Summer of Code/2016/Redesign and recreate sugarlabs web appearance

About Me

  • What is your name?

Venketesh Mahapatra

  • What is your email address?

mahapatra.venketesh@gmail.com

  • What is your Sugar Labs wiki username?

Venky18

  • What is your IRC nickname on irc.freenode.net?

venky18

  • What is your first language? (We have mentors who speak multiple languages and can match you with one of them if you'd prefer.)

My first language is Hindi. My language of communication is English.

  • Where are you located, and what hours (UTC) do you tend to work? (We also try to match mentors by general time zone if possible.)

I live in Rourkela,India. The Time Zone is UTC+5:30 .I can work from 11 AM to 04 AM UTC but it's adjustable.

  • Have you participated in an open-source project before? If so, please send us URLs to your profile pages for those projects, or some other demonstration of the work that you have done in open-source. If not, why do you want to work on an open-source project this summer?

I have contributed to open source projects like Freecodecamp, JULIA ,mifosx. github profile

About my project

We are looking for projects that will enhance the Sugar Learning Platform. Please consider how your project will have impact on children learning.

  • What is the name of your project?

Redesign and recreate Sugar Labs web appearance

  • Describe your project in 10-20 sentences. What are you making? Who are you making it for, and why do they need it? What technologies (programming languages, etc.) will you be using?

I will be redesigning sugarlabs main website, translate and activities websites planet to improve their web appearance.

  • For a modern website these here are the things that are important:
    • Colors and typography - a constant cogo, olor scheme and a typography should be used across all websites so that it will create a unified view
    • Images - good quality images should be used and should be scaled so that loading time can be decreased.
    • Navigation - The navigation should be clear. A user should know where he/she is going.
    • Grid based layout -  we should use grid based layout for so that columns and boxes feel balanced.
    • Responsive - It is now common to access web site from other devices so website must be responsive.
    • Loading time – Enabling compression, optimizing css, reducing number of plugins, minifying resources and minimizing   HTTP requests will improve loading time.
    • SEO

Website Development process:

  1. listing the website pages and check which are needed and which are not.
  2. UX & UI problems to be listed of the website(Source :first time users and community)
  3. solutions to be discussed with the project mentor
  4. designing mockup
  5. choosing technologies to use
  6. improving things upon receiving feedback and start coding
  7. complete the website show it to people for testing(mainly kids and new users)
  8. improving things again after receiving feedback
  9. complete the website

for example i have listed the problems and solutions of the website https://www.sugarlabs.org/

Elements Problems Solutions
screenshots long scrolling slideshow
activities too colorful and no contrast contrasting color and card layout to be used
What is sugarlabs below activities and screenshots should be visible at first glance i.e. upon landing
“ "It's An Education Project" mailing list ” , contact us links and buttons not properly visible social help and mailing list under community and better button
to the top button not visible better button

I will be focusing on the above things while designing a website. If possible then I will add openid connect to the wiki login page. I will be using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Jquery for web pages and flexbox(?) or bootstrap(?) or foundation(?) for grid layout. For the activities webpage we can use the instantsearchJS github

