[Actionchix] State of the new website

[Val Henson]

On 6/24/06, chris <lists at semioticpixels.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 2006-06-25 at 08:36 +1000, Mary Gardiner wrote:
>
> > 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).

I agree, I don't think we should do a generic "Cleanup HTML" on the
old site.  It's clear we're going to have to migrate by hand each
piece we care about (with some automation, perhaps).

> > 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.

What does this mean?  It sounds like you are answering the question as
asked, instead of telling us what you think we should do.  What do you
think is the best next step here?

> > 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/

Just a quick note: I never looked at this in detail because I couldn't
understand what most of the text on this page meant.  For example, I
don't know what "comps" are - but I do know what "samples" are.  It's
confusing for people who aren't already familiar with the jargon of
web publishing (or whatever this comes from).

I like the way you organized the web site (I'm afraid I didn't
understand what "information architecture" meant either until I read
the document).  One concern I have is that there appear to be several
time-sensitive pages or divisions in the architecture.  I realize this
reflects the current web site.  What I would like to see is, instead
of "Current courses" and "Past courses", some sort of way to figure
quickly what the date of the last lesson was.  This naturally ages
things into the past.  Courses never end, they just kind of die away
slowly, and no one wants to say "This is the last lesson, I will never
do another one."  Chix @ conferences is another page that should go
away and be replaced with emails to announce at linuxchix.org. (Note that
the first and last entry are for 2004.)

I'm afraid I don't particularly like the new web site design (under
the link to "comps").  Like Akk, I think the web standard of
navigation links on the left sidebar makes sense.  Having two sidebars
shrinks down available page real estate for content; add the top side
bar and we're getting really low bandwidth.  I also never liked
navigation bars across the top.  I don't like the color; yellow of any
shade is not high on my list of great colors on my computer screen.
Combine that with the rising Sun version of the tuxroboto logo and it
makes me wince.

I really want to see a low-graphics, low-overhead, extremely simple
3-color web site in soothing colors.  Please don't make me learn CSS
just to submit a clean, Google-style, navigation-bar-on-left web site
design.

For one method of doing nested navigation that keeps all the
navigation on the left sidebar, see:

http://www.bitkeeper.com/Sales.html

This site still has two extra navigation bars, but at least they are
entirely redundant to the information in the left-hand sidebar.  I
also really like the colors.

-VAL