Official Rust Websites

Web Presence
1

Hey,

I wonder why Rust's official websites still use old designs. Couldn't we have a more systematic, modern, and explainable design, like on the Next.js site? I'm talking about at least putting everything on a template and emphasizing simplicity and systematic functionality.

2

The website was redesigned back in 2018. Also I have to say, I'm not the biggest fan of the next.js website. Only the header loads when javascript is disabled and when it is enabled, loading takes several seconds and there are several distracting animations playing that don't add anything.

8 Likes
3

I do feel like the website needs a revamp.

For users of Rust, we have

In evaluating our situation, I consider

  • How discoverable are each of these?
  • How easy is it to navigate between these?
  • How well can a user tell that it is an official website?
    • We have multiple domains, themes, ways of organizing things, etc

Some concrete ideas I have:

To help with discoverability of different docs and their versioning, provide dropdowns on each for changing to a different piece of documentation or to a different version (like docs.rs has for crate versions).

Re-evaluating what domains we use.

  • Should we move TWiR to a section on the blog like Inside Rust and now Releases?
  • Move rustup to a subdomain of rust-lang.org?
  • Merge docs.rs and crates.io?

Define one or more themes that convey the websites are from the same group. I say "one or more" because we may want to use themes to convey distinct ideas, like a separate theme for docs.rs/crates.io for conveying this is us hosting third-party content but using the same theme to show how related these are.

7 Likes
4

When talking about Next.js's site, I was referring to their consistency and design systems. There's no need for complex animations or modernity. I think that's the fundamental issue.

1 Like
5

Even if all official Rust websites keep a different aesthetic, it would be great if there was a top bar that unified them somehow, to aid discoverability (this need to be thought in the context of existing top bar of current sites, like docs.rs and crates.io)

1 Like
6

Not sure how indicative this is of other users' experiences, but I've been programming in Rust since 2019 and I just today learned that TWiR is an "official" website. Up until now I had assumed it was an unofficial project of one very-dedicated individual.

I can see now that it is discoverable from the "community" page of rust-lang.org, though I can't say that I've ever navigated to that page until now. So I'd be in favor of moving it to a section on the blog.

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