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A comprehensive redesign to donations

Hello world!

This is my first issue in kde land, and I've been using plasma for about 3-4 years.

As I've watched the latest brodie x nate podcast this issue came back to my mind, so I finally got around to at least make a post about it and get some sort of discussion going.

I LOVE Kde and want the best for the whole project, and my belief is that the donation page is probably the MOST important page you could direct people, and that it should be a SINGLE page where a potential new supporter could quickly and easily assess the project and how it is doing and not have to look through different pages to find an option suitable for them. Also, Nate mentioned the christmas popup in apps or the system that is potentially coming, and it would be nice to have a unified landing page for that as well.

So my proposal would include consolidating all 4! webpages that various links point to into a single site, and cleaning up the footer of all the kde websites from kde patrons and donate option and additional links. This should hopefully make plasma look more organized and present a better first impression to folks that come and want to donate but find themselves in the maze of links that are provided.

You can get to the main 3 pages straight from https://kde.org/ , these include from top to bottom:

Issues with the current representation:

  • Looking unorganized -> possibly looking less professional/trustworthy
  • More friction and confusion when wanting to make a donation than is neccesseary, possibly driving away people
  • Incosistent descriptions next to the same two options on two different pages

Inspirations:

So now onto more concrete ideas!

  1. Make the link shorter, like blender and godot: (I don't understand the reason for the /community/)
  1. Make it even shorter! This way, at least in english, it will be consistent with the header link.

  1. Flare: add a ❤ left of the Donate button, like blender and godot, becasue we all love kde!

  2. kde.org footer cleanups, relevant issue

  • kde patrons are already listed on: https://kde.org/community/donations/ and blender as a successful example, lists both corporate sponsors and individual patrons/ in kde's case plasma6members on their funding site
  • removing the green backgrounded paypal one time option as it is already listed on: https://kde.org/community/donations/
  • removing the green backgrounded MetaStore, and possibly renaming it:
  • After facebook decided to use the word meta for everything, it makes it a weird option to show Merchandise, which would be my proposal for it, and its placement could be in the products column in the footer, it even has a nice little slot for it! (also that page needs some love in and of it self)
  • at https://godotengine.org/ the footer has a column for getting in contact with them, it could be worth looking into a 6th column for that, and listing kde's online presences, maybe calling it like opencollective does it: "Community", this could make it look more in line, since when you look across the industry, they all have columns in their footers to list stuff, examples:
  • https://www.microsoft.com/hu-hu/
  1. kde.org scrolling donate button to be renamned the same as the header one, from "Donate Now" -> "<3 Donate" this is for consistency.

Now to the donate site itself!

  1. Rename plasma 6 members to just "plasma members" or "kde members", since their recurring donations will help fund the whole project, not just plasma 6.
  2. I think that blender's template is great, it lists everyone who donates, be it corporate, recurring personal or a one time donation.

relevant open issues at: #29 (comment 938229)

https://kde.org/fundraisers/plasma6member/ would cease to exist and would be consolidated as well into the new site with the names categorized by the amount they provide

Generally blender, godot, thunderbird list one time and monthly options for donating as their go to options, I feel these should become the default for kde as well, monthly is the most reasonable for most people who want to give but can't give a lot all the time.

tldr:

  • consolidate all the dono links into one (one link to rule them all), this being the ones mentioned in the points 1. and 2.
  • clean up the kde.org sites's footers
  • implement the monthly donation feature into the main donation window, which should have one time and monthly options available (maybe annual or quarterly could stay)
  • blender esque donation page design with all the kde relevant things mentioned and listed as well

I know this is a huge proposal, but as I have mentioned in the begginning, I feel like this would be a much needed redesign. I look forward to all the discussions and ideas that might make it into the main site one day! Mockups coming tomorrow.

This issue will need input from the visual design group and @ngraham, I'am not a dev, but I would like to help in the design! Also thank you if you read all my ramblings! ❤ I might've lost the thread here and there, but I've been writing this issue for 2 hours, so ask away, I will try to clarify.

Edited by Répási Dávid