IrelandOffline website - Feedback please

damien

Righto, unleash people.

What would you like to see on the website ? What changes are needed ? Comments please.

www.irelandOffline.org is the address

jwt

Can we get rid of the porn spamming comments at the end of articles?????


I know google loves it from a pageranking side but ....

John

dahamsta

I cleaned them all out two days ago and disabled anonymous posting.

adam

cgarvey

damien.m wrote:

What would you like to see on the website ? What changes are needed ? Comments please.

1) Contact info

2) Resource Centre. I think we should start a "Resource Centre" which is a collection of facts and figure to back up any arguments committee or ordinary members make. "There are only X unbundled lines to date, and these are all only by EsatBT" type snippets and/or links to related published articles. As content builds up we can categorise them into company profiles and technology review areas, etc. But when its useful, I can educate myself, and jornalists can do so too.

3) What's On Now / Current Activities. I think we need a Current Activities section, that details what the committee, and any working group is actively working on, so that all members know who is doing what, and that one committee member isn't duplicating the effort of another (unnecessarily, anyway). E.g. "Composing press release in rsponse to recent eircom release that they achieved the world's best company status", or "Sending delgates to government conference on alternative last mile technologies".

4) Less emphasis on news aggregation, and more on what IoffL are doing. The news aggregation is good, and useful, but should not appear to be the emphasis of the organisation... put the collected items one step down. E.g. rather than seeing "NTL Ireland announces €100 million investment in broadband" on the front page what we should be seeing is "IoffL responds to recent NTL announcement of major investment".

5) De-tempmlate-ise the "look 'n' feel" .. while GeekLog is quick'n'easy .. it does seem a little over complicated for the job in hand. But rather than changing it now (unless there is a reason to), we could do without alot of the features it offers, and make navigation a whole lot simpler.
5a) Does anyone care how many words are in an article, it adds clutter
5b) Do we need "Contributed By:" .. all articles are contributed by IoffL (we 0wn you)
5c) Remove comments altogether. Either in title bar (beside email/printer icons), or as a text link beside "Read more..." have a "Discuss this topic" which links to a thread here on boards.ie. It concentrates the comment/opinion in one place.
5d) Move navigation out of content. Maybe along the top where the "Submit a Story" links are?
5e) Re/move the "Submit a story" line of links. Calendar if used could be a sidebar item (even in place of the IrelandOffline navigation if moved). Post a story can go to Member Options sidebar, as can Personalise. Polls aren't used, but if they will be then they can be a side bar item. And should Stats even be public?
5f) So final suggestion is left side bar to have the following sections: Calendar, Press Releases, Current Activities, News (currently Topics). Right side bar to have Polls, Member Options, Cost Calculator(s).

That's all for now

I can help, my PHP isn't my main l33t skill, but I get by, and certainly won't break anything!!

.cg

damien

*bump*