Website Redesign/2010

= June 2010 Notes =

As of 2010-01 new (community) site in progress here: http://community.okfn.org/

Material

 * Mockups from Clara
 * Top of page project stripsa
 * Use Cases

Main Site

 * Overview - the overview "diagram"
 * Projects and Working Groups (2010-06: separate in wiki atm)
 * probably just have a summary page listing main active projects?
 * Noticeboard
 * Contact
 * Member/Participant system/pages (2010-06: will be separate in wiki atm)
 * Just a placeholder pointing to wiki
 * Blog and Wiki
 * separate sites atm. May integrate blog going forward but that is phase II

Phase I: 2010-06

 * New look and feel
 * Front page
 * Replicate all pages from existing site (can automate this)

Things to do or think about:
Answers to questions below:


 * Calendar: Defer (phase II)
 * Sidebar: do it like mockup (just twitter plus list items) atm. Keep it simple
 * Footer: like scraperwiki footer - do it same colour as top (and just put some sample content in e.g. footer info from current okfn.org)
 * blog merge: probably but phase II
 * For carousel let's just take 3 at the moment: CKAN, WDMMG, open shakespeare. Images for all of these, see http://m.okfn.org/files/talks/media/

Things to decide:

 * Calendar (2 options)

stefie
 * Content for Sidebar/ Footer & what goes where
 * Tagcloud with tags or projects or categories or …?
 * Twitter-Feed
 * Credits/ Imprint
 * Links to other okfn websites (Wiki/ Blog/ Mailinglists/ Blog….)
 * Links to okfn on social networks like flickr/ twitter…. (i would use icons)
 * calendar overview/ upcoming events
 * anything else…?
 * merge the old blog & the new website? yes/no?
 * I would say yes, because:
 * easier to maintain if both sites are running on the same installation
 * it's both wordpress anyways
 * we could even keep the subdomain blog.okfn.org for it
 * which projects shall be displayed on the frontpage (jquery carrousel) (only the ones with a website or all??)

To-Do's (technically)

 * design
 * plugins & javascript/ jquery
 * mod_rewrite? (still not sure that it's there….i get an error message when i try to configure the multiple sites option in wp3…)

To-Do's (content)

 * short description of all projects (text frontpage)
 * Images to all projects
 * move content from old site to new site
 * (move blog content?)

Think about….

 * I would start with concrete idea in the beginning, no puzzling, cause this will be way more work in the end
 * different site areas of the site for easier orientation /usability (eg. different templates/ color schemes for blog pages/ general pages/ projects/ working groups)

What's Bad Currently

 * No connection to members/community
 * No noticeboard
 * Design isn't very nice
 * No link to working groups

www.okfn.org
Merge with community.okfn.org?

Split http://www.openknowledgefoundation.org/ from okfn.org?

Profiles
Page at http://community.okfn.org/profile/xxx containing:


 * Name
 * Memberships of projects and workings groups
 * Avatar
 * Other info (irc handle etc)
 * Activity log

Aggregating Activity
http://drupal.org/project/feeds

Implementation Details

 * Migrate to Drupal? - see /Drupal
 * Migrate to Pinax - see /Pinax
 * Integration with blog
 * Wiki can be more 'wikilike'? Currently looks too much like main site.
 * User pages

= Notes from January =

About the design methods

 * Hopefully as design processes are carried out, some tasks and small projects will emerge.
 * Try to keep things manageable, quick wins and longer term, more involved projects.
 * Prefer to talk in terms of user experience than technology. We'll sort out implementation later, make adjustments to design for feasibility.
 * User enquiry (interviews, testing, etc) very important part of the design process. Would like to start talking to people and gathering opinions

Links useful to the redesign

 * Main Web design page Links to other discussions about the redesign
 * Links to content and data recent site activity, community, rss etc that could be pulled onto the front page
 * Use Cases Page Info on current tasks and stories for users of the site, suggested features thus-far

Designs, metaphors
Ideas:
 * Collage
 * Fun, colorful but clean
 * handmade
 * gardens as central metaphor. Instead of incubator, use germinator or greenhouse
 * Danger of making it seem laboured - so guard against that
 * other graphic design print - particularly fulltable, war posters - esp. land army. danger of looking retro, so update somehow.
 * web 2.0 shiny is too dated.
 * real people, physical space
 * emphasis on info. set it in best light.
 * don't overpower projects ID.
 * work with existing logo stamp

Motto/taglines
Tagline should encapsulate what you do. Perhaps need two - one short and snappy, other an explanation, more a mission statement.
 * From sonnets to statistics, genes to geodata.
 * Promoting Open Knowledge in a Digital Age

Clara's notes from 9 January 2010
- Meeting with Jonathan, Rufus
 * Aid the discovery of OKF projects
 * Way of linking projects together, make OKF more visible. Many visitors to a project don’t know of other projects supported by OKF that they might find interesting.
 * Link of projects with main OKF site – create top header that doesn't detract from particular identity of project. Strip, or linked logo in current project header. Global links property of OKF and consistent between projects, and branded OKF
 * Benefits:
 * projects retain branding autonomy while under banner of OKF
 * Reasonably easy to execute for each project
 * No restructuring of header needed
 * Supports elastic or fixed layout as its independent of header
 * Disadvantages:
 * Need to involve every project, including orphaned projects
 * Aid the discovery of similar projects or projects that would help this project?
 * Old skool Web rings based on tags and categories?
 * OKF as a destination
 * Distill purpose for the website, why people go there, or will go there, and what they are trying to do. Refer to Use Cases Page
 * Find ways to support discovery of content/projects – latest activity, featured content, community activity
 * Better visibility and use of tags and categories for projects, for future support for browsing and discovery for casual visitors or ones looking for info.
 * Projects should have some associated data that can be used on their project/project page and the OKF home page or listings to support discovery
 * New navigation, make it easier to find your way around on the site
 * OKF should have a presence, and identity. A recognizable and usable ID
 * Clean up logo to better support resizing Current logo is limited for backgrounds, print, readability on small sizes
 * Basic brand guidelines and style guides
 * Find ways to integrate visually the many technologies that is running on the site
 * Decide central metaphor and language to better place OKF working for public good, positive change – garden, hand-made, community driven, democratic (or egalitarian? anarchic…?).
 * Design should be clean, visually attractive, informative, usable. Not overpower project identities, but work to compliment.
 * OKF as community
 * Centralize and make more visible community aspects of sites
 * Members list that would be updated automatically (not wiki, but DB driven)
 * Members or people pages
 * Avatar that can be set by the user, and used alongside their activities on the sites – gravatar? No image set can be random from 10 OKF member default images
 * Area that they can edit
 * Passively updatable modules – latest activity, projects, work groups
 * Personal editable content, some open, like area for bio, and some strongly codified, like interests, links, bio, location, languages/nationality
 * Wiki as a ‘scratch pad’, a community resource that is completely flexible and open, sometimes taking the place of officially sanctioned project pages (how to integrate with project pages?)
 * Wiki should be associated with look/feel of OKF, but not to be confused with OKF. Currently its not clear when you jump from one to another.
 * Make it clear that you can get involved
 * Path is not through the OKF site directly. Usually through a project.
 * Important to let people know that OKF is run by a community, away from standard idea of ‘foundation’ – of a board etc.