Reorganizing homepage for Ike

[Andy Carvin]

Just wanted to start a thread on what features people would like to see occupying real estate on our homepage for Ike. I plan to give the forum less prominence and move up features like the blog, map, etc. Are there any other widgets we should create for it? Any thoughts on the best ways of using the blog?

[Blogs2c.com]

I have to agree with Earl and Ben on this one.

Think "Google" and if you do a search for "Hurricane Ike", for example. You come up with 2.4 Million pages. Yet some links offer useable information and some do not. So, it is not an index structure. We could be the aggregator of all things useful and relative to say Hurricane Ike, in this case.

I do a similar thing on one of my sites.

http://assistdir.com/zip/77077

Not that you want to use the "Colorful Cloud" that it has, but you get the idea. The navigation is very simple, and most things are only a few clicks away. And I get clicks per visitor counts way beyond the average for a directory type site. Some links are Local, some are Regional, some are National.

It might not be that hard to generate a Sitemap from the Wiki and make a Blog post out of it. Then, just take the Sitemap and update the Blog for every major Wiki update, or like once a day. Extra good if you could make a sitemap that is "Location" based realtive to the current Hurricane(s).

As they say in Real Estate, "Location, Location, Location" :-)

So the key is to help the user find what is valuable for their location. Maps, Shelters, Alerts, Volunteers, et. al.

--Brian


Andy Carvin said:

Isn't that what we're already doing with the wiki, though?
Ben Tremblay said:

Earl McGehee said:

I think there is a need for a portal to actively pull together and organize all the different storm data available, but maybe we should be spending more time organizing links to other sites than reentering data from the other sites. This topic deserves more thought and conversation after Ike cools off.

I agree whole heartedly. For me a "trampoline" function is prime; most obvious and quickest to set up. Also in most cases the data is credible. That can be thought of as aggregation of "all things Ike".
My "Mapping Ike" blog post has mutated so it presents a concise sub-set of available data ... a start at synthesis. Doing that on more specific topics ... imagine creating an authoritative page on shelters, say ... that's daunting. Collecting / collating sources, sites, and resources seems a valid and doable task. More than that I think requires some up-front design.

[Ben Tremblay]

*re-factored for readability*
Ben Tremblay said:

[...] For me a "trampoline" function is prime; most obvious and quickest to set up. Also in most cases the data is credible. That can be thought of as aggregation of "all things Ike". [...] Collecting / collating sources, sites, and resources seems a valid and doable task. More than that I think requires some up-front design.

Andy Carvin said:

Isn't that what we're already doing with the wiki, though?

Perhaps same "thing", but IMHO not to the same depth. FWIW I would expect the Wiki to contain reams of pages where the equivalent would be treated here with a handful of links i.e. the wiki as repository (striving for comprehensive) while Ning's interactive functionality produces a far denser if somewhat less substantial presentation.
As Blogs2C put it, "We could be the aggregator of all things useful and relative to say Hurricane Ike, in this case."

BTW I realize most content creators have fast machines and broadband, but in case someone considers load-time ... the google map alone calls in more than 490KB.

[John Walling]

Slightly off topic:

A wiki normally deals with events spread over a long time period and can be difficult to navigate if you are looking for what is relevant to current events. The Ning site can help with wiki highlights but can't do it all.

I am using the Current events page on HurricaneWiki to highlight the wiki resources relevant to "real time" events. I am trying to answer the question, "What resources on HurricaneWiki can help me in the face of current events?" by linking to relevant wiki pages and relevant web resources.

The page can be archived and cleared when an event fades from the scene. Different news editors can take lead to maintain a fresh perspective.

Reference:
http://www.hurricanewiki.org/wiki/Hurricane_Info_Wiki:Current_events

[Ben Tremblay]

I've come across some Texas-specific resources ... very high quality / very timely; for inclusion on FrontPage?

* Evacuation Maps a half-dozen, very detailed, e..g.:
* Houston / Galveston Evacuation; interactive map

Also, more general: Texas Governor's Division of Emergency Management (GDEM)

[Earl McGehee]

It's what we all want to do. But we are going too fast and not working together well. We need some organization of the teams and the site to avoid duplication of efforts (news and maps links on the shelters pages and vice versa) and we could probably figure out a better way to arrange all this stuff.For example a map of shelters needs to be on the shelters page and the maps page for the ease of use of visitors but that means we have two links to check and maintain for the same source document. Should the shelters page have all the shelters in the country or should there be a shelters page for each Hurricane. Hurricanes don't respect state lines but government responses are by state and county - how can we pull just the needed info for a storm from every one of our state pages? In a crisis situation people don't have time to look through many links on multiple pages to find what they want. How do we ensure the most useful links bubble up to the top of the right page? Food for thought for when hurricane season is over.