  • What is the timeline for development of your project? The Summer of Code work period is from mid-May to mid-August; tell us what you will be working on each week. (As the summer goes on, you and your mentor will adjust your schedule, but it's good to have a plan at the beginning so you have an idea of where you're headed.) Note that you should probably plan to have something "working and 90% done" by the midterm evaluation (end of June); the last steps always take longer than you think, and we will consider cancelling projects which are not mostly working by then.
WEEK TASK
23 April - 7 May
  • listing all sub domains under sugarlabs.org
  • selecting the websites needed to be redesigned
  • discuss with mentor which technologies to use for each websites
  • choosing typography
  • choosing color scheme
8 April - 22 May
  • listing UI /UX problems of selected website
  • solutions to be discussed and developed
  • creating mock up of selected websites
  • showing websites mockup to mentor and upon receiving feedback improve things
  • finalize mockups
  • start coding the sugar labs main website
23 May - 29 May
  • finish sugarlabs main website
  • after getting feedback improve the website
  • start coding for planet.sugarlabs website
  • planet is a key to greats seo the looks can be improve 2 modes i.e day and can be added for those who want to read at night
30 May - 6 June
  • finish coding planet.sugarlabs website
  • after feedback improving the wlanet ebsite and start working on translation system
6 June- 12 June
  • finish translation system
  • wiki improvements like custom skin and fixing the visual editor( I faced some problems while creating this document)
  • adding openid connect to the website or using google, github, facebook, manual login
  • removing the old links and updating the newer website links
13 April - 19 June buffer week
20 June- 26 June Midterm Evaluation
27 June - 3 July
  • share the website with community. show it to various people. get the reviews, learn SEO
  • start working on remaining websites(small improvements)
  • If possible developing a website like what can i do for mozilla to help new users.
4 July - 10 July
  • Test the website on various platforms and check if it breaks somewhere
  • add support for all the devices
  • finish remaining websites
11 July - 17 July
  • Analyze the reviews make improvements
  • add support for all platforms (in case something breaks,this should have been taken care of while coding)
  • check the new google analytics 360 suite
18 July - 24 July
  • add google analytics or piwik analytics (opensource)
  • check if website is indexed well
  • for seo tools follow google webmaster guidelines
  • for SEO add relevant meta tags and improve the SEO
25 July - 31July
  • set up a google search console account
  • analyze the data from users
  • protect the website from spam reference
  • porting the websites to https because https is faster than http [1]
1 August - 7 August go through all the website codes and take care of code so that it will be maintainable in future (like adding descriptive comments)
8 August - 14 August polishing the UI and checking each and every element and finalizing all websites
15 August - 21 August buffer week
22 August - 29 August Final Evaluation

websites that are required to be redesigned along with main page, wiki, planet, translate help.sugarlabs.org socialhelp.sugarlabs.org developer.sugarlabs.org Convince us, in 5-15 sentences, that you will be able to successfully complete your project in the timeline you have described. This is usually where people describe their past experiences, credentials, prior projects, schoolwork, and that sort of thing, but be creative. Link to prior work or other resources as relevant.

  • I am currently pursuing B.Tech in National Institute of Technology, Rourkela,India . I have excellent skills to manage time and deliver good quality work. reasons to consider me
  • familiar with the websites and architecture
  • prior experience with HTML, CSS, JavaScript (2 years)
  • prior experience in designing (3 years)
  • No other commitments during summer .GSOC is the only one priority
  • Summer vacation from 1 May to 1 July, can spend 45 - 50 hours per week on project

Mockup

   

In the mockup i have taken care of the above issues upon landing a person get to know what sugar is, if he want to download then the person will be sent to a different page which lists the download links and how to create a sugar on stick. social help, mailing list, chats under community. Sitemap, Latest tweets or releases and facebook twitter google follow buttons in footer.

Prior projects

  • Developed Innovision 2016 website can be seen live at innovision
  • Developed International Students' Meet website which can be seen at ISM
  • Developed Monday Morning website can be seen live at Monday Morning

Me and the community

  • If your project is successfully completed, what will its impact be on the Sugar Labs community? Give 3 answers, each 1-3 paragraphs in length. The first one should be yours. The other two should be answers from members of the Sugar Labs community, at least one of whom should be a Sugar Labs GSoC mentor. Provide email contact information for non-GSoC mentors.

A website is one of the most important asset of a company. It should reflect the company's ideology and brand. A well designed website heavily affects in increasing number of product users. It can generate media interest thus more publicity. It builds trust among customers. By completing the project it well help users navigating through the website, finding what they need and will increase overall User experience.

Dave Crossland dave at lab6.com

The impact of redesigning the Sugar Labs websites on the Sugar Labs mission can be huge, because it could increase the amount of people who pass through the 'contribution funnel', transitioning from the many people who are casually browsing the site to those who are active contributors to the project for many years.

  • What will you do if you get stuck on your project and your mentor isn't around?

Google will be my best friend in case I get stuck. If i need some help in coding part i will search for it in google .If i need some help in design decision and coding part(couldn't find on google) I can ask other mentors and students on IRC and mailing list .In the worst case I will take help of my friends or ask my question on developer communities like stack overflow or Quora.

  • How do you propose you will be keeping the community informed of your progress and any problems or questions you might have over the course of the project?

After a major improvement I will be posting it on IRC as well as mailing list. I also plan to maintain a blog during my GSOC my project.

Miscellaneous

  • If you plan to work on Sugar-Web projects we want to be sure that you're familiar with web technologies, so:
    • Clone the Sugarizer repository
    • Using instructions here develop your first Sugar-Web activity
    • Send us a screenshot of your new activity executed in Sugarizer