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?

[Andy Carvin]

Done.

John Walling said:

http://developer.ning.com/tutorials/Easy_Domain_Redirection

Introduction
If you've purchased the Use Your Own Domain premium service, there's a simple way that you can make sure that visitors to your network always reach it though your domain rather than via its ning.com address. This was so popular that we've made it a hidden feature on your social network as of version 3.3. If your social network is running up to date code, please use the easy domain redirection tool. If you're running on an older version of the source code please see instructions on manual domain name redirection. http://developer.ning.com/tutorials/Manual_Domain_Redirection


Easy Domain Redirection Instructions

To set up domain redirection the easy way, just follow these steps

1. Log into your social network as the Network Creator
2. Visit http://examplenetwork.ning.com/admin/index/editDomainRedirection where you substitute examplenetwork with the .ning.com subdomain of your social network.
3. From the dropdown select the domain name that you would like your members to see.
4. Click on the 'Save' button

Yep! It's that easy. Your members will now automaticaly be redirected to the domain name that you selected in the drop down. If you'd ever like to disable this function, just return to this page and select the .ning.com subdomain from the list.

[Andy Carvin]

I should have been more clear. By reorg I meant rearranging the module placement on the homepage. Each module can be dragged and dropped to any location. For example, I'm moving the important links list to above the fold on the left side, and will move the map up as well. Feeds that once displayed Hanna are now being switched over to Ike.

Earl McGehee said:

Ike is upon us her in Texas. Rather than a reorg this late in the game maybe two changes could be made today:
1. Move the Wiki link to a more prominent location. There are still many people working on the Wiki but I fear visitors may not even find the Wiki with the current link.
2. Modify the Flickr photos on the left side. It appears we are picking photos from Flickr based on the tag Hanna and we are often getting pictures of people named Hanna that are unrelated to the Hurricane. As of this writing there are several pictures of a fashion model named Hanna. This seems inappropriate for people recovering from major damages caused by Hanna and preparing for Ike. Note there are some Flickr searches on the Wiki Image Gallery page that filter out non Hurricane Hanna pictures.

[Andy Carvin]

Something came up and I had to be offline for much of the last 36 hours. If anyone else wants admin privileges for the home page please message me asap and I'll give it to you. Just let me know exactly what you plan to work on so we don't cancel out each others' work.

Ruth Blakeslee said:

和热 Hi there Earl,
I see too some Main Page editting fixes requested on the Main Page discussion tab that have been on there for a week. Is anybody reading here or there? Does anyone have a list of who has Main Page editting privileges?
Thanks, Ruthanne

[Blogs2c.com]

I'd suggest using the Wiki for the heavy content. Including the ancillary and out-dated maps, more widgets if possible and anything else that delivers valuable content.

The Blog for major announcements, site navigation info, with hot links into the Wiki when possible.

The Forum for the team members to communicate and share ideas.

The Ning home page then becomes a link farm into the Wiki, with a only a few external sources of information, The home page being a Sitemap or Directory into everything else.

This may be similar to what we are already doing for the most part, but that may not be apparent to the first time visitor.

Executive Summary: Add more of our links into the Wiki to the Ning home page and move some of the external links on the home page now into content items within the Wiki. This will draw more traffic to the Wiki, where the real knowledge base is and should be.

Just my thoughts :-)

--Brian

[Andy Carvin]

A quick update on the re-arrangement of the homepage: I've moved a lot of content around so there is news-related info closer to the top of the page. In the top left is the list of our most important links (the wiki, Red Cross, etc) and the top center spot is now occupied by the latest headlines from Google News and Natl Hurricane Center alerts.

I've updated all of the widgets to ensure they're focused on Ike rather than Hanna, including Flickr photos, tweets and Craigslist listings. I've also added widgets for Ike-related posts from the blogosphere, and a thumbnail gallery of related YouTube videos. The forum and the blog have been moved down, so administrative posts don't dominate the top of the site. I may remove blog posting altogether if we can't come up with a coordinated way to use it as a public service, rather than as a redundancy to forum posts.

