1. Redesign purpose — “Web for all”: liquid, “responsive” design, that fits in a window of any size, accessible by a touchscreen, by any device from a small smartphone to a projector on the wall, readable by text-only browsers (TUI), without scripts, graphics, media, even with no CSS styling rules. No versions for reader mode, for disabled, for presentation, etc. Conclusion:
good work!
2. Usability and clarity for visitors. What is the purpose of the website? Who are the intended visitors? Which services are intended for passersby, for customers, for partners, for ourselves? I think the homepage is dedicated to newbies and newcomers from other operating systems. Long-time users have bookmarked specific forum threads, Git repositories, RSS news feeds, mailing lists, etc. As such, the information organized and presented in a fairly clear and concise way —
OK. How would I like to improve?
“About”: “Introduction” = “Resources
for Newbies”:
- The FreeBSD Handbook and FAQ… — OK.
- Articles for deeper understanding of specific topics. — I would also add this entry as a second (middle) item in the list.
- Manual pages are good for reference but not always the best introduction for a novice. They generally provide information on a specific command, driver or service. — I would rather say that:
Manual pages are complete references, they provide detailed information on a specific command, driver or service.
“Books and
Articles Online” = “Documentation” — I am wondering why the article list does not include what I consider to be the most important one for newcomers: Slawomir Wojciech's (
vermaden) “
Quare FreeBSD”? He has laid out precise and unbiased criteria to understand strengths of FreeBSD and distinguish differences from Linux and other OSes. I would link it from the top of the front page, perhaps from the description or slogan, at least from the word “Power”.
The light/dark background toggle should be placed at the top, since visitors will want to switch it right away rather than reading all the way to the end.
3. Accessibility and semantics for bots. It would be beneficial to refine entries as clear as possible for indexing crawlers, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), too.
- Metadata: descriptions, keywords in ‹head›;
- Alt txt, figcaptions for images, media, etc.
- It would be better to link section headers ‹h3› (on the frontpage) to an appropriate article, manpage, or handbook chapter.
- If only the horns are now officially considered the FreeBSD logo, then the whole little daemon should be renamed as a mascot or something.
- It probably is not difficult to fix a few HTML, CSS, Atom errors.
- And to slim down the excess weight of some images.
- Maybe also improve INP for overall website performance.
EFF Privacy Badger finds no trackers, and The Privacy Inspector praises this website as completely
clean and visitor-friendly.
Overall, the redesign turned out pretty well,
congratulations!