Ideas for riot-os.org

Community
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Hi, I feel like our website at riot-os.org has not aged very well. I don’t know much about web development, so just some ideas:

  • The comparison table has some historic examples (Tiny OS appears to be rather dead and Contiki is Contiki-ng these days), while completely omitting more contemporary contenders like Zephyr, Mbed OS, RT-Thread or NuttX.

  • The History section ends in 2013, what would be more interesting for new users would be a Roadmap (Kconfig migration, Radio HAL migration, …) so it’s clearer which parts are still work in progress.

  • It would be great to have a news section to announce releases and give the possibility to also post about larger new features and how to use them.

  • Links to the Documentation, Forum, Github are hidden inside continuous text when they should be easy to find menu items

  • It would be great to showcase some projects using RIOT (as is sometimes done on the twitter feed).

What do you think?

3 Likes
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Hi Benjamin,

Hi, I feel like our website at riot-os.org has not aged very well.

i would say it aged surprisingly well. anyhow, the website needs an overhaul, yes, but this needs some professional support.

I don’t know much about web development, so just some ideas:

The comparison table has some historic examples (Tiny OS appears to be rather dead and Contiki
is Contiki-ng these days), while completely omitting more contemporary contenders like Zephyr,
Mbed OS, RT-Thread or NuttX.

an updated table (or any other concrete input that makes clear where RIOT differs currently) is highly appreciated. just removing the table or comparison in general, is not helpful, AFAIC. many readers want an easy-to-grasp “why should i buy this” pitch.

The History section ends in 2013, what would be more interesting for new users would be a
Roadmap (Kconfig migration, Radio HAL migration, …) so it’s clearer which parts are still work
in progress.

that’s why we have the placeholder “Future”. the Visiion page might be outdated. this can be fixed by updating the wiki page, or adding an additional Roadmap page. you are highly encouraged to do.

i just updated the link to the issue tracker to point to New Features.

It would be great to have a news section to announce releases and 
give the possibility to also post about larger new features and 
how to use them.

currently, we try to reduce overhead by reusing the twitter feed as news channel (e.g., the 2021.01 release is already posted and thus advertised on the web page).

Links to the Documentation, Forum, Github are hidden inside 
continuous text when they should be easy to find menu items

a matter of taste if you want to have many menu items, several layers of menu etc.

i wouldn’t agree that all links are hidden, e.g., clear github logo.

It would be great to showcase some projects using RIOT (as is sometimes done on the twitter
feed).

agree. but this needs content. if you and others can provide cool showcases, in particular where RIOT is used in industry, this would be great! happy to frame a template to accommodate those show cases. can you provide a show case and convince others?

thanks matthias

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Semi related: I remember the favicon of the website was changed here. However, after opening the link from your start-post and seeing it side-by-side, I noticed that the favicon of the website is quite different from the one this forum uses. The forum one looks very sharp and clean, while the website one looks blurry, pixelated and squished. Would it be possible to use the forum one for the website as well maybe?

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The problem I see with the table is twofold:

  • the comparisons appear outdated (Is RIOT outdated too? Or are we just cherry picking so RIOT can tick all the boxes?)
  • Which configurations are being compared here? Is this with networking? Just Hello World?

But Twitter puts a hard limit on the scope that a post can have. I was thinking more of a blog where new features, achievements or projects could be described more in depth, e.g. [0], [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]

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I feel like our website at riot-os.org has not aged very well.

I have the same feeling. In my opinion the current content of the website is detrimental to RIOT. Personally, whenever I can, I link to GitHub instead of the website. I share the opinion that we urgently need a fix.

the website needs an overhaul, yes, but this needs some professional support.

Experience has shown that it is hard to get the professional support alluded to here. We’ve been on the look out for a long time already for someone to help us based on our “requirements”. So I would not hope for a fast solution here

I would thus suggest a two step approach:

  • Step 1, very short term: we simplify the website to the maximum, keeping only barebone info / links / logos, keeping the same layout backend etc. to make sure the website does not look bad anymore.
  • Step 2, mid-term: we resume looking for professional help towards a more ambitious overhaul.

Note: Step 2 could happen in parallel to step 1.

We could have setup up a task force for Step 1 and another for Step 2.

just removing the table or comparison in general, is not helpful

I disagree. Having this table is more like a deterrent right now. So why keep it in, now? Let’s be pragmatic. I think we should reconsider this content (as well as all other content in the current website) in the context of Step 1 as proposed above.

