The Challenge

http://developer.meego.com/
Since its initial release, the site has undergone heavy restructuring due to the project being forked into the Tizen project.

With the most popular mobile platforms being close source (Apple iOS, Windows Mobile) or with restricted development (Google Android), MeeGo was founded as a true free, open source platform by the world’s largest chip manufacturer, Intel, and the world’s largest mobile handset manufacturer, Nokia, together with the Linux Foundation. The project's goal is to to enable a next generation open source Linux-platform suited for a variety of client devices.

Since the project was not only a merger of two existing platforms, Maemo and Moblin, but also of two corporate cultures, there were a number of issues that had to be dealt with including

• Integration of existing documentation sources, such as API documentation generation streams
• Flexible layout of sections to adapt to significant changes in content
• Provide information required by both completely new and experienced developers

The Solution

Activeark, a Finnish full-service digital agency, lead the project with the goal of making developer information more accessible and to strengthen the underlying brand identity. The required solution required a number of highly flexible landing pages which would undergo regular layout changes as the sections became more or less complex. The implementation centered around a concept of section heads or section landing pages which could quickly be reconfigured between a number of preset layouts and allowed the inclusion of various lists. This made it possible for the editorial staff to change a section from a handful of articles to tens or hundreds of articles without needing any specialized knowledge. These section heads also made it possible to feature a few important articles, making it easier for beginners to get oriented in the large spectrum of information that the project provides.

By using a content staging server it was possible for all the staff to test content changes with the section head system before publishing the changes. This proved a very effective way to coordinate and integrate the requirements of Intel, Nokia and the MeeGo community.

Documentation such as APIs were imported to the site by a flexible tool which was able to deal with future changes to the API export formats. Having this content as nodes in the web system was an important in preparation for future stages, where the API calls were to be bookmarkable, annotable and tracked for popularity.

The Results

Community feedback following the release of the new devloper site ahs been very positive. Resources which were previously hidden in various locations such as on FTP servers are now easily accessible. The number of visitors accessing the developer pages has quickly increased, showing that the new site is a much more effective solution than including the developer content in the main site.

Note: The MeeGo Project has now become the Tizen project, so further development of the project has ended. Since no new content will be added to the site, it was decided to simplify the site structure to deal with this limited content set.