Improve the map of documentation on Django's home page

[Daniele Procida]

In general, the documentation home page does an outstanding job of unfolding Django’s documentation content in a topographical fashion – it’s like opening a map and seeing the terrain laid out in front of you.

It's rational, compact and shows the relationship of different concerns to each other very effectively.

However some of the rationality frays at the edges, and it's not maintained all the way down.

I propose reworking this map of Django's domains of concern so that things like each other are closer together. For example: features (e.g. Admin, Forms, GeoDjango), quality demands (Security, Performance) and so on.

Here's a ​sketch of the new arrangement of domains of concern. It attempts to achieve a balance of rationality, pragmatism (no heavy-handed application of rules if it would produce something awkward) and aesthetics (it should provide a good experience, feel good and even look right).

It orders topics as:

• entry-point
• conceptual and functional layers
• features
• resources and interfaces (a new grouping, concerned with Django's access to the world outside it)
• quality demands
• development lifecycle activity
• contributing to Django

and sometimes uses those categories as actual titles too.

The page as it stands in 6.0

The domains the page exposes, in order, are:

• ​First steps : the entry-point
• ​Models, Views, Templates: these are key conceptual and functional layers
• ​Forms: forms is a feature (something that Django offers you, that isn't a core of its architecture – you could imagine Django without it)
• ​The development process: development lifecycle activity
• ​The admin: feature (it belongs with Forms)
• ​Security: a quality demand (something we want from Django, and want developers to achieve)
• ​Internationalization and localization: feature
• ​Performance and optimization: quality demand
• ​Geographic framework: feature
• ​Common web application tools: a collection mostly of developer-facing features in no particular order
• ​Other core functionalities: another collection without a strong uniting principle
• ​The Django open-source project: contributing to Django

[Daniele Procida]

Following conversations and reviews with Carlton Gibson and Jacob Walls, I think this is ready to be merged.

[Jacob Walls <jacobtylerwalls@…>]

In 9d977aa:

Fixed #37051 -- Improved organisation of documentation home page.

The various domains of concern expressed on the home page (not
always explicitly) have been re-ordered and the topics within
them reorganised where appropriate.

The new order is:

• entry-point (installation, tutorial)
• conceptual and functional layers (models, views, templates, other core functionality)
• features (divided in to user-facing and developer-facing features)
• resources and interfaces (database, storage, etc)
• quality demands (security, performance, etc)
• developing with Django
• contributing to Django

Two sections ("How the documentation is organized" and "Getting
help") have been moved lower down the page; they don't need to
appear above the main map of contents).

Thanks James Bligh, James Beard, and Carlton Gibson for reviews.