Upgrade bitcoin.org

[blockgenesis]

Can whomever is in charge of this new site version get in touch with me if they'd like to take my offer? Evoorhees on skype is probably best.

Erik I 100% agree with you. However it's open source development, so all you have to do is hire a good designer and point him towards: https://github.com/bitcoin-org/bitcoin.org and then make sure his work gets pulled.

Indeed, feel free to do the work and take feedback. I created this one with absolutely no idea about how it would be received.

If you provide the graphics and a design that receive a better general opinion on this forum than the one I did, I will be wiling to integrate the graphics and re-code the site to fit the new design. Unless it's really fancy and complicate, I will be able to reproduce the design with a good accuracy in HTML/CSS.

BTW, I am also listening if anyone want to be more specific about what are the problems with the current design. I can try many improvements. But I need specific feedback.

[xcsler]

Take Erik's money and make the webpage look something like this...
http://www.apple.com/itunes/
I think they know what they're doing when it comes to marketing. 

[blockgenesis]

A few minor suggestions (I'll highlight what I changed):

Thanks!

Some of these parts have been reviewed many time, so I included many of your changes but not them all. If you feel that one is especially important, don't hesitate to add comments about them so that everyone can discuss. I will explain why I felt we should keep the current version for these specific cases.

I also made a few reformulation that (I think) cover the reason for a few changes you suggested while still being compatible with other rules, such as the length of the sentences, the bold summary that must stay short and single-lined, the width of the paragraphs, etc..

[hazek]

A few minor suggestions (I'll highlight what I changed):

Thanks!

Some of these parts have been reviewed many time, so I included many of your changes but not them all. If you feel that one is especially important, don't hesitate to add comments about them so that everyone can discuss. I will explain why I felt we should keep the current version for these specific cases.

Yeah I felt that pretty much all of my changes were important. Right now the way you left is quite confusing and some of the terms such as ".. integrity of the blockchain is enforced.." are just plain wrong. Also I thought, and please don't take offense, right now some of those sentences simply sound French. I tried to change the flow a bit and clean them up even if I made them slightly longer. And I'm sure someone else could do an even better job at that than me, but as it is right now it's pretty awful (grammar and mainly style wise).

[blockgenesis]

Yeah I felt that pretty much all of my changes were important. Right now the way you left is quite confusing and some of the terms such as ".. integrity of the blockchain is enforced.." are just plain wrong. Also I thought, and please don't take offense, right now some of those sentences simply sound French. I tried to change the flow a bit and clean them up even if I made them slightly longer. And I'm sure someone else could do an even better job at that than me, but as it is right now it's pretty awful (grammar and mainly style wise).

You can review what I've done with them, live and on github. And report what you feel is still wrong.

Concerning the "integrity of the blockchain is enforced by cryptography..", I wonder why you think this is wrong. Each block contains a signature that prevents any change in its own content _and_ in the content of all previous blocks. As such, the blockchain can't be corrupted or changed in any way. The same way, we also use a Merkle tree to share the blockchain with no risk of corruption just like torrent, thanks to cryptography. That is what I wanted to materialize in one sentence.

[blockgenesis]

Take Erik's money and make the webpage look something like this...
http://www.apple.com/itunes/
I think they know what they're doing when it comes to marketing.  

Apple.com have no layout design :-) It's just a white page. And I think that the reason for this is obviously that they have plenty of magnificent pictures of their cute stuff and they want to draw 100% of people attention to it. In our case, Bitcoin is immaterial and we don't sell a product.. So it seems to me that we can't do the exact same thing.

[hazek]

Yeah I felt that pretty much all of my changes were important. Right now the way you left is quite confusing and some of the terms such as ".. integrity of the blockchain is enforced.." are just plain wrong. Also I thought, and please don't take offense, right now some of those sentences simply sound French. I tried to change the flow a bit and clean them up even if I made them slightly longer. And I'm sure someone else could do an even better job at that than me, but as it is right now it's pretty awful (grammar and mainly style wise).

You can review what I've done with them, live and on github. And report what you feel is still wrong.

Whoops, I only checked what you changed at http://174.142.20.146/en/, I'll take a look at github.

Concerning the "integrity of the blockchain is enforced by cryptography..", I wonder why you think this is wrong. Each block contains a signature that prevents any change in its own content _and_ in the content of all previous blocks. As such, the blockchain can't be corrupted or changed in any way. The same way, we also use a Merkle tree to share the blockchain with no risk of corruption just like torrent, thanks to cryptography. That is what I wanted to materialize in one sentence.

Two reasons:

1) No where in Bitcoin can any type of enforcing be found, all there is is validation. Each peer for itself validates that the rules it is coded to follow are followed within transactions, blocks and the blockchain. But because the entire network validates the same rules on the same piece of data at the same time an illusion of enforcement can be seen when in reality all nodes are doing their own independent validating and through clever design continuously arrive at the same result but they just as well may not (say if a temporary fork happens).

