Footer: Revisit footer links and categorize #364
Comments
jasmussen
added
[Type] Enhancement
ryelle
added
[Status] In Discussion
PrologueThere are four main categories in the top nav: Extend, Learn, Community, About. Assuming the footer maintains 5 columns, and that the 5th column (which consists of links unique to the footer) is retained, then everything mostly lines up except that the Related Projects footer column replaces a would-be Community column. Therefore, the Community links get reorganized into the existing columns as appropriate. More details below. Existing footerHere's my take on how the footer is currently organized:
As compared to the top nav, there is also the added desire to keep the footer columns relatively equal in height/quantity for aesthetics. The recently added "Swag" link creates 5 items in column 1 versus the 4 items in the other columns, but that addition was required. See #134/#319 for a proposal to even out the columns by adding links that should be present (Mobile, Photos, Openverse, Job Board). Regarding issues raised by OP
I'm unsure of the intent behind this statement. Is this meant to imply that there shouldn't be overlap between links found in the top nav and the footer? Or that there needs to be full overlap?
I don't think the omitted links in the 4th column (BuddyPress, bbPress) justify inclusion in the top nav as they would only dilute focus for the more likely needs that the top nav should try to address.
The implied categorization does make it so that columns 4 and 5 are all external links. "Privacy" is the only exception and may be better suited for column 1. As well, "Swag" could be moved to one of the last two columns. However, in the top nav "WordPress Swag Store" is in the "About" section, equivalent to footer column 1 as it is placed now.
I think it's fine that the top nav has more links than the footer. The top nav can accommodate more links. A "Get WordPress" footer link wouldn't be amiss. As for the other links from the top nav not included in the footer:
Adding the indicator seems reasonable, but what is considered external? And should the same be done for the top nav links? Just to be clear, these are all technically external sites (not having wordpress.org in their domain): Openverse, WordPress.tv, WordCamp, Meetups, Job Board. Sites that are subdomains of wordpress.org are: Swag Store, Learn, and Developer (though the Swag Store is much more external than the other two, separate in just about all but domain). If Swag Store is considered external (as OP does), are the other two as well? Unless we intend for external to mean "not managed by WordPress.org". In which case, only these footer links would apply: WordPress.com, Matt, Public Code, and Meetups (if added).
For consistency, we should probably use "Swag Store" -- it's still short, clarifies it links to a store, omits the implied "WordPress", and is less likely than the full three word phrase to wrap. And I think it's more accurate to say "Get Involved" is called "Make WordPress" in the top nav, which won't mean much for those who aren't already familiar. "Make WordPress" should be renamed "Get Involved". "Community" seems appropriate as a top-level menu option for community-related links, but changing that to "Get Involved" as well would be reasonable. Changing the footer link text to either "Community" (too imprecise for the singular location it is referring to) or "Make WordPress" (too vague for the uninitiated) wouldn't be for the better. EpilogueI'm going to cross-post some thoughts to #360, since which overlaps with some of what I said above. |
See #359 for denoting external links in the top navigation menu, which should be mirrored in the footer. The current proposal there is for external to mean sites that do not make use of the global WP.org header, which is a reasonable way to go about it. |
Opening that for discussion and input, moreso than dictating. I'm personally assuming there's a great deal of context for the existing links, that I don't want to accidentally regress with uninformed suggestions. But the disconnect at the moment does feel like it could be improved.
