New Forest website beta testing

milk · **Posted:** Tue Mar 17, 2009 12:37 am

you can find The Forest's new website up at http://theforest.org.uk/drupal-6.9/. hopefully it will be going live soon, so please have a look and comment here on things you think need added or changed, or better yet, register and ask myself to give you permissions and i'll show you how to add and change things. stuff to come includes fixing the problems with the theme, in-depth forest info and history, online shop, forest music radio, image gallery and video pages, news and events plus more. thanks.

Gandhi · **Posted:** Tue Mar 17, 2009 9:33 am

Nice job, so much clearer and cleaner. A gold star for you sir!

Duncan · **Joined:** Sun Apr 10, 2005 7:22 pm **Posts:** 405

First off, I'll qualify that I'm fussy so and so. And especially if I think something is good I'll be even more so, so it can be perfect. I should also get sussed as to how fix stuff myself, but I haven't yet.

For starters :

The neon pink, needs to tone down to something more like Chris' off red.

The small text is far too small, and needs a border between it and the images.

Have doubts about a black background, generally makes it less readable, especially for people with subpar vision. Worth consulting someone who knows about accessibility.

The layout is very good indeed.

martinmckenna · **Posted:** Tue Mar 17, 2009 11:57 am

on the accessibility issue i agree it may be hard to read for some . is there a way to change the theme to plain text if someone needs it .

i like the ff00ff !

martin

martinmckenna · **Posted:** Tue Mar 17, 2009 12:09 pm

yes we do need borders round the images . you can input a boarder round the images but it doesn't do anything .

also Automatic alias if switched off , comes back on again if you reedit the page . this is a pain . the automatic alias are a bit messy and i would like to keep all the tk ones clean . eg totalkusnt , tksubmissions ect . it only takes someone not to know this and page address is changed .

martin

rammy · **Joined:** Tue Mar 17, 2009 12:03 pm **Posts:** 3

Hi There,
I'm not 100% sure of the website it looks a cross between an ITN news website and a rock site, sort of.

thehemulen · **Posted:** Fri Mar 20, 2009 10:22 am

Quote:

Have doubts about a black background

i was told by a scientist friend (must be true then eh!??) that black backgrounds on websites use significantly less energy. hence this supposedly evironmentally friendly alternative to google: http://us.znout.org/index.php?color=black

funny, when i try to login to drupal it tells me

Quote:

Sorry, dirk is not recognized as a user name or an e-mail address.

although i know i had an account set up under this name b4 (ditto my email address.) do i need to register again?
anyway, its coming along nice and i look 4ward to help update content. :arrow:

milk · **Posted:** Fri Mar 20, 2009 11:34 am

thehemulen wrote:

i was told by a scientist friend (must be true then eh!??) that black backgrounds on websites use significantly less energy. hence this supposedly evironmentally friendly alternative to google: http://us.znout.org/index.php?color=black

IIRC this is only true of CRT screens. LCD screens have always on light and just block off what should be darker or another colour.

Quote:

do i need to register again?
anyway, its coming along nice and i look 4ward to help update content. :arrow:

yes, fraid so, you registered for the older drupal site.

thehemulen · **Posted:** Fri Mar 20, 2009 12:35 pm

fair dos. while i personally like the black if it is an issue for people with subpar vision we should definately rethink.

ok i signed up again for the new drupal. user: thehemulen - milk, can you authorise me to access/update e.g. the forest records page etc...?

milk · **Posted:** Fri Mar 20, 2009 1:01 pm

sorted.

who is mkop?

thehemulen · **Posted:** Fri Mar 20, 2009 1:05 pm

it still tells me "You are not authorized to access this page." http://theforest.org.uk/drupal-6.9/free ... 520Records ?

milk · **Posted:** Fri Mar 20, 2009 1:29 pm

ah, the links were fucked up as the text had been straight copied from the old site.