2) Enforcement of integrity is also too definitive and too strict. We all know very well that an >50% attacker will follow the rules and yet is able to perpetrate fraud in the form of double spends i.e. compromising the integrity of the blockchain.

For these two reasons I think it's accurate to say "The validity of the blockchain itself is determined with cryptography." instead of "The integrity of the blockchain is enforced with cryptography.".

[whitenight639]

I havn't read all of this thread and I'd like to help,


When I first looked into bitcoin I read lots of stuff that put me off saying it was a ponzi scheme and just made up money etc,
I looked into it again some months later and came accross this site which had all the answers i needed to be a Bitcoin groupy lol


https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ


It's a very good FAQ for n00bs, please consider linking too it or answering some of the same questions or using there content if thats allowed.

[alexkravets]

Gorgeous new logo was just up voted to the top on /r/Bitcoin reddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1a03gu/as_a_3d_artist_this_is_my_take_on_the_bitcoin/

[deepceleron]

This is a known rule when creating website : if we fail to explain things to the user within a few seconds, then we just lose these visitors. Period. We can gain full attention of our visitors only if we succeed to explain things in a very concise way first. And only then, more extensive content can be added (and is in fact very needed in my opinion). But it should never be the starting point otherwise the website will do the opposite of what we want : it will confuse or scare people.
...

The problems with the site design that make it not ready for prime-time:

A. The actual content is small - it has merely:
  1. Four pages of bullet points for individuals - enthusiasts.
  2. One page of Bitcoin terms and one page of "sort of" how it works
  3. A "you need to backup your wallet" page  
  4. Pages of off-site links

B. It has a sparse design that has little in the way of box model or templates for rich content creation. I had to repurpose the only box in CSS, used as a table-of-contents elsewhere, to do anything interesting (geek facts shown at http://we.lovebitco.in/how-bitcoin-works/). This will make adding pages with structured content more difficult and less uniform. The menu doesn't allow much room for expansion or deep content either, and in appearance it also says "not much here".

C. The redesign apparently has the same mission of weusecoins.com, but doesn't do it as well.


What bitcoin.org should be is a home page for the reference Bitcoin client, the Bitcoin protocol, for promotion of the currency as a viable system, and only as a sub-mission be a gateway to other resources. Every other third-party wallet, service, and merchant site has a home page, Bitcoin as a client that runs virtually 100% of the backbone of Bitcoin sites and nodes needs one.

Inclusion of some third-party sites and services will result in the omission of others, thereby creating a perception of recommendation or trustworthiness; it may be better to omit all third party references and defer to other directories of services.

As an example of a modern site that is simple, but does not lack content for the benefit of the noob:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

[Mike Hearn]

Yeah I felt that pretty much all of my changes were important. Right now the way you left is quite confusing and some of the terms such as ".. integrity of the blockchain is enforced.." are just plain wrong.

Well, I'm a native English speaker and don't see anything wrong with phrasing it in such a way. The difference between "enforcing integrity" and "validation" is the sort of thing philosophers can argue about

I think we can wordsmith the site all day, but at some point it needs to launch. It's good enough for v1.

[blockgenesis]

Gorgeous new logo was just up voted to the top on /r/Bitcoin reddit
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1a03gu/as_a_3d_artist_this_is_my_take_on_the_bitcoin/

Very nice, indeed. But not really adapted to small size. Was there some sort of official logo/brand decision in the past for Bitcoin?

[alexkravets]

I'm not sure anything can ever be "official" about Bitcoin, at best perhaps somehow endorsed by Butcoin Foundation, I posted the link here as an FYI, because the artist granted all rights into public domain use, people and even Bitcoin.org can simply use it where ever if they like it. I already used it for a YouTube
Background for a Btcoin educational interview http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BZH0xJg4LQo

Cheers ...

[blockgenesis]

I did some important changes in the design : http://174.142.20.146/en/

[blockgenesis]

..

As said earlier, this is only a start. I completely agree on adding more extensive content. But we must start somewhere in order to get there, this new bitcoin.org already add a lot of content over the previous one. And my goal is to go much further in the future.

[Mike Hearn]

The latest designs are looking significantly better, this is great!

[misterbigg]

I just popped in to check the website redesign since it started. The changes are great!!! I like that there are fewer colors, and that it is more obvious which items can be clicked.

[hazek]

I just popped in to check the website redesign since it started. The changes are great!!! I like that there are fewer colors, and that it is more obvious which items can be clicked.

I agree, it's starting to look a lot better.

[theymos]

The "choose your wallets" page is too wide.

https://i.imgur.com/WFEM0Di.png

[blockgenesis]

The "choose your wallets" page is too wide.

https://i.imgur.com/WFEM0Di.png

This is visible only for low resolutions (1024x768 and mobiles). And that specific CSS style is actually made for them, so that the "description bubbles" don't render outside of the page (and prevent visitors to read half of them). While it's not perfect, I think it's better than the problem it solves. Though if you have a better solution to this, I am interested.