I created a lot of issues yesterday as I was focusing on this, and I should've included here a link to #359, but I see that you found it. Sorry for the omission here. I realize that isn't a truly clear delineation, and it can quickly get a little semantic — does a subdomain count as internal? Would anything hosted on wordpress.net count as internal? What if it had the same global header as wp.org? So to expand a bit on the main motivation, it's easiest to discuss this submenu:
As is, the 1st, 4th, and 6th link maintain the global wp.org header, all the others do not, and when those links are grouped together in a single dropdown, navigating those items in sequence becomes a jarring experience. Whether we actually need this same visual denomination of "external" links in the footer, I've no strong opinion — maybe it's enough that external links are categorized in a single column together (with Privacy, to your point, being worth then moving perhaps). |
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Something @mtias pointed out is that 'Blocks' are missing from the menus. It would make sense to add a link for https://wordpress.org/plugins/browse/blocks/ to the footer, and possibly even from the 'Download and Extend' menu (if we feel the page is of good enough quality) to be that prominent. That page isn't very exciting and doesn't do a great job of explaining what blocks are, but I think will work best for now. Alternatively, there are pages like https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/wordpress-block-editor/ but it doesn't really fit the utility of the pages that are linked in this area. For example, we aren't linking to an article explaining what plugins are - we link directly to the plugin directory. Separately, I created an issue to explore creating a landing page for blocks to take the place of this link to the blocks filter in the plugin directory. WordPress/wporg-main-2022#245 |
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Good note, it seems useful to have a blocks landing page. I'm not sure it's useful to have a link to just the blocks filter in the mean time. On one hand it does add the term "Blocks" to the homepage if you search, which is useful since it's such a powerful concept in modern WordPress. But on the other hand, the page you land on has very little context unless you arrive at it from the Plugins page. |
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Sounds good and I agree - that page needs some context if we are going to prominently link to it. We can focus on building a block landing page as a first step. |
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This issue and #360 will be part of the larger information mapping project, so I'm pulling it out of the "General element cleanup" sprint. If there are specific changes to make to the footer in the meantime, we can tackle that in a new issue. |
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In reviewing the comments above, I have put together an idea to recategorize the footer.
Note this mockup is rough, the logo at the bottom is not correct, and there are more social icons on the current site. But this provides a visual representation of what I am thinking. General
Column 1
Column 2
Column 3
Column 4
Column 5
For reference, this is the current footer: 
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Is it me or is the Public Code link in the footer a bit random? We support other initiatives too, but don't give them a footer link? |
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We also might want to update the twitter (now X) icon. |
Yeah, I don't know the context of this link. Anyone know?
💯 That section is powered by the Social Icons block, and I believe I saw a PR to add the X icon. |
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someone may want to confirm with Matt or Josepha about the context on the Public Code link. I read somewhere that it was a Matt's initiative/project/involvement but that was so long ago, it may not be true anymore |
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I'm happy to defer to those with historical knowledge of what goes in the footer, though I will say it would be neat if we could end up with 4 items in each of the columns, so we don't have that orphaned "swag" in the first column. |
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I'd like to suggest adding actual category titles to the columns. Perhaps as a fast-follow iteration if there's no time to throw in sooner. Thinking about visitors to the site as being a mix of both new and returning, what if we were even more explicit about what goes in these columns? I do think @ndiego has a good starting point based on how you've organized/listed your suggestions. I do wonder if folks still might have trouble finding their way since the top links are still visually coming across as links, not column headers. Some category header suggestions to chew on (based on Nick's proposed updates). I know these don't all match the header nav, that's done on purpose as I don't actually think that's completely necessary:
A really poorly sketched visual based on Nick's mockup above: 
I'll add that this is based on what's been discussed and not removing/changing much of what's already there. (Though I do think there's opportunity to tighten this up further by doing that.) |
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The categorization can help yes, but I would avoid visible titles, and perhaps more importantly I think we should avoid the extra column this adds. One of the trickier parts of this is that there are already a lot of duplicate links here in the footer, compared to what's in the header and even sometimes in the page itself through subpage items, or CTAs on the page. To that end, the whole section feels almost like an "in case you missed it when scrolling" section. We can maybe lean into that and be more editorial and curate what we choose to include, rather than just duplicating links. If I had absolute power, I would add the following constraints:
To make that possible, we'd need to remove one item. Just as a hard decision, I'd probably remove "WordCamp", or "Public Code", or "Developers", and rearrange the resulting links as categorized as possible. But worth noting: it really would be helpful to know the historical context for why those links were added, before we remove one. |
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Great feedback, thanks @jasmussen. Here is an updated idea based on these constraints. I have removed "Public Code". This of course assumes this link can be removed. 