[Blogs2c.com]

Looks great!

I like this "Top News Story" in the top frame :-)

"Commentary: How Obama Should Weather 'Hurricane Palin' - ABC News"

I'm not making fun of the site. I know that this stuff happens with automated feeds.

--Brian

[Ben Tremblay]

Nice list, Brian!

What I think is key is that entry points be comprehensive but not exhaustive, to act as trampolines, designed with a low barrier so those arriving for the first time can find a pointer to what they need, or at worst a pointer to where they can find what they need.

What I recall from Katrina was that most information was slight relative to "Mayday" stuff like "We've been stranded in our house for 3 days and my husband needs his meds" or "Pan" stuff like "My wife was ecacuated on a bus and we don't know where she ended up" ... emergent stuff had to be prominent ... front and top.
Someday someone's going to synthesize a set of Use Cases.

Blogs2c.com said:

[...] The Ning home page then becomes a link farm into the Wiki, with a only a few external sources of information, The home page being a Sitemap or Directory into everything else. [...]

[Ben Tremblay]

Andy Carvin said:

[...] I may remove blog posting altogether if we can't come up with a coordinated way to use it as a public service, rather than as a redundancy to forum posts.

I've been watching that panel, to see if my post was obscuring anything, and don't recall it ever seeming to be redundant of forum posts.

[Andy Carvin]

I plan to post our SMS-to-RSS relay messages at top. I'm just waiting for Damon to activate it for the @stormtxt account I set up on Twitter. Once that's done, users can send a text message from their phone and have it appear on the homepage.

Having said that, I'm leery of encouraging people to use it for emergencies. There's no way to guarantee that the people/orgs who can help will be reading the feed, so it'd probably better to get phone/ SMS shortcodes of emergency orgs and list them prominently.

Ben Tremblay said:

Nice list, Brian!

What I think is key is that entry points be comprehensive but not exhaustive, to act as trampolines, designed with a low barrier so those arriving for the first time can find a pointer to what they need, or at worst a pointer to where they can find what they need.

What I recall from Katrina was that most information was slight relative to "Mayday" stuff like "We've been stranded in our house for 3 days and my husband needs his meds" or "Pan" stuff like "My wife was ecacuated on a bus and we don't know where she ended up" ... emergent stuff had to be prominent ... front and top.
Someday someone's going to synthesize a set of Use Cases.

Blogs2c.com said:

[...] The Ning home page then becomes a link farm into the Wiki, with a only a few external sources of information, The home page being a Sitemap or Directory into everything else. [...]

[Ben Tremblay]

Andy Carvin said:

I plan to post our SMS-to-RSS relay messages at top. I'm just waiting for Damon to activate it for the @stormtxt account I set up on Twitter. Once that's done, users can send a text message from their phone and have it appear on the homepage.

You think that fine-grained item should be front and center? I'd demote it ... perhaps a link to it, front and center.
It's a great little service, so it should be available to those who want to follow it, but I can't think of it as the first thing a person would be coming here to look for. (I'm thinking "hierarchy of knowledge" here, working down from the most global to the most specific / local.)

[Andy Carvin]

Well, it's not posted yet, and it doesn't even exist yet, so we'll see what happens.

Ben Tremblay said:

Andy Carvin said:

I plan to post our SMS-to-RSS relay messages at top. I'm just waiting for Damon to activate it for the @stormtxt account I set up on Twitter. Once that's done, users can send a text message from their phone and have it appear on the homepage.

You think that fine-grained item should be front and center? I'd demote it ... perhaps a link to it, front and center.
It's a great little service, so it should be available to those who want to follow it, but I can't think of it as the first thing a person would be coming here to look for. (I'm thinking "hierarchy of knowledge" here, working down from the most global to the most specific / local.)

[Blogs2c.com]

That's the idea! Top down.

A few more "Use Cases" and we'll have the solution -:)

Might need to add a spam trap to the SMS-to-RSS gateway if autoposting.

--Brian

Ben Tremblay said: I'm thinking "hierarchy of knowledge" here, working down from the most global to the most specific / local.