

SourceForge.net Gets A Makeover - olalonde
http://sourceforge.net/?

======
Groxx
Why do they have FullSync on the front page? Last file update: 2005-03-08.
Review page [1] has loads of mentions of non-running, non-syncing, and "too
buggy to depend on". Not exactly a stellar project to be featuring so highly.

Meanwhile, it seems their navigation hasn't really changed, just received a
new coat of paint. On the ScummVM pages, for instance: still shows 5 items in
the main nav, unless support / develop is clicked. Then 4 more menu items and
breadcrumbs appear, mouse-over menus on develop and the new ones, "support"
changes to "donate", "share" appears out of nowhere, and the styling changes
(different mouse-over font color on the navbar, for no reason). They also
still have the crappy click-to-reload-the-page-to-navigate on the download-
files list, side-by-side diff doesn't show word / character changes, just by
line, and anything to do with the repo (browser, patches, etc) is a complete
style and layout change from the rest of the site.

Put it back in the oven, it's not done yet.

[1]:
[http://sourceforge.net/projects/fullsync/reviews/?sort=usefu...](http://sourceforge.net/projects/fullsync/reviews/?sort=usefulness)

------
sfstinks
I worked there a little over a year ago and in that time they had 3-4
'makeovers'. In the same time they had like a 90% staff turnover including the
CEO and a lot of upper management.

------
icco
Interesting redesign. In 2009 they did a previous redesign, which Chris
Wanstrath from GitHub critiqued at RailsConf
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUUvq48Gb3w> (Around 17:45). It looks like
they've improved since then, but I couldn't even create a project, the system
gave me a 400. Also, the site seems really slow, but possibly that's because
they just relaunched.

While they get a lot of flak because they have supposedly lost to GitHub, I'll
admit that far more people have heard of SourceForge compared the GitHub, and
I must applaud their willingness to at least attempt a major redesign.

------
andycroll
Seems a shame one of their homepage 'featured' projects (ScummVM) has just
moved to github.

<http://www.scummvm.org/news/20110212/> <http://github.com/scummvm/scummvm>

------
olalonde
IMO, the most useful page is pretty well hidden (you have to search an empty
string): <http://sourceforge.net/search/>

~~~
noonat
Seems like a lot of the useful content is hidden. I had hopes that they had
learned from GitHub, but it still takes multiple clicks to see any code.

------
enthalpyx
Too little, too late. Github has won.

~~~
axod
Uh you're high. You're in a bubble...

Quantcast:
[http://www.quantcast.com/profile/trafficGraph?wunit=wd%3Anet...](http://www.quantcast.com/profile/trafficGraph?wunit=wd%3Anet.sourceforge&wunit1=wd:com.github&drg=&dty=pp&gl=6mo&reachType=period&dtr=dm&width=522&country=UK&ggt=large&showDeleteButtons=true&v=-1957318692)

Trends:
[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=sourceforge.net,+github....](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=sourceforge.net,+github.com&sa=N)

Alexa:
[http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&...](http://traffic.alexa.com/graph?&w=400&h=220&o=f&c=1&y=r&b=ffffff&n=666666&r=2y&u=sourceforge.net&&u=github.com&);

By what measure are you talking about? Ah of course. The "It's shiny new so
hot right now within my small circle of friends!" metric.

~~~
pjhyett
The vast majority of the traffic that hits Sourceforge is there to download
software, not contribute to the projects. When we spoke to them a few years
ago, they said their main competitor was Downloads.com not us (GitHub).

Don't get too caught up using graphs to assume relevancy, Myspace still gets a
lot of traffic.

~~~
axod
and traffic = mindshare = $$$

My point was that "Github has won against sf" is a rather naive comment.

And as you rightly point out, github and sourceforge aren't really in
competing markets anyway - making the original comment even more nonsensical.

~~~
axod
> Don't get too caught up using graphs to assume relevancy, Myspace still gets
> a lot of traffic.

Also not sure what you mean. Traffic == relevancy. If something gets a lot of
users, surely by the definition of the word, it's 'relevant'.

Sounds like crazy valley bubble talk to me.

------
iM8t
The new design looks much better than the previous. I digg it.

~~~
icco
I am sad that you got downvoted because you have a discenting opinion. I am
curious though, what do you like about the new design? More whitespace? Better
color choice? New features?