it's now http://theforest.org.uk/drupal-6.9/forestrecords (plus the link from info has been changed. i'm gonna remove the [[links like this]] format so as to keep the wiki section separate from the general info soon, focusing on the backend right now though)

neil · **Joined:** Mon Jan 22, 2007 5:50 pm **Posts:** 944

Milk, what more do you need? This has been taking forever....

milk · **Posted:** Tue May 26, 2009 8:26 pm

the latest news is that mike and I met up last week to work on a few problems with the site. we got an image resize script permissions issue fixed with some help from barnabas but this led to a new issue; http://theforest.org.uk/drupal-6.9/ currently gives a blank screen which really stumped us. i set up a second drupal installation at http://theforest.org.uk/drupal which gives the same problem, which would suggest it's not a permissions issue but rather something to do with the php configuration. mike was going to e-mail barnabas about turning on the php debug output so he could have an in-depth look at what's going wrong, though i don't know if he's had any time or luck in that yet.

neil · **Joined:** Mon Jan 22, 2007 5:50 pm **Posts:** 944

Milk, is there anything other than Drupal 6.9 that can be used without having to redo all the work that's been done so far?

We need something that's compatible!

Are you able to give more of an overview of why there are so many compatibility issues?

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Sat May 30, 2009 12:03 pm

Drupal 6.9 was working fine except for a few things. I discovered that the problem with image resizing was due to some file permissions that had been accidentally set to "nobody".

Barnabas changed them for us but not long after, the fully functioning site just started returning the white page after having previously worked fine.

neil · **Joined:** Mon Jan 22, 2007 5:50 pm **Posts:** 944

Maybe I'm being dumb, but I can't seem to find a list of server requirements on the Drupal site. It seems like a stupid question, but does our server meet the necessities?

If so, there's a support forum. Could it be of any use? Already tried?
http://drupal.org/forum

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Sun May 31, 2009 5:09 am

ChaoticReality wrote:

Drupal 6.9 was working fine except for a few things.

Our server supports it. I think a PHP upgrade may have been the issue and am working with Barnabas to confirm and see if we can rectify it.

chombee · **Joined:** Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:01 pm **Posts:** 1327

The forest site is really in need of new life, things like http://oldhatbooks.wordpress.com/ (just beautiful, the simplicity! and it's hosted on wordpress.cm so they don't need to do all the work themselves), http://www.forestfringe.co.uk/, http://resonancefm.com/ and http://www.thebowery.org.uk/ are putting us to shame right now.

For this new site, same as Duncan I think overall it looks pretty good and has a lot of promise but I'm picky so I'll criticise.

I think we need a different font, this is very important, I think it needs to be bigger, have more white space, be a different colour, in general it needs to stand out and be easy to read. Look at the old hat books theme. Grey on black and a small font size might not be the best approach!

The other major thing for me is the info page. It starts with a bullet point list of our charitable aims. Really? It's not inspiring. I think there's too much info and way too much text on there. For example I don't think our charitable aims and constitution need to be on the site at all. A Forest in The City is a really neat little youtube documentary about the forest. Isn't that a much better way to introduce us? It's visual, it's video! Stick that on the front page or at the top of the Info page, then get Ryan or someone to write a few inspirational paragraphs and follow it up with a bunch of good, big photos.

More minor stuff:

In general more big photos and less text would help a lot.

I think the administrators login form should definitely not be the first element after the title bar on the front page! There is already one at the bottom of the page, so just get rid of the one at the top. The one at the bottom should be smaller too. I'm guessing that's only for people who have a password and not for most people to see or use, so hide it away.

There are various broken links and broken syntax showing through but I'm guessing you know about that.

Word of warning: don't recreate the labyrinthine maze that is the current site! I worry that with Drupal's extensive features we may be tempted down that route, it is already going some way towards it with the info page which is really long and links to a huge number of other pages (many of them broken links). There is a lot of information that you could put into a forest website, but I don't think all the info that's there already is necessary, there more pages you make the more inevitable it becomes that they will go stale and out of date over time.

