increasing traffic

[Bruce Esrig <esrig-ia@esrig.com>]

Amber and I talked about how to increase traffic,
and have the following progress to report.

(We didn't address budget issues like how to pay for changes to the
site.)

We can address the issues in four phases:
1. Fix the entrance page to the site.
2. Re-architect the knowledge base.
3. Establish a flow of new content.
4. Promote the site.

Now for the details.

1. The entrance page to the site needs some re-design so that users can
find what's there.

a. Make all primary and secondary navigation available at the top of the
page.

For example, change the four words at the top to four orange buttons.
Move them away from the blue bar (they're in the blind spot: the top 150
pixels). Change the secondary navigation (add a link to the section home
followed by all the secondary links) depending on which button is pressed
or hovered over. Make the secondary navigation less dominant, for example
by using bold orange mixed-case letters on a white background, and allow
the items to be two lines high in order to accommodate the long titles in
the Knowledge Base. Create a home link and make it visible in text up
near the icon in the banner area.

This is a first step to make the Wiki more prominent. Right now, the KB,
Wiki, and About links at the top don't even look like links and are
probably missed. Notice how few pages our typical user visits.

We also need a link-out icon that we can use. For example, the Wiki page
on deployments has a mix of local and remote links.

b. Use the following sequence on the home page: soapbox, news, featured
topics.

This means dropping the repetition of the blog headlines. Featured topics
needs to be an edited item. If the editorial board needs access to edit
the home page, that may be a necessary price to pay. The first set of
featured topics should be: Getting started, Migration,
Publishing.

2. The destination for new authoritative content would be the knowledge
base. It needs to be rearchitected to allow new content in.

3. Conceive and implement a process for accepting new content.

For example, thread summaries are written as Wiki pages (or blog entries
if necessary) by contributors. Contributors can be authorities on a
dita-users thread (Bruce's preference) or digesters who understand the
thread (if Don is right that the authorities won't have time to
summarize). A tie-together task would be performed by an editorial board
member, who would transfer the answer to an appropriate location and link
it in with the existing site structure. (Amber might be able to free up
some time for this, but there may be a delay since she may need to be
away for a temporary respite of a few weeks.)

Criteria for a good summary: subject is of general interest, question is
concrete, an accurate answer or best practice was agreed on by most on
the discussion list.

4. Promotional efforts can follow once the above are decided upon and
getting implemented.

Good promotion can accelerate the adoption of the site, but we need to be
ready for the increase in contributed content. Without a plan and enough
gardeners, the site will grow wild.

Notification should be automated. That is, once we get a content stream,
we can create a script to regularly find new content and mention it in
various forums.

Those are our thoughts,

Bruce Esrig, Amber Swope

At 11:46 AM 5/11/2007, Michael Priestley wrote:

A few thoughts:

1) one reason we don't get new content from users is that new posts in the wiki (which is where we expect new content to go) is completely hidden from the frontpage. We repeat the blog headlines twice, with no clue as to which blog they come from, but we don't give wiki posts any attention at all. Which means people treat the blogs as a random dump for anything they think of, which reduces the value of the blogs on top of everything else.

2) we could consider getting some more serial content, e.g. "specialization of the month", "user post of the week", etc. - but there's no point in doing that until we have a way to highlight new content on the frontpage (beyond the soapbox) - until then, we're just burying bones in the backyard.

3) we should consider getting sponsors for the serial content - like radio programs or newspaper columns :-) - either to recognize the time contribution of the column editor, or to provide remuneration to a series of contributors, or to get money so we can pay someone to fix the #$%#$ site

4) every time we get new content - post of the week, article of the month, case study of the month, specialization of the month... we need to announce it on dita-users, xml-doc, framemaker-dita-users, techwr-l, etc.

5) what else can we be doing to raise the site profile? technorati tags? podcasts? google has been very good to us - the soapbox is the first search result for "dita xml".

Michael Priestley
IBM DITA Architect and Classification Schema PDT Lead
mpriestl@ca.ibm.com
http://dita.xml.org/blog/25


"Carol Geyer" <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>

05/10/2007 03:06 PM

To

"'DITA Editorial Board'" <dita-fa-edboard@lists.xml.org>

cc
Subject

[dita-fa-edboard] Minutes: 10 May 2007 DITA XML.org Editorial Board Call




Attending: JoAnn (chair), Carol, Scott, Bruce, Amber


1. Board discussed traffic stats provided by OASIS webmaster. We are concerned
about declining traffic numbers, but feel we need more data before we can
really see a meaningful trend.

Board agreed that getting fresh content on a regular basis is the best way to
increase traffic. Amber suggested we invite prolific posters from the
dita-yahoo list to provide a recap of topics that have been discussed. This
would not be a continuation of discussion, but simply a summary of the dialogue
and a link back to the yahoo thread. Bruce suggested we use the "blog" portion
of the site for this.

AI: Amber and Bruce will identify the top 20 prolific *and knowledgeable*
posters to the dita-yahoo list
AI: Edboard to draft invitation and describe what we're asking posters to do:
Goal: Provide easier access to important answers to DITA issues raised on the
yahoo list
Task: Summarize an issue discussed on yahoo in a blog entry on DITA XML.org,
provide a link to the thread.

2. <soapbox>
Team discussed Amber's article and agreed to expand it as the first in a series
of articles on "Confusing DITA elements." After "keyword", article, the team
decided to plan future <soapbox> articles on term, index term, phrase, and
data. The articles should highlight the fact that DITA is an evolving standard
and practices may change in the future.

AI: Amber to recast "keyword" article and write an intro for the series.
AI: JoAnn to write next article on index term (due in July or so).
AI: Amber to invite Eric to co-author future "term/glossaries" article with
her. Bruce to invite Eric to co-author future "data" article. Amber may
co-author "phrase" with someone else.
AI: Edboard members to provide feedback on "keyword" article to Amber by the
end of the week, especially questions on keywords that would stimulate
discussion.

Next call:
14 June 2007
2:00 pm EST
+1 (605) 990-0700, access code: 562542*


_________________________________
Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
+1.978.667.5115 x209


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