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Red Hat Software Businesses

Redhat's New Web Site 144

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hey-look-at-that dept.
Jonathan Ocab wrote in to tell us that Red Hat has redone their site. You'll notice a summary of both Freshmeat and Slashdot stories on the page, linkage to User Friendly, as well as lots of javascript mouseovers to consume bandwidth.
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Redhat's New Web Site More

Redhat's New Web Site

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  • I'm still here, just no long bored :-). Gots a job that keeps me busy, so I can't spend more than a few minutes reading slashdot.

    And btw, I'm not the one who started first post junk. I just always seemed to sit down in the morning just as Rob posted stuff, and my comments were usually in the top 5 or so. Somebody(s?) noticed I got like 3 in a row one day, and decided to just hit reload constantly, just to get their name up first the next time. Seemed kinda dumb but harmless then, but now that every AC and his inbred cousing do it too, it really sucks...

    --

  • What's a morperson? ;-)
  • Thanks. For a few minutes there I was a bit confused. Now I get it...
  • ..it's pretty hideous. I can't design sites to save my life, but that's why I don't attempt to.

  • Yuck (Score:1)

    by Micah ( 278 )
    1. Red Hat should present unique Red Hat information prominently
    2. Ripping headlines from other sources is tacky. A sidebar maybe, but not the whole site.
    3. The color scheme bites.

    What would be nice is a Linux portal (but not on www.redhat.com) that would let you customize things you want to see - /., freshmeat, E-mail, Linux related stock quotes, apps that you're interested in, upcoming Linux events in your area.
  • Click on redhat.com's poll results - check which server it's going to.

    Red Hat's not stealing anything - they've obviously come to some arrangement with Rob and co.

    Syndicated content is going to be one of the next big things. Go Rob! (and co!)

    ...j
  • Aacck!
  • Hmm, it seems to be slashdotted.

    However, a traceroute (www.redhat.com and redhat.com have the same results) brings up an interesting question...the trace gets all the way to router.redhat.com [199.183.24.225], which reports "Destination net unreachable." That means that something's getting through to RedHat, but not to the www server. My question is, what causes something like this? Is the router purposely dropping packets (and replying that the destination is unreachable) due to too much traffic, or is this the router's way of saying that its request to www.redhat.com timed out?
  • Ok, a bit more info and to clarify my question - both router.redhat.com (which has very low ping times) and www.redhat.com (which times out) are on the same class C subnet, so apparently the bandwidth to the network is there. If it's not a bandwidth problem, what is the problem? Is the box down or overloaded? If Slashdot can handle a ton of visitors per day on one box, I don't see why RedHat can't handle a certain percentage of the Slashdot visitors clicking over to their site.
  • Are all the applications listed proprietary? On the word processor page, there was no mention of Lyx. On the scientific page, there was no mention of gnuplot. Etc.
  • Why are only closed-source, binary-only, commercial applications listed in the application index? Even when better free alternatives exist, they are not listed. That kind of shows some bias, eh?
  • It seems redundant to have a listing of (older) Slashdot stories on the RedHat site... odds are, people looking at RedHat's site probably already read slashdot, anyway. Having the poll linking from there doesn't make much sense, either.

    Frankly, I think their site looked better yesterday - streamlined, classy, and to the point. It looks trashy now.

    Just my $0.02 (CDN)
  • I thought that too, they are supplying /. content
    but noone is seeing the banner ads that Rob's
    supporters are paying for.
  • They need Linux Today headlines too.

    TedC

  • Don't you think that redhat.com should show you the redhat news first? If I want news from slashdot, I'll go to slashdot. If I want to find out something about Red Hat, I don't want to wade through other site's news to find it.

    Also, what's the deal with the slashdot links? Are they trying to insulate people from the "evil" comments threads? The page you get taken to when you click on a slashdot headline is like a neutered version of our beloved page. There is no way to get from the redhat page to the original story.

    Rob, I hope you got some money out of this deal, because you've really sold your soul.
  • Rob has to be involved. They don't even have LINK to slashdot!!! All the links that look like they should be external just point to the redhat site. What a travesty.
  • They don't even bother to put a notice up that says "This stuff belongs to Slashdot," and the same goes for Freshmeat junk. If someone were to check out that site, they'd see the articles or the polls and think it was Red Hat's deal, not someone else's work. The more time that passes the more irritated I become with RH. Praise Bob for Stampede.
  • Looks stupid. We don't need more headline snagging Websites. Tired.
  • ...As most people here seem to agree:

    The new look sucks!