I honestly think the 'Forest Collective' stuff should get the chop, or be replaced with a little list of links to the individual sites of our members and friends, maybe in a sidebar. We don't need to provide websites or blogs to individuals or groups, anyone can go to wordpress.com or any number of other sites and make one in five minutes.

About 'Visuals', I don't think it's a good idea to have a static page to hold an image gallery and videos. Don't put all our images on one page, put them all over the site. The images and videos are what look best so they should be right there on the front page.
We can post new photos and videos to the blog as they come along, right? And we can have a 'visuals' blog category that people can click on if they want to browse all the photos and visuals we've posted.

In general I think there's a lot of promise here, and I can see that a lot of good work has gone into this. Well done!

ravanwin · **Posted:** Sun Jul 12, 2009 2:11 pm

good points. can they be considered?

neil · **Joined:** Mon Jan 22, 2007 5:50 pm **Posts:** 944

Yes, these are good points. I totally agree.

chombee wrote:

I think the administrators login form should definitely not be the first element after the title bar on the front page! There is already one at the bottom of the page, so just get rid of the one at the top. The one at the bottom should be smaller too. I'm guessing that's only for people who have a password and not for most people to see or use, so hide it away.

No question about this. It shouldn't be one of the first things you see when you load up the page. If it's relocated somewhere less prominent, those who need to use it will know where to find it. If people need to be encouraged to use it, this can be done in another way, without detracting from the visual impact of the front page.

Also, the main headline needs to be changed from this:
The Forest | Café and Arts Space | 3 Bristo Place, Edinburgh

It's too matter of fact and it's information that most visitors to the site will either already know, or don't need to know. But what should that front page title read instead?

neil · **Joined:** Mon Jan 22, 2007 5:50 pm **Posts:** 944

neil wrote:

Also, the main headline needs to be changed from this:
The Forest | Café and Arts Space | 3 Bristo Place, Edinburgh

It's too matter of fact and it's information that most visitors to the site will either already know, or don't need to know. But what should that front page title read instead?

Answering my own question, it might be good to just put random stuff in this field and change it regularly, instead of having the same boring title come up every time.

Also, Milk check out the screenshot below. See the word Array in there? You seeing that when you load up the page? It's always there for me lately...

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Sun Jul 12, 2009 6:02 pm

Hmm. I put that bit in there (I think) when I was testing something but I thought I'd removed it.
I will have a look when I get a second.

chombee/neil: The original plan for the login was to have it in the pink header bar under the search box. The reason it is where it is at the minute is that was the closest we could get at 6am when we were both falling asleep and couldn't fuck around with templates too much.

milk · **Posted:** Fri Jul 17, 2009 7:25 am

thoughts on the theme - we can certainly tweak the font to see what works best for readability. the plan is still to have multiple themes with the most liked as the default.

an introduction video would be fantastic (as would good up-to-date photos, both of which i've been asking for since i started the website endeavour

. while the Forest In The City video will do for now, we really need to do something of our own that's scripted and better produced. does anyone know what came of Olivier's project?

issues relating to content - yes, the navigation flow needs to change. this is something that will be looked at and debated soon. the basic info i just coped from the old site, so a new introduction/etc would be greatly welcomed.

on the login fields - i think hiding it away would be a bad idea by making it seem as if access to adding content is something only privileged volunteers can do. an aim to an uncluttered look is certainly something i'm striving for (as mike notes, the plan is to move them below the search box), but this is certainly still workable with a login box present in the header.

milk · **Posted:** Fri Jul 17, 2009 7:28 am

the array thing was me, has been sorted.

oh, and the new site is live. i'll be monitoring the top 404s and creating redirects to existing pages. the old site can be found here. i've a full backup of the server files on my machine and will be pruning unused directories and eventually merging content back into the new site as well as getting the, like, 3/4 older forest websites that exist in various states on the server accessible for posterity.

milk · **Posted:** Fri Jul 17, 2009 7:33 am

if anyone, anyone at all, wants to add, amend or refactor content, register and give me a private message and i'll give you content editor permissions.

