Rewrite & update the "About" content

[kmpaul]

As mentioned in #115, regarding the new portal landing page, @brian-rose mentioned:

I think the paragraph under the "Project Pythia" heading is too verbose, seeing as it's the first thing people see when they hit the page. I think we can come up something snappier that describes the project in a few short catchphrases, and leave the details to the "About" page.

and further:

The "About" page needs updating to better reflect where we are and where we are aiming with our content.

With the merge of #115, I am moving these suggestions to this issue.

[brian-rose]

As discussed at today's EWG, I will take a stab at these changes in a new PR.

[brian-rose]

Punting this to the NEXT hackathon to be held hopefully in late October.

[r-ford]

Some thoughts on the Pythia site related to this issue:

I think the content (Foundations, Gallery, and future work) would be more accessible if it were immediately visible upon reaching the landing page, instead of first seeing a paragraph and a link to read more about the project.

I remember someone referencing the QuantEcon site before. I think their layout is nice because the header is large and centered, making it an obvious starting point for navigating the site, and all of the links in the header (Home, About, etc.) go to different pages instead of having one long page. You can also see some of the projects without scrolling. In the Pythia site's "Start Learning" section, the Foundations Book and Resource Gallery are linked three times, which seems a bit confusing to me, compared to the simple link + short description on the QuantEcon Projects page.

I think a layout similar to the Foundations site (or desktop Wikipedia) could also work, with a vertical navigation bar.

[brian-rose]

I'll tackle this during today's hackathon.

[brian-rose]

I am re-committing myself (again) to getting this done, and making sure that the link to Pangeo is spelled out on the landing page.

[brian-rose]

Can we close this with the merger of #215, and further landing-page improvements in #227?