  • Red Hat are so un-original they can't even come up with their own polls!

  • I didn't even get to look at the site before it went down, but I was doing a traceroute, and saw this as the last hop:

    www2.portal.redhat.com

    AHHHHHHHHHHH!
  • ...Slashdot stories like that? I mean, on top of IT is open-content, but /. is not. Maybe they have some sort of licensing agreement with Rob?
    It's not like most of the headline grabbers, they really are reproducing the entire story (minus the comments of course.)
    So what's the deal? Same with freshmeat apparently .
    --
  • Wow! It sucks just as much as other portal sites. They need to keep in mind that people go to redhat.com to find out about RedHat products and services. Details of the CDs and the training and support services need to be prominently displayed on the front page. If people want news, they'll go to slashdot, freshmeat or elsewhere, not RedHat. I've got no objection to the summaries being there, but they shouldn't be the main focus of the site.

    Oh, and the garish colours suck, too. Still, with Gnome 1.0 and kernel 2.2, RedHat 6.0 should be pretty good when it's released.
  • Normally yes. But keep in mind, Redhat isnt dieing out like Netscape was/is, it is THRIVING... This isn't some attempt to save itself.. it is THE number one distro and has more outside support than anyone else.. it has to be going on fine with its financial problems.
  • does this new site not look more like a box of marlboro cigarettes than the old site???
  • You know, as many mistakes as Redhat has made, I must admit that they alomst instantly correct any mistakes they make [redhat.com]. Kudos to RedHat.



    I think the portal site is a good idea, and feel that a link to Slashdot, Freshmeat, and Userfriendly belong on the page, or belong on a page marked 'Linux community' or somesuch. I also liked the link to the Google Linux search engine. RedHat has some good ideas here, and just need to get it organized in a better manner.



    - Sam Trenholme

  • Never mind. My cache was acting funny, and was pointing me to the old www.redhat.com web page, even after I hit reload. Deleting all my cache files, exiting and entering Netscape made www.redhat.com look like the new portal again.

    It was a nice thought. For people new here this is what Redhat.com used to look like [redhat.com].

    - Sam Trenholme

  • i always tell my clients to look at redhat.com if they want the lowdown on linux. it had various corporate announcement and link to redhat/linux articles in the press.

    now, it has stuff about the new playstation 2 and some mozilla party at a bar in san francisco on the main page. how is this supposed to help my calls for linux? how does that benifit my corporate clients? slashdot scares non-techies and now redhat has decidedly put up a barrier of technobabble stolen from slashdot.

    i will now remove that redcom.com bumper sticker from my bmw. i work in the same building as sco's kernel group. they're probably laughing at me now.
  • you know it's a sad day for linux when their web site looks better on IE4/Win95 than it does on NS4.5/Solaris and NS4.5/Linux. Wow, using the default font settins with netscape, some text on the redhat site in five pixels high. that's fun to read!
  • Now Redhat looks like the biggest joke in town. Take this for example:
    Posted by The.Heathen on Wednesday March 03, @02:20PM | X11/Games
    Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday March 04, @10:48AM |from the shake-your-groove-thang dept.
    This stuff will bring linux to the mainstream? People will look at redhat.com and associate the linux community with the junky slashdot posts (kde/gnome/gpl/bsd rulez/sux first! not! etc)
    I've now lost all respect for Redhat and because Redhat is portrayed as the official linux, it will hurt linux' image.
  • BECAUSE...it now gives all of linux a bad name
  • and redhat links to all those whiny /. kids
  • Wonder what OS they're using?
  • nope it's back up...and still sucks
  • the title bar etc. isn't bad but i would definately sidebar the slashdot/freshmeat news and have RH news down the middle. Or at least present the portal part a little better. oh hell, make a portal.redhat.com and move the layout there. The portal idea is cool i guess but not for a corporate homepage. Its kinda unprofessional. I would have been confused as hell if i was a newbie looking for linux info etc. Let alone if I was a PHB.

    oh well, just my 2 cents

    -doobman
  • The sites linux.com and redhat.com are not for us.

