NMC 2.0 Web

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Contents

[edit] Newer Stuff

[edit] Overall Goals (LJ)

1) Our web site must serve 2 audiences with very different needs:

  • an external audience that needs to know what the NMC is and is about (funders , primarily, but also potential attendees of events)-- this function is critical and tied to revenue generation and image making
  • an internal audience that knows who we are at some level, but still has a need to know about us and how they can benefit.

They will be interested in several aspects of their relationship with NMC -- how they can leverage it to advance what they are doing is always going to be of paramount concern to them, so highlighting what they do and who they are is important; helping them easily know how they can plug into or benefit from NMC activities is equally important; ensuring we have effective communication mechanisms built in, feedback loops, and ways for members to build a sense of community will help us to stay relevant.

2) We must model cutting edge web practice as we do this

3) We must model excellent design practice as we do this

We are *not* going to redo the entire site, but rather, make a break with the past, and simply leave old content as the old content. We may tweak the CSS to make it work better, particularly on the 3rd level "workhorse" page, but we do not need to worry about reaching back to old pages.

We will draw a line in the sand and move forward with a new vision based on the concepts of:

  • automated content flow wherever possible
  • integration of social networking tools wherever possible (tags, user contributions)

[edit] Requirements Gathering Area

This is the place to capture specific ideas on what we want to do with the new website.

[edit] Sites With Design Ideas We Might "Borrow"

Are there web sites we should look to for ideas to use? Navigation elements? Design elements?

[edit] What Works Well for Current Web Site

  • Consistent design from page to page
  • Good color scheme
  • Branding
  • recognition and familiarity with repeat users
  • "random" ness of the small image icons


[edit] What Does Not Work Well for Current Web Site

  • Small font size hard on eyes and does not resize for accessibility
  • Beyond images, most contact static
  • No RSS feeds
  • Atmoz search engine (does it work well?)
  • Grid layout gives boxy look
  • Bright colors- orange and light blue links on small text are hard to see. Aim to use better color coding for major site theming?
  • fixed size does not use all of window space for larger monitors and results in pages not dense with information (in a Tufte sense)
  • Random images represent projects; there is not much that represent "people"
  • Gallery is not searchable/browsable
  • Pages are all manually edited, and we have a sprawling directory of content
  • HTML tables used for controlling layout; was state of the art in 1999 but should be Web Standard design now (CSS 2.0 , XHTML compliance?
  • Needs better separation of content form formatting
  • Needs print style CSS
  • Needs robots exclusion rule for directories that should not be indexed by search engines
  • Accesiblity issues (forms need labels)
  • No links for contact or feedback form
  • Participants for events must complete full contact/bio content for each event
  • Too many "click here" type links- hypertext needs to be contextual

[edit] Ideas / Suggestions

  • No need for complete design overhaul; current design elements (colors) can be recast into new CSS design
  • Move content to a management system such as Drupal or use Wordpress for editing and content management. This would gain in features of full featured search, coments/forums, user customization, collaborative content creation, RSS feeds, aggregators, categorization, and move all editing to a WYSIWIG editor.
    • Proceeding with R&D using Drupal, first as local prototype on Alan laptop, than on a new NMC server for web development
  • Incorporate some sort of web calendar system (Google? RSSCalendar?) Note: Google Calendar working great for NMC Campus project
  • Created robots.txt file at root level of server- edit to add additional restricked directories
  • Sign up for Google Public Service Search free for non profits, that tells Google to index site and allows us to use Google search interface (?? Drupal's search should be sufficient)
  • Ideas for Members Area (moved to WebMembers)
  • rethink over-all structure, create specific community areas

(RS) I put up a sample drawing (pdf) of a layout for an "at a glance" page that is based on our core competencies matrix. Each of the blue things would be a link; I don't know if it's possible, but if there's a way to dynamically populate this page by tagging other pages with a short title, an initiative, and a column (or more than one, as appropriate) that would be waaaay cool. This would give people a quick idea of what we are working on, and what we have worked on in the past. The first two on the drawing are current and the last is retired.

[edit] Timeline

  • June 8-10 (Summer Conference) use invited breakfast meetings with selected NMC Directors (convening to discuss our Fall Survey) to also solicit input on ideas for Members area. Also, invited lunch meeting with corporate partners to get their input.
this was way too ambitious!

  • June - investigate Scuttle, Aggrssive for web resource management
  • mid July - Post draft for members site (need to coordinate logins with NMC database)
  • mid August - Post as beta a copy of the new main site with all pertinant upcoming event and project info available.
  • mid September - announce site publicly


A different strategy, and a unique way to develop this incrementally, with the community, not for community -- we develop and allow the web public to peek over our shoulders and provide input, comments as the site is developed:

  • mid September- create a stand alone Drupal blog site that is used to document the progress. "Peeking through the fence"
  • build in a basic prototype site at http://www.nmc.org/2.0/ that can be viewed. As a start, it will not be formatted beyond the basic templates as we develop the information architecture. Early candidates for new web presence:
    • Marcus Project
    • Horizon Project
    • MacArthur Project
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