Launch of the new Pandion.im website

After working on it for the last ten days the new Pandion website is finally ready for launch. Behold:



The goals for this new website are:

1. To make Pandion more appealing to new users

I hope everyone likes the new look. It's certainly a drastic improvement over the old website. I'm very happy with the custom theme that was created by jinx based on a beautiful design by Sailesh.

2. To foster a community of advocates and contributors

The footer of each page shows various ways for users and developers alike to stay in touch with Pandion. Using lessons on social media marketing I've launched a GitHub repository, Facebook page, Twitter account, blog, and other tools for the Pandion community.

3. To provide better access to support features and extras

I received too many direct emails through the old site's contact form. People asked me for help with Pandion instead of accessing the (admittedly very spammed) forum for answers and community support. Often these emails were repeating the same questions and I sent canned responses. This was not an efficient process. The new website is structured to give visitors easier access to all community support resources like the wiki and discussion board. It also shows a live content feed on every page, enticing visitors to join the Pandion user community.

4. To be easier to maintain and translate

Drupal is an excellent free and open source content manager. The learning curve was fairly steep but now it's a breeze to make content or design changes. I have not yet enabled locale and translation support but it should be possible to have the Pandion site in any language eventually. By creating restricted Drupal accounts contributors can securely translate the website without requiring involvement of an administrator.

Here's to the success of this new Pandion website!