    Its for PH bosses who will buy Linux. What they will do first? Right. They will type "linux.com" and "redhat.com".
    That's not for geeks, but that does not means that that's bad!

  • I guess they could not make enough money selling Linux.
  • I'm glad. If they want a portal, let them use another URL for that.
  • The new RedHat portal
    [o] sucks
    [o] does not suck
    [o] Rob Sucks/This Poll Sucks/Slashdot Sucks/First Post!
  • Your penance is to get an account and use it. Amen.
  • Since it would seem their site moved, and it's taking ages for the cached entry to expire.
  • I agree with previous posters that we don't need another site snagging headlines from slashdot, freshmeat, etc. Its easy enough to see all of this data on their respective sites, or slashdot itself which aggregates Freshmeat data (and presents it better than the Red Hat site).

    That said, the site needs to polish up spacing inside cells, and some color issues.

    There is far too much wasted space on the left and right gutters/borders of the page. You should always avoid large clumps of whitespace. Slashdot and Freshmeat have good approaches to conserving real estate - Red Hat does not.

    This site also seems confusing for users who want to find out more about Red Hat itself. It seems to be more of a slashdot tribute site.
  • Whitespace along the gutters cannot improve the readability of the cramped font.
  • Hrmm.. having the /. poll on Redhat seems like
    a bad idea. Sometimes these polls aren't exactly
    business friendly (What's your favorite beer?). Do we really need these to be on a non-lighthearted site like Redhat?
    /. == Good Clean Fun
    Redhat == Business trying to make money and impress the pointy hairs..
  • Anyone else notice the sudden break in VA Research's virtual monopoly on sponsoring Linux-related sites?

    I feel bad for VA, since they've put so much more work into Linux. I visited the IBM Netfinity pages and didn't see a thing about Linux other than the official announcement - if you try building your own Netfinity, Linux isn't even an option.

    The Netfinity is also /much/ more expensive than an equivalent VA sever, at least as far as I can tell. What are you getting for about double the price? Or am I just reading things wrong over there?

    Incidentally, I agree with the consensus that Redhat's site is lousy. I didn't mind the colours, but if I want to read Slashdot, Fresh Meat or User Friendly, well, I'll visit them myself.

    D

    ----
  • I love RedHat and all, but you'd think they'd know to make their site somewhat lynx friendly. There's god darned [inline]'s all over the place. There isn't even a text based version. Oh well...

  • hm... (Score:1)

    by cswiii ( 11061 )
    what a color scheme.... did RH hire a bunch of former McDonald's employees?
  • The new and improved RedHat site has nothing to do with RedHat. It is a piss-poor attempt at co-branding (vis a vis /. and Freshmeat). I already have three portal sites, and all three of them are better than RedHat's. The colors are ugly, and the content is lame/irrelevant/sucks.

    Psychic prediction: The RedHat site will be changed within the next two days.
  • I vote for this too !!! I'm curious as to whether RedHat will use that poll and have a link to the (obvious) result (negative).
  • Agreement there; this "Now with Portal" trend is really tired...
  • It seems that you are right.
  • Seems like so many people here are on machines connected to T1's, college LAN's, and 28.8/56K modems. Unless you people are playing Quake at the same time you're trying to view Red Hat's site, I don't see how they're wasting your bandwidth.
    Some bandwidth waste is good. The effects make the site easier and more pleasant to deal with. Aesthetics (sp?) count you know. I don't feel like reading black text against a gray background all day long.
    (As if Slashdot doesn't waste bandwidth, using images for story subject groups instead of a bandwidth saving text link.)
  • 'Portal' does seem to be the buzz word these days, doesn't it? Can't wait to see what happens to the stock.

    The tables were terribly slow and the headlines from SlashDot and FreshMeat seemed kind of pointless and, well, tacky. They would have been better served buying a banner on SlashDot and leaving their page the way it was. A real honest to goodness find everything here Linux Portal would be nice, but this certainly ain't it.
  • Hear, hear. If I want to see Slashdot, I can click my mouse. Quite frankly, Red Hat's site has been a big loser for a long time. This job, at least the front page, looks like they grabbed some html'ers from the local high school and paid 'em a few bucks to gin up a page. I hope that's the case, because if they paid more for professionals, they got ripped.