Actually we have a repo to try out Step 1:

It would be great to showcase some projects using RIOT (as is sometimes done on the twitter feed).

+1 Input welcome as Matthias was saying :wink:

Maybe for Step 1 we could just have a section at the bottom of the page which lists “these companies use RIOT” and have a few logos there, for starters?

I am convinced this would already look much better with Step 1, while waiting before Step 2 completes.

1 Like
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Just to add my own personal opinion. I think that the website could also use a better overview of resources for people getting started with RIOT.

Maybe not just from the ‘why should you get this’ perspective, but more along the lines of: ‘I bought it, how do I use it’ Especially the usage and getting started sections are not enough to start using RIOT for actual projects.

There are some nice tutorials and informative articles, but these are not prominently shown on the website or linked in documentation.

These opinions might also be formed due to the fact that I never use the website, as I usually start my search using the documentation, the forum, or by pestering the local RIOT expert.

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I know there is a (currently private, thus not linked) repo for the website. How is this hooked into the website? Just a copy webhook, or could this be integrated with something like Jekyll or Pelican?

Either way, for this step I think it would be beneficial to make this repo public, so we can benefit from the great input the community gives us :wink:

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Interestingly enough we were discussing about this with @akshaim on Friday. I completely agree with what you describe here.

I remember there were some draft, maybe it’s a good idea to revive them :slight_smile:

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Yes. I would really appreciate it if the website can endorse a few projects that can build confidence among first timers. The first timers could be ones who are arduino users/ bare-metal code makers but very new to embedded OS’s. Once someone gets acquainted to an OS, the chances to make a switch to another one is low i.e. at least what I have seen in the industry and startups. When it comes to making that first switch, the following aspects matter a lot.

  • Features support with project examples. For eg. OTA Firmware Updates, Ultra Low power sleep support.
  • Updated list of boards, could be fetched live from github repo, with search option based on manufacturer, radio support etc.
  • “Easy to understand” documentation on adding custom boards ( assuming CPU is already supported )
  • How friendly is the community? Promoting people to ask even the dumbest questions in the community adds that extra confidence.
  • Overview of firmware development life-cycle (matter a lot for the industry).
  • Unique prospect ? For eg. when it comes to LoRaWAN, we support Semtech Stack and one build from scratch. Semtech stack support is more or less dead and this is reflected in ARM Mbed and OEM stacks like Cube-LRWAN from ST. RIOT is the “only” OS offering a stack that was built from the ground up and one still offering good support. I believe LoRaWAN is not the only example.

On a side note, I also suggest we revive https://riot-os.readthedocs.io/ . Doxygen is too old :sweat_smile:

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It is not hooked into anything unfortunately. It was created to:

  • Work out a workflow for updating the website content.
  • Fix the most glaring issues with the current website.

It is still a manual copy between the hosted version and the github version and there is no single truth.

I’d be very happy to have a {Jekyll,Pelican,Hugo}-based workflow with some webhook to deploy it. That would make it easy to start with a design and have the necessary flexibility to enhance the layout and style later if we find professional support.

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thank you all for the discussions!

i just had an offline chat with @jia200x and @leandrolanzieri. they have experience with building websites and offered help. the proposal is to come up with a revamp that is good looking and functional, in a reasonable time. the solution will provide some GitHub-like process. i think this is a good idea.

it seems that we all agree that the current content should be updated and extended.

it would be very helpful if we can collect ideas (and results) how RIOT compares to competitors. i don’t think that we do ourselves a favor if we just remove the table. is there really no way to update the table? do we not distinguish from other OSes?

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Great! Starts to look like a task force :wink:

If by reasonable time we mean aiming to swap the current site with a first revamp “next month”, I’d volunteer to be part of the task force.

If it’s about “taking the time it takes”, I’d propose a second task force aiming to come up with a quick clean-up, to put up with the wait.

To be honest, every day the website remains unchanged is detrimental to RIOT, in my opinion.

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  come up with a revamp that is good looking and functional, in a reasonable time

If by reasonable time we mean aiming to swap the current site with a first revamp “next month”, I’d volunteer to be part of the task force.

reasonable time means: next four weeks.

let’s collect and discuss ideas in the forum.

If it’s about “taking the time it takes”,

no. it doesn’t.

To be honest, every day the website remains unchanged is detrimental to RIOT, in my opinion.

any ideas how to improve the comparison with competitors? anybody volunteers to create hard facts?

cheers matthias

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3 posts were split to a new topic: LoRaWAN FUOTA

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Migrating the Doxygen output to Sphinx