Website Overhaul Requirements
This document specifies the requirements for the 2009 re-design of the PostgreSQL website. The aim of this project is to update the design of the site, but not the structure or content. The only exception to this is the front page, where the designer may consider adding or removing elements from the existing page.
Layouts
There are three basic page layouts on the site:
- Front page
- General content
- Documentation
The designer is free to use the same design for general content and documentation pages, or add further distinct designs if appropriate (though the total number of designs should be minimal). Note that the general content pages usually have a sub menu (currently on the left hand side), and sometimes an additional box for links or supplemental content (currently on the right hand side).
There are also some external sites that use the same layout. In particular, consideration should be paid to make the design usable for the mailinglist archives (http://archives.postgresql.org), and the wiki (http://wiki.postgresql.org, based on Mediawiki). Eventually we will need to make some other sites consistent with the general design, including: pgfoundry (www.pgfoundry.org, based on GForge) and PUGS (pugs.postgresql.org, based on Drupal).
Browser Support
The following browsers should be supported at minimum:
- Firefox 2+ (About 2% of our users are still on FF2, the rest on FF3.x)
- Internet Explorer 6+ (IE5.x represents less than 0.2% of our current users)
- Opera 9+
- Google Chrome
- Apple Safari 3+
Additional consideration will be given to designs that are able to include support for mobile devices.
Technical requirements
Image sizes should be kept to a minimum, and images should not be used as titles or other essential elements on the page.
CSS files should be well documented and use a naming scheme that conveys the use of each style. Each page layout should be contained within a single CSS file, with one common file used for common elements.
Design Considerations
The following considerations are requested:
- Use of the official PostgreSQL elephant logo, adhering to its color scheme as closely as possible
Design Restrictions
The following are the restrictions for any designs:
- The design must be able to be implemented 100% in CSS with no special considerations for design in the HTML. Markup must validate properly against the appropriate standards.
- Any use of JavaScript for UI interaction must gracefully degrade in the case that JavaScript is disabled.
- There must be no use of "plugin-requiring technologies" like Flash, Silverlight or JavaFX.
- Only freely available fonts may be used in any images. Use of images for heading or title elements other than the page banner/logo should be avoided however.
- Freely available images are preferred. If an image requires a low, one-time fee for use, that is acceptable. In this case, the PostgreSQL project can pick up the cost, but only after the submission has been chosen as the winner.
Accessibility
All designs must meet at minimum the AA rating of the W3Cs Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0
References
The following documents may also be of use:
