Hello fellow nixers!

Today's topic will be about making a good website for your software.
It is indeed a matter of taste, but I'm pretty sure we can agree on a few point that are "required" to make a good website.

This keep this thread clean, please formulate your answer as:

• A list of important points (no more than 7)
  
• a link or two to software pages that illustrate your points
  
• (optionnal) a counter example
  

To start on the topic, here are my main concerns:

• A cool icon!
  
• Simple description of the software on the main page
  
• Links to the source code / tarball releases / documentation
  
• Usage / configuration examples
  
• No more than a full page of text per link
  
• A simple and clear navigation
  
• CSS should be discrete
  

I really like msmtp, ratox and musl pages. They're simple, easy to read and go straight to the point.

On the other hand, the website for the nix package manager feels a bit weird to me. I think there is too much text, and it's not easy to get a specific information.

for sites about software, i think that the text needs to be your focus.
but a huge wall of non-formatted text is jarring. you need a visual rhythm at moves your eyes from element to element.

* disregarding the site menus and sidebars *

underscore's docs:
- http://underscorejs.org
even though the method name, description, and example are all the same font size, the subtle padding adds to the readability. same same way the border beside the example separates itself from the rest while keeping a united block.
- http://underscorejs.org/#filter
their annotated source is pretty cool too:
- http://underscorejs.org/docs/underscore.html

i also like a well laid out github wiki:
- https://github.com/mbostock/d3/wiki/Selections

and as i said on irc, magnum-ci's docs:
- https://magnum-ci.com/docs/api

Software sites should be based around the software, informing you of everything you should know.

• The simple description of the software on the main page
  
• A section for documentation
  
• Link to the source code and links to binary releases for specific distro
  
• A clear changelog and important news or changes on the front page (as in critical things)
  
• A contact link or bug report page.
  
• A how-to-get-it-running page.
  

http://i3wm.org/ and http://www.irssi.org/ have satisfying webpages.

This topic is under-rated and under-discussed.

EDIT: I dislike http://ratox.2f30.org/.
http://msmtp.sourceforge.net/ is simple and clear even though the design is not very appealing.

I won't make a list, but I find the kernel website to be a great example of project website. Admittedly it doesn't list what it is about on the homepage (you have to click the about link) but all the needed links are displayed on the homepage and it's got a good, nice clean design to it.

No external Javascript, no Google Analytics, mandatory, secure TLS configuration.

@dtnt:
This is what I want.

I also don't like making lists, but blog.fefe.de is really good as a website (made by the creator of dietlibc).
I also think using werc (like www.cat-v.org, www.suckless.org and www.aiju.de) is a good idea, I especially like
the tree-like structure.

Let's make this clear, are we talking about about software that users use or about everything including libraries?
It does make a big difference because I don't see how a non-technical user would feel comfortable using websites such as the ones mentioned in the post above.

@pranomostro: All these website are not "dedicated" to a piece of software. They're website for multiple ones, and thus are restricted to one page per software (except suckless, which has one subdomain for each "major" software. As for fefe's blog, even if I love his softwares and ideas, I must admit that reading his website feels painful. There are walls of text everywhere, which are not well organised. Take for example the libowfat page. You have to scroll after all the releases to actually read something about what it is (and the description doesn't even describe the software itself, it only tells WHY it is a rewrite).

@venam: I asked about everything in fact, my goal is to find out what are the common places that make a website good at presenting its subject (regarding IT software/libraries).