After Swift.org was open-sourced earlier this year, the Swift Website Workgroup (SWWG) began working on some initiatives to involve the community in the efforts to improve the Swift website.
On behalf of SWWG, I'm happy to share with you an initiative that focuses on making some immediate improvements to the content on Swift.org.
The website currently hosts some great content for visitors of different levels and backgrounds looking to learn more about Swift, but there's definitely room for improvement.
While a redesign of the website is necessary—and something we will involve the community in at a later point—it is a process that will take some time.
The goal of this initiative is instead to provide as much value as possible in the near future by updating the existing content on Swift.org, without making any bigger changes to the design.
SWWG has identified a few key pages where we think this effort would make the biggest impact, and have some thoughts on how these could be improved. This is not a strict plan, but rather a starting point for further discussions.
Home page (www.swift.org)
The current home page is very simple and does not provide much value. As it’s the first page that visitors see when they come to Swift.org, there’s a lot of potential here.
Some early ideas include adding a link to the latest version of Swift, a link to getting started, some information on why someone might want to use Swift, where and how Swift can be used, how to get involved in the many open source efforts, and showcasing what’s new in Swift and the community.
Getting Started (/getting-started)
At the moment, the Getting Started page contains a lot of information, and much of it is not necessarily required to get started with Swift. This can be a bit intimidating—especially for people new to Swift, which is the main target group for this page.
Instead, we would like this page to show new users how simple it is to get started with Swift and set up their first application. More advanced usage guides, like Using the LLDB Debugger, can be mentioned at the bottom of the page in a "Next steps" section, along with some other recommendations on how to continue learning and using Swift.
Download (/download)
The Download page currently hosts both different versions of Swift available to download as well as installation instructions.
One idea we have is to move the installation instructions to a separate "Install" page (/install). This page could also contain the download link to the latest stable version of Swift. That way, the Download page would only have to be accessed if you’re looking for a specific toolchain or Swift version.
As I mentioned before, these are just some of the ideas that the workgroup has discussed so far. We would love to hear your thoughts and ideas in this thread on how you think the content on Swift.org can be improved.
Once the work starts, a separate branch on the website repo will be used, and you're welcome to open pull requests there.
We're looking forward to your discussions and contributions!