Draft of possible styling:
http://www.archserver.org/index.php?page=test-only

The most interesting link I found on scroogle :
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/drupal-vs-ez-publish-vs-wordpress-vs-cms-made-simple-004744.php

I saw that Drupal caching is quite good, and I believe that we mostly have anonymous visitors (since the forum, wiki and the bug tracker are separated from the website itself) and static content (with one exception, the front page).

One downside however is that drupal is quite heavy for the database (52 tables on my computer, core-install).

I think caching is something strongly worth taking into account here since at the moment it's still only 1 server taking the full workload of all the websites, plus the repos etc and the site isn't that busy yet. I'm somewhat concerned that our first release may result in the being overloaded from digg effect given the positive interest we've seen from quite a few areas.

I don't see a large number of DB tables being a barrier to adoption of a package -- CMS Made Simple already uses 40 tables, plus sequences.

I would be interested in creating a few templates for your review. If I created a few, would they be seriously considered? Or have you already got someone working on a new design? I see the link above, is this an idea or are you moving towards that design already? If you have someone driving the website design, is there anything specifically they require help with?

What are your requirements from a CMS? You mention caching (to help with high usage) anything else?

I didn't really made any work regarding the website redesign since we don't have decided yet what CMS we would be using.

Anything that's been done at the moment is just experimentation and throwing ideas around, so feel free to come up with your own, mix and match from the other ideas etc... Everything will be taken seriously (unless it's bright pink :P), especially if it's from someone who is experienced with web design etc :)

The main 'requirements' are detailed in the bug details -- although I've experimented with Drupal recently and I don't think it is a suitable platform. Joomla looks very nice, but perhaps overly complex, plus it doesn't seem to support PGSQL as the DB backend :(

With the correct templates and stylesheets, CMS Made Simple is still a winner IMHO:
- Simple
- PGSQL Backend
- Easy to theme
- Easy to extend
- Already being used for the site :P

I'm happy to put up a testing and development installation of CMS Made Simple if someone wants to play with it...

I would be interested in playing with CMSMS if you could set up a testing area; I've not used it a great deal before.

Generally CMSs like Joomla I find are not easy to work with, but CMSs that sit in the background and don't get in the way I like; sitecmd is one of these https://launchpad.net/sitecmd.

Check out my work so far (page border and menu) at http://devel.archserver.org.

Criticism welcome. Likes and dislikes?

Website "on a page"? Or do you prefer the original "whole page" design?

Is the menu too simple?

"although I've experimented with Drupal recently and I don't think it is a suitable platform."
@fukawi : I would like to hear more about this please. I'm running drupal on my own server so I would like to know what is wrong with it ? Performences, security, lack of features ?

@jsteel : Well... currently it is just a white box with a grey border... Doesn't look really professional to me :/

I'll do some work on Photoshop (but I'm quite busy right now).

@faelar - Perhaps I just didn't spend enough time on it, but my number 1 dislike was that everything is treated like a blog article, and displayed with a 'teaser' with a 'read more' link.

@jsteel - Personally I like the 'whole page' approach. In reference to bug 38 (http://bugs.archserver.org/task/38), we don't want to waste any screen real estate. Both the FreeBSD and PC-BSD websites often receive comments that they are clean, clear and easy to use/navigate so perhaps we could use them for some inspiration: http://www.freebsd.org/ http://pcbsd.org/

As far as creating a website design/template, the main areas (am I missing anything?) are:

1) The banner, which the site's logo plays a huge role in. In this case I have kept it as it is; do you think the banner needs work?
2) The page. If you prefer a "whole page" design then there's nothing to consider further; there will be no borders/rounded corners etc. It will fill the page.
3) A menu. I created a very simple menu as you can see. I like to start things as simple as possible and build upon them. In terms of positioning, colours etc. am I going in the right direction?
4) The content, I assume doesn't need changing apart from keeping the fonts etc. in theme with the design.

By banner, do you mean logo? We just had 4 pages of that in the forums :P
http://bbs.archserver.org/viewtopic.php?id=6

The main thing with the menu is there needs to be a common, site-wide menu (home, forum, bugs, wiki etc) and a defined area for a sub-menu that each sub site uses for links that are specific to that sub-site (eg, the forum has Index, User List, Rules, Search, Profile etc).

There is also the Graphic Charter (aka Design Guidelines) in the wiki:
http://wiki.archserver.org/index.php/Graphic_Charter

By the banner I mean the top of the website. At the moment this is just the logo. If you look at the FreeBSD website, they have a red banner and have incorporated their logo into it with some "waves" behind it. If you look at the Debian website, they just use their logo as the banner. Would you like a more "fancy" banner or are you happy with how it currently stands?

I have not yet decided on how to provide the second layer of links. I was going to go down the route of having static links beneath the menu as you have now, or would you prefer drop-down links like you created in your proposed design?

Personally, I'm not set on either way in regards to both the header (banner) and menus... Whatever we can make look good and work well :)

The menus are probably easier to maintain from a technical point of view if they're separate like they are now, but I do like the CSS drop down style. A big plus IMHO for the drop-down style is it allows all parts of each sub-site to be accessible from all other sub-sites (eg, from the wiki I can click thru immediate to the Forum Search page for example).