wanna post news entries? register. events? register. i shall be laying on guilt trips far harsher than i do over people using the bb when they organise an event in the forest and don't post it on the new site, thus shooting the forest in the foot. have a nice day!

p.s. any issues, please feel free to get back to me in some form or other.

neil · **Joined:** Mon Jan 22, 2007 5:50 pm **Posts:** 944

Great that it's live at last!! Milk, you are a god.

milk wrote:

on the login fields - i think hiding it away would be a bad idea by making it seem as if access to adding content is something only privileged volunteers can do.

I wouldn't worry about that. Let's be honest, adding content is something that only volunteers can do, and only the ones that have been given the appropriate privileges. You can pretend, for whatever reason, that it's not something only privileged volunteers can do, but that is the way it is and that's the only way it can be. Believe me, you do not want to encourage every random numpty who looks at the website to contribute to it.

neil · **Joined:** Mon Jan 22, 2007 5:50 pm **Posts:** 944

milk wrote:

i'll be monitoring the top 404s and creating redirects to existing pages.

You can also use a thing like this to check for broken links. There are loads, but probably the most important one to fix is the Events one (http://theforest.org.uk/calendar), which returns "page not found".

thehemulen · **Posted:** Sun Jul 19, 2009 3:24 pm

yikes! i just updated my section of the forest site and i see it appears as "news" on the frontpage: not sure this is cool/desired...anyway we can remove it from there?

think its great that the new site is up. a shame though as it appears all the copy/paste of "forest records" artist-infos that a did b4 has been lost (and now i can find the old pages anymore - are they gone forever or can i still retrieve that info somewhere?...)

fuck on the webWG! big up and liebe grüße, Drock

thehemulen · **Posted:** Sun Jul 19, 2009 3:44 pm

pardon! always helps to read properly first...i see the link to old site now and will transfer certain infos from there. actually maybe not - seems i can only see the start page of the old site, no deeps links...

here are some recent pics that Pogo's been taking http://www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=ho ... 1065514257 btw have you Milk or others in the web WG met Pogo while he's been around? he did the old site and might be able to help with a player for forest radio if we havent decided on anything there.

i like the idea of multiple themes - maybe that could be a permanent thing so people can change the look if they get bored...? personally i like the black background with pink trim.

milk · **Posted:** Mon Jul 20, 2009 3:59 am

hmm, strange, at least some of the content beyond the front page was working with the new old site when i made the new one live, shall look into that. nothing's lost, just inaccessible atm.

there's a whole load of stuff on the old new site though.

the jukebox and a gallery section are the next big things to get added. i missed pogo when he was around but it would be great to use his pics if he doesn't mind.

the themes will eventually be switchable using something like icons or a drop down menu. there have been a couple of volunteers interested, but i haven't heard from them in a while.. will give them a poke via e-mail soon.

thehemulen · **Posted:** Mon Jul 20, 2009 3:58 pm

of course... the old new site! why didnt i think of that?!

ill get copy pasting...

martinmckenna · **Posted:** Tue Jul 21, 2009 9:56 am

well done to those involved in getting the web site ready .

One thing i have notice , why are events being posted in news section . this should really just be for news and all events should be in the events section . It would be good to see how the events section is going to function .

martin

thehemulen · **Posted:** Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:23 pm

copied what forest records info i could from the old/new site. i see all these posts also/still appear on the frontpage/news....
also i dont see a way to edit the posts i made. thats probably just me being dim though: will give it a closer look.
i love that spectrum line! and the way certain headers change colour on mouseover...

thehemulen · **Posted:** Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:28 pm

SORRY! this thing with all posts appearing on the front page under news is slightly demented. better get it fixed quick or im likely to bring forests good name into ill repute...!

neil · **Joined:** Mon Jan 22, 2007 5:50 pm **Posts:** 944

Ok, I deleted the blog thing from the front page.