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I would argue that the design @thetinyl did is actually better from a findability standpoint… we might even make it slightly bigger 🙂 |
@jasmussen I'm curious about the rationale for this. Would you be able to expand on that a little? I think these constraints would make sense if we were to limit to maybe 2 columns, but anything more than that and I believe we're making the footer feel convoluted and tricky to navigate... even if it does look very nice and clean. Unless we wanted to organize alphabetically, which is probably only marginally more helpful (without actually helping). With the current number of links, even the neat rows don't make it immediately clear how they're organized. Without the ability or absolute power (at the moment 😄) to scrub the content and start from scratch, category titles feel like the easiest way to make the footer more useful. Even with the potential awkwardness of duplicate links.
I think this is a great thought and I was pondering the same. I look at the header nav as the journey we want to lead visitors through, and the footer nav as the specific information visitors know they're looking for. There's definitely more we could be doing with this space, especially considering its appearance on every page. |
The main rationale, and this response is partially to Joost as well, is that almost every one of these links are redundant, already present in the header, and as noted sometimes also present in CTAs (Get involved, Developers, Documentation). Redundancy can be okay, especially in cases of very important links. But as a rule of thumb, whenever you link to the same place in more than one place, it can engender the question in a visitor: which link is the right one? If links in this section are more findable, that also reads as all the more reason to improve the main navigation, and every page itself, lest this footer become a bandaid to a more underlying problem. To that end, I feel quite strongly that more is not better in this case, and that constraining ourselves here is the prudent thing to do, lest we end up with a wall of links on virtually every page of the site. That said, I will ultimately defer to those with the historical knowledge of the project, and if we end up having to have more links, I would actually add a 6th column, and have there be 4 links in each. At least then we'd keep the uniformity of the shape. |
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Thanks for the additional background @jasmussen. It's much appreciated.
Just to make sure I'm extra clear: Are these constraints proposed for the state of the current footer, assuming we don't have jurisdiction to make changes? Or are you proposing these constraints to be applied to any iteration of the footer, including if we have the freedom to make content changes? |
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That depends on how broadly we want to redesign the footer. If we're being a bit more bluesky about it, I would still appeal to keeping that main area very compact and minimalist, at some point it will start affecting legibility. Visually I always try to look at the whole page, rather than just the one element of it, and reduction nearly always benefits the scannability when doing so. I was under the impression, though, that there's a great deal of inertia to the footer as it exists today, which is why I've assumed we have to be careful in both adding and removing links. To me it feels like one of those foundational aspects of the wp.org site history that makes me just personally want to not completely reinvent it without being quite sure we're on a good path. I regret to be so vague in my comments here, I don't mean to make this task any harder than it is. My assumption can be entirely wrong in which case I'm happy to support a fresh path forward. |
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Based on the most recent comments, I think this might work as an iteration and provide some subtle improvement. It would be worthwhile to revisit the entire footer in the future.
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ryelle
added
[Block] Header & Footer
and removed
[Status] In Discussion
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I don't see "forums" in the footer anymore, I don't see where it was agreed to remove it. It seems to have been removed in this view #364 (comment). |
From WordPress/wporg-main-2022#221
The top navigation includes, at the moment, these links:
The footer includes these:
A few things going on:
Keeping in mind that there's a historical context to the addition of some of these links, it would be good to do a pass at the content here, perhaps especially the first three columns as they refer to the main navigation, and decide which to keep, which to omit, or which to add, as well as decide whether the external link indicator is useful here. As part of this pass, it would be good to either surface this categorization in the footer, or at least try to map them closer to the top nav system.
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