the previous one said: "we are programming zombies" :P

I know I don't call the shots, but I just throw in my opinion: I think the colorful elements on the otherwise grey backing not only make it look fresh, but also enables branding it. It will be easy to poor that contrast into almost anything. You just have to decide on the actual colors then (not sure about the gree/blue/yellow).

What don't you like about it? I'm interested so I can produce another iteration.

FWIW, I enjoy doing these in my "spare time" anyway. In the end it's up to Libardo what he wants to do with n2cms.com. If he doesn't like the designs, I'll find a use for them in some other project or side project somewhere.

Mostly, the choice of colors for the icons is wat disturbs me.

I'm also not really sure about the paint spots, but to be honest, I cannot tell you how to fix _that_ :) I do think they're a good start. Maybe less colors? Only the ones from the icons?

wouldn't it be more wise to have a "project" setup for the site development rather than just shoot options, design's and revisions in public?
Usually designs are made to customers wishes as are revisions. Cristian would be the customer here I think?

Altough it is nice to have idea's poped up here, in this setup, it probbably also will result in designs not being used in the longer run and some disappointment in time invested?

Let's show the world that N2 developers are able to do projects in correct setup and order? And are able to work together to come up with a good website?
In that setup I would strongly advice not to have the "community" engaged in every small issue/decision but make some options in a small team and present them if wanted. If everybody is involved (altough involvement at the moment is not that big) it will only take a lot of time to produce and end result. 

Martijn, I totally agree, but I also have no idea how everyone in here relates to libardo and how much communication is between them. So I was just throwing stuff at people throwing stuff. But I guess Libardo will kick in anytime now and express how he sees this going forward ;)

And regarding a more or less formal project team, that will probably be a bit hard. Libardo has its own interests in N2CMS, he exploits it commercially and he is the main committer (I think he's even the only one with write permissions). Putting together such a project team cuts right through the way he was able to bring N2CMS where it is now.

But then again: FUD? :)

an m$ thingie: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fud

And, I do have no objections to your responses, I think there are valuable, I just think the questions posted here should be more aligned in a project.

I had the change to meet the team a couple of weeks ago (not on the website subject btw) and altough we did not discuss the website itself, that was discussed before between Cristian and my company and Cristian and Ben (and a bit Ben and me). But, not really a team yet. I think it is up to Cristian to decide how and what (and when) to form a team and project or do it otherwise.

BTW, I do have a lot of confidence in the N2 team if they pursue their thoughts!

I almost had the chance to meet, when he visited you, but I was in Barcelona then :( (which was nice in all other ways)

mmm, I might have prefereed Barcelona as well ;-)
And Luik is indeed close enough to have come over, to bad!
(we actually had one of ours come over from Serbia) 

MartijnRasenberg wrote:

wouldn't it be more wise to have a "project" setup for the site development rather than just shoot options, design's and revisions in public?
Usually designs are made to customers wishes as are revisions. Cristian would be the customer here I think?

In an e-mail conversation, Cristian has welcomed me to share these design ideas with the community. That's why I'm posting them, not only because I feel like it :-)

That does not change anything to how I feel it would be wise to do a project...
Just sharing with the community does not take things in to gear and it does not do jusitce to the time you and me (and my co-workers) invest(ed) in it.   

BTW, as I stated before, it is not a competition, I think it should be done correctly to come up with a good site and I doubt that you, Cristian and me working on more or less the same thing will result in a good solution or satisfied participants. 

I'll follow up on e-mail.