So, the website sucks right now. As Brian started this trend of owning up to things, I will own up to this and say its completely and totally my fault. It was sort of a half-vision. I started it and got sidetracked and never finished. If you are curious, take a look at the website thru the years:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.dhctstage.org/
In 4 years, we've tried some different things. The 4 main people working on the site were Me (Jerry Kondraciuk), Catherine Parkins, Allison Walentowicz & Cynthia Frabutt. Some worked and some didn't. But I don't think any of them had a "WoW" factor about them. Not that we need a wow factor, but we need something to grab their attention to want to click down thru the menus and submenus. Without that, they would just look at the front page and leave. This was one of the reasons why I wanted all the pertinate info on the main page. So, as Cathy pointed out, its more of a Web PAGE now and not a site. She wants the site back. I want the site back too.
So how do you propose we do it?? I'm all ears..
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Website revamp
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5 comments:
First of all, I want to say THANK YOU to you Jerry for your work on the website and the board. I'd also like to acknowledge Cynthia for the great work she has done and continues to do. Our entire board deserves praise for continuing to work together for the success of DHCT.
Jerry, I hope you didn't take personal offense with my comments about the site. I know how difficult it is to set up and maintain a site, and I appreciate the stresses (although positive :)) in your family right now.
I think it's awesome that you are working on this. Let's just remember to keep the conversation here on the call board positive, as our new actors and crew will have access to this site.
I agree with Cathy
I think photos are important...things that show a little history. A guestbook I always liked as well
on a side note, it's really hard to see the words with the "criss-cross" design on this call board. Just sayin...
Marc
Cathy,
I have thick skin. I find it refreshing that people are talking about the site now. It shows that we've grown to the point where we realize the web is an integral part of the marketing structure. Obviously, the timing is good and bad for me. With a new baby, my time is extremely limited. So in a way, I was glad you brought it up and I appreciate the candor. If I had my way, we all would have a piece of the DHCT website. I envision the DHCT site kinda like this call board. Cyn calls it Web Master, I call it Content Designer. I want to setup a Content Designer/Contributor construct on the main dhct page. One person in charge of the overall design and scope and multiple people in charge of contributing information to the site.
I know first-hand what a chore it is to maintain a website because I am the creator / webmaster for the DATA website. I am constantly being reminded to update things and change things around because of just how constantly productions go up and down.
At this point, lets have a working site which is user-friendly, looks nice, and is somewhat professional. The site needs to updated often with working links. I am not sure if I really care about the color scheme or anything like that- let's just get it up there and do our best to keep it up!
One of the built in services offered by Yahoo! is a phpNuke community Portal.
More info on it can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP-Nuke
This is something I will be toying with on the dhctstage website.
If the Board agrees, I think it would be the way to go. I'll set up a sample site for us to review.
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