Andy Carvin said:

Isn't that what we're already doing with the wiki, though?

Ben Tremblay said:

Earl McGehee said:

I think there is a need for a portal to actively pull together and organize all the different storm data available, but maybe we should be spending more time organizing links to other sites than reentering data from the other sites. This topic deserves more thought and conversation after Ike cools off.

I agree whole heartedly. For me a "trampoline" function is prime; most obvious and quickest to set up. Also in most cases the data is credible. That can be thought of as aggregation of "all things Ike".
My "Mapping Ike" blog post has mutated so it presents a concise sub-set of available data ... a start at synthesis. Doing that on more specific topics ... imagine creating an authoritative page on shelters, say ... that's daunting. Collecting / collating sources, sites, and resources seems a valid and doable task. More than that I think requires some up-front design.

[Earl McGehee]

The Ike maps page has had links to these maps and another Texas DOT map that shows live traffic info and road status as well as which roads are contraflow at the moment. The PDF maps just show which roads may be reconfigured for contraflow.

I think there should be three wiki links prominent on the front page now: Shelters Texas, Ike 2008 Maps, and Ike 2008 News. These should be the wiki hot spots. Using links to these pages instead of links to specific maps lets each of the teams of experts constantly update the info to show the best data at the moment.

Ben Tremblay said:

I've come across some Texas-specific resources ... very high quality / very timely; for inclusion on FrontPage?

* Evacuation Maps a half-dozen, very detailed, e..g.:
* Houston / Galveston Evacuation; interactive map

Also, more general: Texas Governor's Division of Emergency Management (GDEM)

[Andy Carvin]

Earl, Ben:

I've given both of you admin privileges. When you go to the homepage, you'll be able to click an edit button for each module. Please be very careful and make copies of the module's code before making edits, since Ning doesn't let you back up modules. If you'd like to make edits, please go ahead, though post here what you are going to do so we don't work on top of each other.

[Earl McGehee]

Thank you. That explains why it asked me a bunch of extra questions when I just logged in. I am mostly only available at night - busy at work lately - and now hoping my company doesn't have too much damage here in Texas from Ike. Let us know if you are going to be out of pocket for some extended period so we can pay closer attention to requests.

Andy Carvin said:

Earl, Ben:

I've given both of you admin privileges. When you go to the homepage, you'll be able to click an edit button for each module. Please be very careful and make copies of the module's code before making edits, since Ning doesn't let you back up modules. If you'd like to make edits, please go ahead, though post here what you are going to do so we don't work on top of each other.

[Debbie Cerda]

The Texas Specific information has been on the wiki for since September 4 (or earlier), and include the GDEM and Texas Online .

Ben Tremblay said:

I've come across some Texas-specific resources ... very high quality / very timely; for inclusion on FrontPage?
* Evacuation Maps a half-dozen, very detailed, e..g.: * Houston / Galveston Evacuation; interactive map

Also, more general: Texas Governor's Division of Emergency Management (GDEM)

[Ben Tremblay]

Debbie Cerda said:

The Texas Specific information has been on the wiki for since September 4 (or earlier), and include the GDEM and Texas Online .
Ben Tremblay said:

I've come across some Texas-specific resources ... very high quality / very timely; for inclusion on FrontPage?
[ block of dangling text deleted]
Also, more general: Texas Governor's Division of Emergency Management (GDEM)

I'm not sure what you're telling me ... I got something wrong here?
I certainly don't expect that resources like that will be posted in one place only.
You're correcting me on something?
I apologize if my posting resources for inclusion here cause offense in some way.

p.s. why do people leave text dangling? Originals are here on the forum to be seen / read.

[Ben Tremblay]

Andy Carvin said:

Earl, Ben:
I've given both of you admin privileges. [...]

Ahhh ... like Earl, I was wondering what was up!
BTW: Apart from the feed from one of my Pipe! in the left side-bar I've had 0.00 success embedding widget; gave it a few shots early on in my blog then cut my losses.

cheers

[Gwynne Kostin]

Debbie Cerda said:

The Federal Hurricane Response badge looks great! However, t I'm not getting the full content of it in Firefox 3.0 or IE7.

We made an adjustment to the stylesheet that helps somewhat. If your browser fonts are set larger, tho, it will sometimes overflow the box. Generally it is working well with IE 7 and FF3.0. This is a pretty (technically) simple widget--limiting changes but very flexible content-wise--but if others have suggestions let me know.