Ubuntu derivatives are relatively hard to find on the new website

[Stéphane Graber]

On the previous website, derivatives used to be accessible directly from the front page, making newcomers aware that there might be a derivative focused on their exact need.
Now with the new website, one as to go on the "Project" tab and then select "Derivatives" to finally get a list of links to the various derivatives with no real description of what they are about.

Jonathan and I worked on a new website for Edubuntu that got online last month, since then we are tracking our visitors using Google Analytics and we noticed that most referrals come from xubuntu.org nowadays and not ubuntu.com.
Recently we noticed an increase of 50% of the traffic arriving from ubuntu.com just because of the beta announcement linking to edubuntu.org.

I'm wondering if there could be any way of making derivatives easier for visitors to find on the new website.
I don't necessarily think that direct links should be on the front page, but at least having an easy to find link to the "Derivatives" page and having that page contain a bit more information including ideally screenshots should improve the situation.

[Emmet Hikory (persia)]

For the avoidance of confusion, could we use "flavours" to refer to various base installable images of Ubuntu, and "derivatives" to mean various things other people do in other archives (e.g. Mint)?

[Jonathan Carter (jonathan)]

Hi Emmet. The problem with both flavours and derivatives are that they are both used to refer to both kind of spins.

What about copying what Debian did and calling the official builds with everything in the archives "Ubuntu Pure Blends" and the custom once-off builds that someone did by themselves just "custom spins" or something similar?

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

bug 607054 is related to this issue. Why would anyone be sent to the derivatives when looking at a 404 error? From the error page "Still can't find what you're looking for? Get in touch today." The "Get in touch today" is actually a link to http://www.ubuntu.com/project/derivatives , which does not help at all in finding what the individual clicked to get the 404.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Is anything happening with this issue? Are we really expecting people who look at the website to follow this procedure to find there is an alternative they might want?

[Matthew Nuzum (newz)]

There was a conscious decision made to remove these. The point is, if people are looking for Ubuntu we want to give them Ubuntu. No need to confuse them with a list of alternate things they may want instead.