Landing Pages -- Can TiddlyWiki Learn From Them?

[cdaven]

Let’s have a look at the “landing pages” for different products in this niche, shall we?

Notion

Obsidian

Roam Research

Logseq

Joplin

Zettlr

TiddlyWiki

Conclusions

• The competition have clear taglines, TiddlyWiki has “HelloThere”
• The competition opens with 1-2 sentences explaining the benefits of the product, TiddlyWiki says “Have you ever had the feeling …”
• The competition has clear download/sign up buttons, for TiddlyWiki you have to scroll down to GettingStarted and try to make sense of it
• The competition has large text and lots of whitespace, TiddlyWiki has lots of small text and images that you don’t understand

Suggestions

• Redesign with more whitespace, larger text, less text
• Open with stuff from “Some of the things you can do with TiddlyWiki” and “Ten reasons to switch to TiddlyWiki”
• Replace the 9 image links with information about how to download/save

[arunnbabu81]

https://groups.google.com/g/tiddlywiki/c/DBBrOsCfphg/m/lL716KnCAQAJ

@Odin had created a concept for TW landing page in the past. See the linked Google group discussion.

https://landingpage-example.tiddlyhost.com/

Edit: Go to control panel → Appearance → Layout. Switch Layout to landing page template to see it

[TiddlyTweeter]

@cdaven

Let’s have a look at the “landing pages” for different products in this niche, shall we?

Very useful to kinda survey the territory of obvious stuff around!

Just FYI the long history of TW also spans some “ages” of thinking about software that leverages “free text”.

I started with all this stuff as a social scientist where we called them “TEXT-BASES” … at that time they were seen as a kind of “intelligent word processor”. Likely the strongest in the field of the time was NotaBene …

“FREE-FORM” text organisation was well done, at that time, in tools like InfoSelect …

There were many others that are no longer supported.

My point—there is a complex history of tools and methods that maybe fed into TW.
For @twMat’s “marketing” thoughts they are all somehow relevant.

One thing we perhaps underplay is TW’s comparative FLEX? It seems exceptionally flexible.

Most of the other solutions seem to commit to one or two models of data design.
TW architecture is very interesting for being radically agnostic–most all methods of info-working are possible.

Just thoughts
TT

[twMat]

@cdaven

• Redesign with more whitespace, larger text, less text
• Open with stuff from “Some of the things you can do with TiddlyWiki” and “Ten reasons to switch to TiddlyWiki”
• Replace the 9 image links with information about how to download/save

These are all good suggestions. Not sure they answer the question in the OP but good suggestions for a more general redesign nonetheless.

[Tihnessa]

One of the major problems, in my opinion, is that TW seems to be ultra geeky - especially to anyone who reads this forum and sees long strings of abstruse, strange characters in answers to what seem like simple questions.

I don’t think TW should be - or needs to be - dumbed down, but I do think that it could be emphasised to new users that TW is precisely as geeky as they want and need it to be, no more, no less.

David Shaw

[TW_Tones]

I think one way to help keep things simple but feature rich is to find ways to do things that are simpler to understand. There are many ways to do things in TiddlyWiki and some are better than others, especialy when they are broadly applicable. Much of what I contribute is about this. Unfortunatly we do not have a method to collate this although @Mohammad and @EricShulman do a good job of it.

[Mark_S]

InfoSelect is informative of why one would avoid proprietary solutions. I bought the product, and almost the next day they changed their business plan, quadrupling the price of future upgrades. My sense is that it hasn’t experienced a lot of uptake, and it would fail the “man on the street” test. And of course, it’s single-platform.

[Mark_S]

@cdaven

The competition opens with 1-2 sentences explaining the benefits of the product, TiddlyWiki says “Have you ever had the feeling …”

The 2nd sentence is pretty clear:

Welcome to TiddlyWiki, a unique non-linear notebook for capturing, organising and sharing complex information.

Once again, we have no data-driven evidence that there is anything wrong with uptake of TW, other than that it doesn’t advertise. If people make decisions about a product based on a screen layout, they will certainly make decisions based on a name. And the name is the speed bump for about 300 million English speaking people. Or, at least I think it is. But I can’t prove it because we have no data.

[TiddlyTweeter]

@Mark_S

InfoSelect is informative of why one would avoid proprietary solutions.

Right. They whacked up pricing and they changed it.

TBH, I used it most when it was DOS based. The Windows thing got expensive and less flexible.

(Footnote: I found it interesting that [reductive] “column search” in @BurningTreeC’s MCL is exactly like InfoSelect was on Windows 3 )

[markkerrigan]

@arunnbabu81

https://groups.google.com/g/tiddlywiki/c/DBBrOsCfphg/m/lL716KnCAQAJ

@Odin had created a concept for TW landing page in the past. See the linked Google group discussion.

https://landingpage-example.tiddlyhost.com/

Edit: Go to control panel → Appearance → Layout. Switch Layout to landing page template to see it

I would like to see this split off into another topic. I think there is real value in changing the homepage, not particularly with this use of a CSS framework, but the overall and structure content of HelloThere. Especially the section titled “Customize TiddlyWiki for any usecase you can imagine”. For example under the Zettelkasten section, we can link out to some of the example editions.

