Blog posts about OCaml.org #503
Description
After a coversation the other day with @Chris00, we thought it might be good to write a short sequence of blog posts about the history and evolution of OCaml.org - the community's web presence.
The plan would be to have three sections/posts that cover the past, present and future of OCaml.org. I've described some rough ideas about content below and writing these would likely be a collaborative effort. If we're happy to do this, then we can think later about practicalities of where these go up.
OCaml.org - Past (The Sands of Time?)
This might require some research but it would be interesting if we can pull it off.
- Background to the website (origin of the domain name?).
- Evolution of site design. Screenshots of older versions?
- @agarwal at OCaml meeting in Paris 2yrs ago (confirming name and desire for web-presence)
- Gathering and curating content
Some intersting historical threads
(and a couple of random ones, since I was browsing anyway)
OCaml.org - Present
Overview of current state of site. This essentially documents what we have now, which will help people understand the system.
- The overall architecture
- The community libraries written (OMD et al)
- The new site design and improvements
- Toolchain that builds and deploys it
- Ease of getting changes in or fixing content
OCaml.org - Future (The expanding universe?)
Describe some of the ways the site can become more useful in the future.
We should make an explict call for more contributers.
Suggestions:
- Highlight how people can contribute and improve the site
- Maybe point out the edit button or refer back to previous post
- Run some kind of poll to see what the community would like to see
- Call out specific sections that could benefit from improvements (i.e tutorials section)
- Perhaps encourage people to write sections that cover specific domains (e.g. which set of libraries are generally good for web-programming and which others for scientific computing etc.)
A large part of this post would be to describe how people can get involved and to encourage more contributors. We should ask for assistance with specific things and perhaps tag a bunch of existing issues so any willing voluteers have an entry point.
Can I gather thoughts on the above? We can write one post that covers all the above but if we have enough material, then it would be great to split them out into three, on different days. Either way, we should aim to get the content out shortly before OCaml 2014.