Create a rust-gamedev.github.io site

[AlexEne]

We need a way to communicate status, news and other things.

The first idea I have is a site like https://rustwasm.github.io/ or any of the other wgs

[AlexEne]

I created this as I am unsure if anyone else can create repos now: https://github.com/rust-gamedev/rust-gamedev.github.io

[erlend-sh]

So I believe the current rustwasm site is built with Jekyll: https://github.com/rustwasm/rustwasm.github.io

Would you like to copy their pipeline wholesale, Jekyll included? I'm fine with that if we have a volunteer for the work. Otherwise we might also entertain using a generator that more Rust developers are familiar/comfortable with, e.g. https://github.com/getzola/zola. I also know many Rust devs who prefer https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby because it's way more mature and they've already used it for work.

[AlexEne]

I think Jekyll is good, but that's the only thing I know and use for my site :D.
I'd say that as long as posts can be written in some easy format (markdown) I'm happy for anything.
The advantage of Jekyll is that is kind of just works for github pages so that's a bunch of automatic work for publishing that it taken care of without us having to do any effort.

[Lokathor]

Anything that can accept markdown sounds fine. People already understand it because that's how they (hopefully) write their rustdoc comments.

[AlexEne]

I've set up a basic jekyll site. It uses the minima theme - what Rust Web Assembly site uses.
Not so pretty: https://rust-gamedev.github.io/
Pretty: https://rustwasm.github.io/

Posts go in the _posts folder in markdown form. Their file name has has to be: YYYY-MM-DD-super-long-article.md.

We can add some analytics and other cute things (eg; svg discord icon with a link to the channel), links to the rust-gamedev wg github, etc..
You can also play with the css in there and make it nicer. Honestly I have no idea what the best practice is here, but if all else fails you can probably just change the _scss folder I got from minima, change it and open a PR with it.

[17cupsofcoffee]

I'd be super up for helping out with the website - will submit some PRs when I get the chance.

It might also be helpful if we could collate/checklist what's missing somewhere? It's a little fuzzy at the minute exactly what should go on the site (other than 'mostly do what the WASM WG do, which is a good call), and I think breaking it down into more fine grained tasks/ideas might make it easier for people to contribute.

[AlexEne]

There are a few things that need to be done (in order here):

• Website should look nicer :)
• A first post about what we're up to.
• A newsletter post / format proposal.

To add a bit of context as I kind of rush-responded to this in a break, sorry:

The main functional end-goal is something where news / announcements will be posted. Other than that it can also contain a high-level view of what this wg is about, some links to the github issues/charter and other similar things.

Also please do feel free to propose things, the truth is that there's no detailed plan on how it should look besides the functional purpose, so that's why I've intentionally left the vague look nicer above.

If you have some questions about anything here, I'm more than happy to try and answer.

[17cupsofcoffee]

A (very rough) first pass on prettying up the website:

Feedback on the header text/general direction would be appreciated (I am many things, but a designer I am not)

Not sure if the emojis are overly cutesy - bit of a placeholder in liu of someone drawing us a costumed Ferris :p

[AlexEne]

It looks great to me. The direction is good, doesn't look like the default site, serves it's purpose and the emojis are just fine. Thanks for doing this

[17cupsofcoffee]

Cool! The whole thing is a mess of inline styles and divs at the minute, but I'll hopefully get it cleaned up and send a PR in the next few days.

[17cupsofcoffee]

For the benefit of people looking at this issue rather than the website repo:

• The initial website design has been merged and published (First pass at the design of the website #1)
• Ozkriff has started a discussion on the format/first issue of the newsletter (Newsletter #2)
• I've started a discussion on the content of a introduction post (Introduction post #3)

[ozkriff]

Maybe the background shouldn't be blue? Or the emojis should be removed/changed. It looks a little bit weird with red emojis without an outline of my system's font:

[17cupsofcoffee]

Hm, yeah, that's unfortunate - on Windows 10 they have nice black borders:

If we can't rely on them looking vaguely consistent across platforms, they should probably be removed/replaced. I only really put them there because I was jealous of the WASM WG's hard-hat Ferris :p

I'm not particularly attached to the blue either, picking out color schemes has never really been my strong suit. As long as whatever we choose passes the Chrome accessibility audit, I'm happy.

[zicklag]

If we can't rely on them looking vaguely consistent across platforms, they should probably be removed/replaced.

I think you should be able to make the display consistant if you provide a downloadable font and set that as the font-family. That way every system uses the same icons instead of each one using its system default.

Also, there might be a way to extract the SVG from a font and put SVG icons in there instead.

---

Also, I have experience with Quasar for building websites if that seems like a direction you might want to take. See rust-gamedev/wg#43 (comment). If you guys are satisfied with Jekyll then go with that, but the option is out there if you need it.

[AlexEne]

If nobody has anything against this, I can go ahead and close this one and we can open more targeted issues if needed. (like one for font icons if we want to change/fix them them). Otherwise it gets to be too big of an issue.

[17cupsofcoffee]

Don't think there's anything left to do here that's not covered by other issues, so I think this can be closed now.