[Actionchix] State of the new website

[chris]

On Sun, 2006-06-25 at 08:36 +1000, Mary Gardiner wrote:
> I'm going to send these out fortnightly I hope, so that this project
> doesn't slowly disappear. Since I'm loosely coordinating it, it will
> invite comment from others.
> 
> 1. Move to new server
> 
> Complete as far as the website goes, I believe.
> 
> 2. Restructure of website for more consistent semantics as far as "what
>    goes in which section?"
Do you mean the information architecture?

http://mosshead.com/projects/linuxchix/files/linuxchixIA-2.pdf is the
information architecture work that I submitted in May. 

> 
> 3. Cleanup of HTML
> 
> I really don't know the status of this work, I think it may have been
> waiting on 2. Any comment?

I've done some work on this. However, I question the usefulness of
re-developing the old site and then turning around and developing the
new site (if there is to be one). 

The old site with it's current inconsistent architecture is more work to
develop than the new site will be with a consistent architecture. So,
it's not even very rewarding to do twice the work on the old site when
we could just build the new site once and be done with it ... and have
something that looks decent too.

> 4. Move content to Plone
> 
> I believe this is waiting on the work in 2, any comment?
> 
technically, the site is already in plone, it just needs stylesheets,
content types and a bunch of extra templates to maintain it's
inconsistencies. 

> 5. Redesign
> 
> We only ever had one official entry to our design competition, by Chris.
and Amy who is on these lists, but not very vocal.


> To be honest, my feeling is that therefore, the redesign contest was a
> failure. What I am currently tempted to do is:
>  - wait until the move to Plone is complete
>  - task a single chick or a small team thereof with simply implementing
>    a design of their choice
> 
> How I will choose said chick or team is sadly unclear.
> 

Amy and I put a lot of energy/time into wrapping our heads around the
architecture, page layout and design of the Linuxchix site, however we
never did receive any feedback. If everybody really hates it we'd like
to know. 

Considering that we have spent a good deal of time getting into the
head-space of the project, I propose that we work with the design and
architecture that was submitted and people provide feedback on what does
and doesn't work.

It's still available at: 
http://mosshead.com/projects/linuxchix/

Looking at the design 6 weeks later, there are, of course, things that I
would change, in particular, I'd remove the News clipart that we threw
in at the last minute, etc.

chris (and amy)