Why
The old website at wordpress was limited. It was not really a website to be used for knowledge base articles, manuals and or API descriptions. It was perfect for a blog and some images, as what wordpress.com is mainly used for. It became quite a job to maintain the site, continuously restructuring to make sure items where posted at the correct location, work with immense menu's. In other words, PiDome has outgrown it.
Next to the above everything got scattered at different places, manuals, API descriptions, screenshots etc.. And the manual entries, it was just not fun anymore to maintain it. The need to add or change links at different places became a big hurdle.
So, let's update, or better said, sit down and look at the stuff we want to provide.
We hope the new website will serve you better and make it easier to find information. If you got any remarks, contact us.
The changes
News/Blog posts
This is the section where almost nothing is changed. The wordpress.com site provided good blogging and news posting and we wanted to keep the structure.
Events
We have made it easier to find the events we will be attending, instead of making a blog post they now are more prominently present on the website. You will be able to see upcoming and past events.
Search
We made it easier to search over the news and blog posts. You can enter a search term on the top of the website, press enter and there you go.
Features
There now is a real dedicated features section. This provides the server- and clients features, screenshots and video's we post. So instead to head over to other websites they can now be easily found here.
Downloads
The page has been kept intact for a large section, but instead of searching through a whole page they are now devided into Stable, Beta and Snapshot sections. And we have also included the playground downloads.
Support
The support pages have now been more organized, each piece of software has it's own installation and FAQ section, and not important a re-designed manual section.
Manual
Finally a searchable manual. You can use the search box to search through the manual and find the appropiate item you are searching for. The manual has been split up into categories, subcategories and items. Currently the manual is a work in progress because all the items at the wordpress site are insanely outdated so we are completely rewriting it and make it up to date with the latest version of the software.
Platform
We used to have a http://platform.pidome.org subdomain. This has been obsoleted. So instead of going to a completely different website the platform is integrated in the website. You will find all supported technologies on this website. Future platform integrations will also be made available here.
API
As with the platform the api was under a different subdomain. This has been integrated to the website. This means you do not need to go a completely different site to get API information.
As the server is currently still in alpha version the API has not been published yet. But, the server supports scripted drivers, and this API has been published, you can find it at: http://pidome.org/platform/api/custom-drivers/
Contact
We made it easier to contact us and have added the PiDome team members so you know who is behind the project.
PiDome Friends
You probably have seen the PiDome friends block on the old website. This has been extended. PiDome friends are users, organizations or others who help PiDome evolve quicker by funding or extra support with hardware. We gave these "Friends" a dedicated page to introduce them, providing more information and links to their website.
Live long and prosper.
Support PiDome
We have extended the information on how you are able to support the PiDome development.
Forum / login / register / commenting
The forum is still at it's old location. This is a large section of the project and when it is done you will be notified. The same with the login and register. When the forum is done they will be activated. This will enable website comments where you will be able to comment on blog and news posts.
Updated PiDome identity
We have changed our logo and the colors are also slightly updated. We will soon create a page where you will find the logo's with best practice usages. The updated identity will be implemented in the software over time.
There is more to come
We are not done yet, we have planned more things which will be integrated on the website. These will be rolled out in the next couple of months.