    Oh, and ditto the complaint on broken links. That tradition was certainly maintained. They may sell a good distribution, but their web site is an embarassment.

    =h=
  • Ah, thankyouverymuch.

    Ugh. I think I hate that yellow...
    ----------
  • Same here.. even cleared my cache and reloaded.
    It's the same old site!
  • I'd think that if they want to become a sort of general Linux portal, they'd provide easy access to what I would consider essential Linux resources. The Linux Documentation Project comes immediately to mind, although other Linux FAQ's and sites would also be nice. Ghod knows there's enough room for some extra links in the sidebars.
  • I found that it was nearly impossible to find support infomation on the old RedHat site.

    Either what I was looking for wasn't there, or I couldn't find it. I find the new site is a big improvement in this regard.
  • Is it just me or are fixed width websites annoying. Used to be that HTML rendered in whatever sized browser window you had. Lately everyone want's to tell you how big your browser window should be. Fight the power! =)

  • hehe.. and see what they do then.
  • I've been trying for the last hour, and it seems to be down. Either that or the proxy is filtering out dubious material again.

  • Plus there sould be an option for "I haven't seen it yet due to the Slashdot Effect/Red Hat's shitty bandwidth".
  • hey. you forgot the obligatory 'huh?'.

    also, i think the new site sucks. ugly. it's just sad that slashdot had to be part of the imminent demise of redhat.com...

    i guess redhat got really mad that they didn't get linux.com, eh? the former owner of that domain chastised redhat for just tossing money at him, and not offering a linux-supportive plan for the web site. they sure are trying to be supportive now, eh?!?
  • this new site just looks like a re-slashdot with a suckier color scheme. They even ripped the poll? I know they wanted a portal, but come on!
    -davek

  • Bzzzt. White space good. I'm always happy when site designers keep their text columns in the 60-80 character range. It's called readability. Too bad more web jockeys don't bother to get at least a cursory background in typography. It would save me from my next spare-time mini project: writing a local style sheet for Opera to slim down all the overly wide text blankets I read.

    NB: Ever read suck [suck.com] with a standards-compliant browser? Classic misuse of the <p> tag, and it kills all the italicized text that spans line breaks.

  • like others have said, it's a rehash of other sites all pasted together.

    the older version had a professional look to it, something I could show to a manager.

    the new one? arghhhh. i don't even like looking at it. the focus is on "linux", /., and freshmeat. but the site is redhat.com -- makes no sense to me.

    i keep thinking "this is a joke, right?"
  • "My ass is a portal."

    Portals are sooo 1997. It's ugly, it's stupid, it's worthless. All I want from a RedHat site is RedHat info. Not /. news, I can (surprise) get that at /. and not freshmeat news because (more surprise) I can get that at freshmeat.net.

    RedHat, are you listening? The average Linux user doesn't want a portal. The average Linux user can write his/her own in HTML. Additionally, the average Portal user a) doesn't know Linux from a vacuum cleaner and b) is already portalling through Yahoo or Netscape.

    Give up this madness and launch a site that people can be proud of (or here's an idea, fix RHCN so it actually works).
  • It seems that Redhat cannot even keep their new links up to date. The link to "today's" UserFriendly is several days old...
  • What new site!

    They re-did their site MONTHS AGO! Right along with the release of RedHat 5.2....

    Get with it boys!
  • I think so, because:
    1. The page dos not error-free run through:validator.w3.org [w3.org] Hu!? Even /. fails!?
    2. It is not LYNX-clean (no ALT-Attribs etc.)
    3. It is too slow (more than 30 seconds from Europe)
    4. It's not user-friendly, not "clear" enough
    How to avoid this:
    1. Read the alertboxes [useit.com]
    2. use a 14.400 Modem to simulate over-sea connections (this is no joke!)
    3. use tidy [w3c.org] to clean up Your pages
    4. try with LYNX before publishing!
    Why this is important:
    People using the best OS should write the best code.
  • Anybody besides me think it's odd for a Linux site to be using a MS font? Granted, the HTML does degrade gracefully, but still...

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