This poses a couple of questions:

1. Do we want to support people to maintain blogs on the site? I would suggest no, as most blogs are full of complete & utter twat, and they are rarely updated after the first couple of entries.

2. If we do have blogs, should the entries be posted direct to the from page? Answer = no.

I would not rule out blogs altogether, but they should exist for a reason, and that reason should be a good one. We should also have a certain amount of faith in the blogger to not be a nob before we give them permission to blog. The content of the blog should be highly good & relevant if the posts are to go on the front page.

Btw, Dirk I am not trying to imply anything about your good self! I realise you were just doing a simple Hello World.

chombee · **Joined:** Thu Apr 20, 2006 2:01 pm **Posts:** 1327

Quote:

1. Do we want to support people to maintain blogs on the site?

No. What we should do is maintain a list of links to sites of individuals and groups that are involved at the forest. Pruning the list and finding new stuff to add to it should be a volunteer role for a specific person(s), don't let it go stale. In a sidebar or on its own page. We could even use feeds to show a preview of the latest posts to these sites, but that isn't necessary.

In general the old site probably had a lot of stuff that should get the chop, not be transferred to the new site.

If someone wants a blog they can get one from wordpress.com or many other places for free, takes 5 mins, then they can ask us to link to them, they will get better features than we can offer, professional support, their own choice of theme and configuration, etc., and we will not have to take on the work of supporting and maintaining them. This is how the internet works, it is very quick, cheap and easy for individuals to get their own site. People don't just have pages on a site that they share.

It already happened anyway, all these have their own sites now: Ryan, Pogo, drama group, old hat books, probably a bunch of others. TK would certainly benefit from something like a wordpress or tumblr blog.

We should keep the forest site small and simple, chop away all that we can, reduce the amount of work needed to maintain it! (And also make it easier for visitors to comprehend.)

Also, you know, why would someone want a page on the forest? Sure they do stuff at the forest, but that's probably not all they do, they are not merely a part of the forest, they can have their own site! Everyone can have their own theme and way of doing things, then we'll all just link to each other. It will be amazing!

milk · **Posted:** Fri Jul 24, 2009 5:46 am

i forgot to disable the Story content type (which had it's sefault set to publish to the front page.

to post info pages, plz use the Page content type

an aggregation of external foresty peeps blogs/news (anything that outputs stuff in RSS format) would be good, maybe on a revamped Collective (or other term?) page.

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Wed Oct 14, 2009 2:04 pm

milk wrote:

the old site can be found here.

No it can't. I just tried to look up info on hall prices for someone. Couldn't find any info on the new site so I used the link at aecalendar and added the appropriate /old/. When this didn't work I tried your link above and got a 404.

It would be nice if the old site was still usable, just incase info is missing from the new site (like hall details).

ChaoticReality · **Posted:** Wed Oct 14, 2009 2:44 pm

Ok, I found the info on the new site. Buried at the bottom of the Info page on a link that doesn't actually look like a link.

If I had that much difficulty finding the info on the hall info, what are the chances someone wanting to book the hall will get frustrated and give up? Pretty high, I'd think.

Maybe we can add Hall to the top menubar?

martinmckenna · **Posted:** Wed Oct 14, 2009 3:01 pm

the aggregation of the blogs would be cool . Its possible the thing that drupal can do better than a wordpress blog . ive tried with mines to aggregate feed with not much success .

i guess each feed could have a category . with some being reposted on the front page eg events. i cant help feel we double handle information . having to re input events on more than one site .

the facebook events on ical , have all the info in them . whereas our ical feed only has the title ,date etc . any way to improve on this .

martin

milk · **Posted:** Wed Oct 14, 2009 5:02 pm

pogo moved the old site to http://theforest.org.uk/old_site a couple of weeks ago and i haven't taken the time so far to mention it. no, wait..

i'd like to put a link to the Bristo Hall info on the landing page at the top at some point soon

also, getting the aggregation working would be sweet. and i can look at getting more info in the ical feed.

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