Back to the topic of growth, I think fast growth for the sake of growth is not what TiddlyWiki is about. TiddlyWiki is about the long view. I assume TW will still be around 25 years from now. I would be cautious about analytics. TW is privacy conscious by design. I don’t see how collecting data about visitors supports that (implied) valued of user privacy.

[Mark_S]

@markkerrigan

TW is privacy conscious by design. I don’t see how collecting data about visitors supports that (implied) valued of user privacy.

Because its aggregate. And opt-out. And because conversations like this happen over and over, and yet we lack the data to show that there is actually any ongoing difficulty. I’m pretty sure that there is a major demographic that is under-represented. But we have no numbers.

When I think of privacy, I think of trackers and information-sharing among advertisers. But I don’t worry about “someone from Elbonia visited 6 times and downloaded once in the last week.”

As for growth – apparently some people want to see more uptake.

[markkerrigan]

@Mark_S

When I think of privacy, I think of trackers and information-sharing among advertisers. But I don’t worry about “someone from Elbonia visited 6 times and downloaded once in the last week.”

This is why I put implied in parentheses. I assume TiddlyWiki.com is not collecting detailed user data. see Jeremy’s post here about removing Google Analytics. You’re right some may not worry about such broad high level tracking details, but I am skeptical about what insight there is to glean from this. I myself might visit TiddlyWiki.com from my work computer everyday to lookup something and it’s location does not match my actual location due to the way the network operates. But if there are any analytics used, then they should be privacy respecting as possible. And from what I can tell from a quick search, there are tools that are privacy respecting and do not require a cookie banner.

[Mark_S]

@markkerrigan

but I am skeptical about what insight there is to glean from this. I myself might visit TiddlyWiki.com from my work computer everyday to lookup something and it’s

Unless you have a very long commute, you visit from the same country every day. Probably the same city. That’s the stats we need – how many visits by geo-graphic region.

Honestly, this privacy thing seems like OCD writ large. And it doesn’t tackle the real infringements – the financial companies who apparently can do anything they want with your data with no repercussions.

[Charlie_Veniot]

@Mark_S

Because its aggregate. And opt-out

I loathe the practice of opt-in by default (except for things that lockdown by default for the purpose of security). I much prefer opted-out by default, and invited to opt-in.

Just quickly saying, because opt-in by default might be worth a dedicated discussion on an “opt-in by default” case by case basis.

[Mark_S]

@Charlie_Veniot

I loathe the practice of opt-in by default (except for things that lockdown by default for the purpose of security). I much prefer opted-out by default, and invited to opt-in.

I understand the feeling. Especially with stack-exchange, where every single time I have to reset the settings.

I think we would end up with almost no usable statistics. Only committed TW people would opt-in. Leaving out the most valuable demographic. I guess what I would want is to try it opt-out for say, 3 months, and then look at the stats and see if they are useful. Then drop them and re-instate every year or so. Sort of like the equivalent of a pledge-drive.

[Charlie_Veniot]

@Mark_S

Only committed TW people would opt-in. Leaving out the most valuable demographic

Then them are the breaks.

Get people to opt-in with a carrot of some kind. Even if just a “star” for helping out, with a public display of a user’s number of stars. Can turn into a little bit of a competition to get them stars. (Duolingo does little achievement rewards to encourage folk.)

[boris]

All of those projects are … funded in some way where people have full time jobs making the home page.

Yep I’m sure things could be done to make TW — an open source project with one (1) “full time” person on it — more approachable.

If you (or anyone else) would like to design a landing page for TW — go for it!

Want a dedicated space in #projects to have a set of people to work on this? Yes! Go for it!

Will Jeremy accept such a new landing page? Maybe! It’s a process and starts by having some folks volunteer and do some work.

And of course, there are people like @abesamma that are building products around TW — see https://oneplaybook.app/ — which are much more focused landing pages.

As has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I think a group of folks making an Edition — and shaping it with defaults and out of the box settings that they think are good — would be the easiest path, including to not have to replace what is on TW right away.

[twMat]

@boris

Will Jeremy accept such a new landing page? Maybe! It’s a process and starts by having some folks volunteer and do some work.

Actually, the process should start with Jeremy explaining the purpose of the landing page. Musts and must-nots. Otherwise there’s a big chance people put a lot of effort into creating a fantastic but wrong thing.

[jeremyruston]

@twMat

Actually, the process should start with Jeremy explaining the purpose of the landing page. Musts and must-nots. Otherwise there’s a big chance people put a lot of effort into creating a fantastic but wrong thing.

tiddlywiki.com serves the needs of several distinct but overlapping groups of users:

• It is the landing page first encountered by prospective users
• It is the online demo for prospective users to explore
• It is the online documentation reference for current users
• It is the community test bed for quick tests and proof-of-concepts

And perhaps there are more. The point here is that any redesign should not unknowingly make tiddlywiki.com less useful for any of these groups of users.

[TW_Tones]

@jeremyruston has the idea of moving some of these functions to tiddlywiki.org progressed?

I think everyone wants to address these goals but also improve its appeal to naive visitors. However as tiddlywiki has being used as a reference for sometimes we do not want to invalidate such links.