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Re: [jox-tech] Re: Site structure




Hi Stefan, all

(Apologies for any formatting pain, I had trouble with my text editor)

Here are my comments and suggestions for the journal site. First, I appreciate all the work Stefan has done; in particular he has put all the ox conference material into the new website, and it looks really great IMHO.

At the same time I am concerned that the journal, while hosted by ox, and obviously connected to ox in many ways, should nonetheless be seen as existing _in its own right_, and specifically have its own visual identity.

So I would advocate having a different layout than the current layout (black title band with a green toolbar sub-band) which is used in the other ox sites.

I had a look around and found some websites that use Plone. 

The FSF: 
http://www.fsf.org/about/

A more commercial scientific magazine: 
http://discovermagazine.com/

This helped me to formulate what I think is needed. So following are some recommendations which I will try to organise as clearly as possible.

COLOR
Ideally the colors should match the logo, in any case be similar to First Monday as discussed, ie red and black.

TITLE
In both above sites I liked it a lot that the title is on a white background. Since our title is very long in my view it should be written like this (font size proportions a bit like Discover magazine):

-title: 
cspp 
(very very big black letters in minuscules – not caps - please)

-subtitle: 
critical studies in peer production aims to open up new perspectives on the implications of peer production for social change  
(very very small red or black letters)

-site map, accessibility, contact: 
should be smaller, higher and more to the right (like Discover)

LOGIN
The title bar should also feature a login button.

BY THE WAY...
Where do the Contact messages go? Sorry if I already asked this.

TOOLBAR
We could try having it in a coloured band like FSF (red?) or without a band like Discover: it is hard for me to decide without seeing: as I am not as technically able as Stefan I am here relying on his goodwill to try different combinations...

LOGO
The logo should be much bigger; it might not fit with the toolbar so may have to go; its colors ideally match that of the font and toolbar...

FRONTPAGE CONTENT
I was wrong to want to have no content at all on the front page; this is what people will see first so it should have the content currently listed under « call ». http://cspp.oekonux.org/call

(Consequently there is no need to have the categories in the middle of the page as we have the toolbar anyway)

PAGE LAYOUT
-Column width
In the two sites cited above the text columns are narrower than what we have : this helps the pages to « breathe » by having more white space on either side of the text column; i think we should also do this.

-Font size
I think the character fonts for the page titles above the dividing lines (like « Frontpage » or « Research ») are too thick; a finer font would look better, see http://discovermagazine.com/2010/oct/30-ways-the-world-could-end

-Dividing line
Like us Discover mag uses a line to separate titles from article content, black dividing lines, also see:
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/oct/30-ways-the-world-could-end
Their line is thicker, which gives more weight to the structure: I would be interested to see if this works well for us.

NAVIGATION
This is in my view not necessary as we already have the toolbar to travel to the different parts of the website, plus the « you are here » field tells people in which subcategory they are. So I would  advocate getting rid of the navigation column.

SITE STRUCTURE
(I will refer to the site map for this)
-Critical Studies in Peer Production (old page, should be deleted)
-cspp_logo.gif  (not necessary)
-Call for submissions (should be called « Home »; needs two subcategories: 
--call for submissions 
--submission guidelines)
-Research 
--Theory stream (all research is theoretical, delete in my view; I will make suggestions later based on CFP categories)
-Debate 
--Activist (sorry, not quite happy with this subcategory either, too vague in my view; same observation as above)
-Reports 
-Journal 
--Peer review 
--People 
--Mailing list 
Perhaps we could have another category: for links to other projects? 
-« Resources »?

COMMENTS
Finally the question of comments has not been addressed. Do we only allow comments by site users who we have registered? Not to mention ratings? Or do we allow anyone to register and comment? This is more than a technical question, I raised it on the main list but no-one responded yet...
This journal allows anyone to register:
http://orange.eserver.org/join_form?came_from=http%3A//orange.eserver.org/issues/6-1/striker.html

WORK/TIME
It would be good to launch the site officially before the different conferences which are happening in mid?-October (Berlin and Spain, plus the Association of Internet Researchers in Sweden) so we can take advantage of these events to seek submissions; do you think that will be possible? 

Once the structure and layout is agreed on I will take on a more active role in terms of site content but at this point it is probably better if the person who knows the most runs things, especially as the site interoperates with other ox sites. Does this sound OK? 

Thanks for raising anything I may have missed or any other concerns.

cheers,

Mathieu 












----- Original Message -----
From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
Date: Monday, September 13, 2010 7:48 pm
Subject: Re: [jox-tech] Re: Site structure
To: journal-tech oekonux.org

Hi all!

3 days ago Stefan Merten wrote:
I started to create the structure outlined on 

 	http://cspp.oekonux.org/scientific-
committee/website/suggested-structure

I moved everything into place now. I made the new frontpage 
design the
frontpage obsoleting the "Under construction" page. I also 
created the
call, research, debate, reports and journal page and sorted the
navigation bar at the top accordingly.

The research, debate and reports page are folders containing
collections. The collections list all content which is in a certain
category.

For this to work I also changed the categories I introduced recently
to better fit the structure. See

	http://cspp.oekonux.org/scientific-committee/website/submission-
categories
for an explanation of the categories. Of course this list is not
complete.

BTW: You also got mail for each change of the categories.

What is needed is that every submission is tagged by exactly one main
category and by at least one sub-category.

From this the question arised what type of side-columns to use for
ordinary pages other than the front page. As far as the 
elements (aka
portlets) concerned we need here I think we need a navigation 
portlet> as the very least. Also a recent changes portlet would 
be nice. The
login portlet is not really needed everywhere and can be removed.

Well, I think I'll just configure things as they seem right to 
me and
then show it to you.

I did this also. Please note that for the real thing you have to
logout. When you are logged in you get some additional portlets.
Basically it is only a navigation portlet in the left column 
while the
right column is clear and thus doesn't take any room.

AFAICS the content is now in place as wanted. The theme question is
still open and the categories need to be completed. When the 
latter is
done additional collections need to be created under research, debate
and reports.


                                        	Grüße

                                        	Stefan

****
Dr Mathieu O'Neil
Adjunct Research Fellow
Australian Demographic and Social Research Institute
College of Arts and Social Science
The Australian National University
email: mathieu.oneil[at]anu.edu.au
web: http://adsri.anu.edu.au/people/visitors/mathieu.php


______________________________
http://www.oekonux.org/journal



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