The current previous libvirt website design dated from circa 2008 just a few years after the libvirt project started. We have grown alot of content since that time, but the overall styling and layout of the libvirt website has not substantially changed. Compared to websites for more recently launched projects, libvirt was starting to look rather outdated. So I spent a little time to come up with a new design for the libvirt website to bring it into the modern era. There were two core aspects to the new design, simplify the layout and navigation, and implement new branding.

From the layout / navigation POV we have killed the massive expanding menu that was on the left hand side of every page. It was not serving its purpose very effectively since it was requiring far too many clicks & page loads to access some of the most frequently needed content. The front page now has direct links to key pieces of content (as identified from our web access stats), while the rest of the pages are directly visible in a flat menu on the “docs” page. The download page has been overhauled to recognise the fact that libvirt is shipping more than just the core C library – we have language bindings, object model mappings, docs and test suites. Also new is a page directly targeting new contributors with information about how to get involved in the project and the kind of help we’re looking for. The final notable change is used of some jquery magic to pull in a feed of blog posts to the site front page.

From the branding POV, we have taken the opportunity to re-create the project logo. We sadly lost the original master vector artwork used to produce the libvirt logo eons ago, so only had a png file of it in certain resolutions. When creating docbook content, we did have a new SVG created that was intended to mirror the original logo, but it was quite crudely drawn. None the less it was a useful basis to start from to create new master logo graphics. As a result we now have an attractively rendered new logo for the project, available in two variants – a standard square(-ish) format

and in a horizontal banner format

With the new logo prepared, we took the colour palette and font used in the graphic and applied both to the main website content, bringing together a consistent style.

Libvirt website v1 (2006-2008)

Libvirt website v2 (2008-2016)

Libvirt website v3 (2016-)