Frontend Feature Enhancements

[Eswaramuthu]

I am Eswaramuthu M. I am currently working on to become a contributor in Google Summer of Code 2026. On working on with the official website of neuroinformatics, I came across a few issues in the frontend. The issues that I found are

1. Issue 1: There are two "ABOUT US " button in the main page where the "ABOUT US" button in the footer can be removed.

2. Issue 2: A separate "Contact us" section can be created in the footer of the website so that the website looks professional.
3. Issue 3: Social media links in the navbar can be added in the contact us section which will be created in the issue 2
4. Issue 4: Alignment in the Navbar needs to be improved.

These are the issues that need to be solved on the website.

Thank you.

[bhanushaliparthhitesh]

@adamltyson , hey
I would like to work on resolving the listed frontend issues. My approach would be as follows:
Issue 1: Review the existing footer navigation logic in the Sphinx theme setup and remove the redundant “About Us” link while keeping the primary navigation intact.
Issue 2: Design and add a dedicated “Contact Us” section in the footer using the existing theme structure to maintain consistency with the current design.
Issue 3: Move the social media links from the navbar into the newly created Contact Us section to reduce navbar clutter and follow standard UI/UX practices.
Issue 4: Improve navbar alignment and spacing using responsive CSS adjustments to ensure better visual balance across different screen sizes.
I will ensure that all changes are minimal, well-documented, and aligned with the current design system of the website. I’m happy to submit a PR for review once approved.

Looking forward to your feedback.

[adamltyson]

Hey @bhanushaliparthhitesh could you raise a PR for this? One thing we're very keen on is to reduce the maintainance burden of the website (we have many to look after!), so ideally the sphinx customisation would be kept to a minimum. Thanks!

[bhanushaliparthhitesh]

Hey @adamltyson, I will address these frontend issues with minimal Sphinx customization and will raise separate PRs for each issue shortly so they can be reviewed independently.

[bhanushaliparthhitesh]

@adamltyson , I wanted to discuss whether Issue-1 (duplicate “About Us” in the navbar and footer) is something we should treat as an actual issue.

From my understanding of common UX patterns, having important links like “About Us” in both the header and footer is fairly standard and often intentional. It helps users who scroll to the bottom, improves mobile usability, and supports accessibility use cases.

Because of that, I personally don’t see the duplication itself as a problem, unless there’s specific user feedback, accessibility concerns, or project guidelines indicating that this causes confusion or maintenance issues.

It might be more of an organization or layout discussion rather than something that needs to be fixed by removing one of the links. Happy to hear other opinions and align with what maintainers prefer.

[adamltyson]

I think the duplication isn't an issue. The only issue, and it's very minor is that the "about us" is only there because it's the next page, not because we specified it.

this is a very minor issue, but I suppose it may be useful to explicitly choose what we put in the footer (if anything). Not sure if anyone @neuroinformatics-unit/neuroinformatics-core has any input?

[adamltyson]

Reopening as the issue isn't fully completed. As we have have lots of repos that will eventually need to be updated, we have decided to gradually add these changes to our cookiecutter template, and we will roll them out to all repos once we're happy with the final version. See #162 for an example.

I will now transfer this issue to the cookiecutter repo.