Forest BB

Sat 24th November.

2 til 4.

How to use the website.
Updating and improving.
Using Joomla.

See ya there

_________________
the more you think, the more you stink

Quick minutes...

Mr Gaz, Mr Swith, Mr Milk, Mr Ryan

Identified the following issues:
Website is slow to load. Are there too many components on the front page?
Layout is too busy. Could it be simpler?
The bottom bar - what is its role?
The top bar - what could it be doing?
Adding a new wiki.
Adding an events box.
'Advertising' banners.
Updating/adding/improving content.
Security.

Solutions/Work to do:
The following components (modules) you normally see on the front page.
1. Advertising Banners
10. Mishmash galleries box
11. Forest records (Radio box)
12. Forest records
13. Top shop - list of records for sale.

We debated if these things were working. They do slow up the page load (hence Pogo's recent new front page). We experimented with load times by temporarily unpublishing these modules. Although the page becomes quicker not having them does make the site looks less special.

A solution would be to utilise the bottom bar more (which currently has 5 boxes) Grow your own, Kunst galleries, art submission, CIA, Radio. This duplicates some of the things in the above components. CIA and Grow your own don't need a box. In addition to this it seems you can't click on these boxes. They don't do anything. We think that redesigning the bottom box would cover the work done by the modules, look good, serve the key functions and make the page load quicker. Perhaps the bottom box could become a left hand side box to fill in the gap potentially left by the modules. Perhaps people don't always get the bottom of a page so a left hand box could be more prominent. Possibly with 5,6,7 key boxes. eg. Contact Us, Events, Mishmash, Radio Player, Shop, TK - you can click and go to those pages.

Also the top bar - currently showing pictures - looks very good. Can we add new ones? Can we make them clickable??

Banner ads. Some/many are out of date. Do we keep the banners or not? They add some value by linking up with our connections.
If we do keep them then someone will have to update and design new ones and unpublish the out of date ones.
Also we should put a post out asking if people want their thing advertised on our site.

Events box.
Wouldn't it be nice if someone could type in the events and then each day there would be a big box on the front page saying what was playing tonight. There is an events application which was on the site before. We put it back as an experiment but it doesn't serve that function well. Someone will work out the best way to make something like this work properly.

Wiki.
Milk suggested adding a wiki page to the site. Can this be merged with Swithun's sustainability one from before?

Security.
Swith was horrified to see a box unticked that should really be ticked.
So we ticked a box under global configuration about permissions.
This should make the site more secure.

Content.
Aware that content should be updated when necessary. More people involved should help with this, esp. events and front page.

Swithun has been added as a super-administrator.
Milk has been added as a manager.

They know what they are doing.
We will discuss on the bb what needs to be done before we do anything.

We wish to create an effective web team/working group to fix problems and make improvements.
We need to assign action points for the above tasks...

_________________
the more you think, the more you stink

is it good to have a monthly web meeting until things work better? I think that would be good? what did the gang think?

_________________
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www.ryanvanwinkle.com

Do you want to set up a whole other meeting or do it during behind the scenes?

i've just been through all the ad banners. most work. some are dead and i've unpublished those. there are a couple of dupe entries early on, should those remain? also, bunnybeats has been inactive for over 2 years. keep or remove? here's the basic banner list for anyone interested;

1 The Very - not published, theforest.org.uk article
2 john crave - works
3 forest cafe 1 - self referential, needed?
4 b-lab - non-existant, now unpublished
5 theabdominalshowmen - works, site under construction
6 dawn of the replicants - works
7 asm 2 - dupe of 5, works
8 dawn of the replicants 2 - dupe of 6, works
9 arctic circle - theforest.org.uk article, works
10 Che Camille - works
11 photographii - works
12 Ryan Van Winkle - theforest.org.uk article, works
13 danseizure - theforest.org.uk article, works
14 ras Babi - works
15 brunette on fire - works, last post on May 05, 2007
16 bunnybeats - works, last post on September 17, 2005
17 Ryan Van Winkle 2 - works
18 tuberians - works
19 soutrane - works
20 babytiger - works
21 edinburghguide - works
22 The Truth Rockets - works
23 OSM 1 - works
24 OSM 2 - works
25 gavin cameron - site not active, have unpublished for now

anyone got suggestions for sites to add? i can make banners if required. also, there was a mention of the possibility for a policy requiring linkage reciprocity for sites added at the meeting - thoughts on that?

_________________
hey, if you don't like it, post on the BB (so you can ask about participating for better) | MilkMiruku

re events, we could;

a) install and use a new events addon (of which there are a number available)

b) use some nifty tools (fbCal, iwebcal for joomla) to display the forest events from facebook on the site (this should be workable).

thoughts?

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hey, if you don't like it, post on the BB (so you can ask about participating for better) | MilkMiruku

it would be good to make it so we only had to update ONE thing. At the moment we use FB, Forest Email List, The BB and The Web Site.... it's a bit much. Any consolidation would be awesome.
r

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www.ryanvanwinkle.com

this would be cool , plus some training on how it works . if the peps over at the visual arts group decide that using facebook is a good thing , how can we use it . we have a few promos on at the moment that need better coverage

Bunnybeats Not Dead.
Keep the faith.

_________________
Pep Up The Turmoil

Aye. Don't kill the bunnies.

martin - i can give you a FB lesson and make you admin if you want.

_________________
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www.ryanvanwinkle.com

that would be handy ryan , am sure a heated debate of the virtues of facebook shall ensue over on the visual art forum . we may get over it