Organization and Structure

[Michael]

Talking about the idea of organizing and structuring this group:
getting some focus and orientation going. I've uploaded a short page
with the same topic that gives some of my thoughts.

http://groups.google.com/group/better-school-websites/web/organization-and-structure

Here's what I'd like to contribute to the conversation to get things
rolling:

What exactly do we intend to produce as a group?
What is the bare minimum of structure and organization we need to
successfully function?
How do we define the success of our group?

Everyone has the floor. :)

[Caleb Fidecaro]

This maybe should go on the page you set up, but I can't edit it on my
iPad :)

Here's what I imagine as far as requirements for the software:

1. If it is indeed built on Wordpress, it should work with current
vanilla Wordpress themes - that seems like the simplest way (for both
users and us developers) to enable school to have good LOOKING sites
without having to know any code.

2. It obviously should be very user friendly - the potential user base
is unlikely to be very tech savvy. Wordpress is perhaps ideal for this
as it is already very user friendly.

3. Further to point 2, I think maybe we should do a study of current
school websites to find out what sorts of things they are used for,
how they are currently solving those issues, and how it could be done
better. Several of the people in this group seem like they may be able
to speak to that off the tops of their heads :)

4. It's got to be polished. In my mind, I don't think a project like
this will be worth it's salt if it's only got the polish of an open
source Linux app. It may have a perfect set of functions, but if it's
not extremely simple to use, it's not better than the existing
solutions.

5. It's got to have decent branding, I think. To become the de facto
solution for schools, it's got to be the one they find if they don't
know what they're looking for. Good branding will ensure it stands out
from the (decidedly mediocre) current crowd, as well as attracting
developers and designers to the project to improve it over time.

Those are just my thoughts off the top of my head, happy to be
disagreed with :)   

On Nov 5, 11:44 am, Michael <blackmax...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Talking about the idea of organizing and structuring this group:
> getting some focus and orientation going. I've uploaded a short page
> with the same topic that gives some of my thoughts.
>

> http://groups.google.com/group/better-school-websites/web/organizatio...

[Michael]

Actually, Caleb, if it makes sense to you, I'm going to start another
page and thread called "Organizing and Structuring the Site." I didn't
make myself clear here, my fault. I'm thinking more about organizing
this group: who's gonna do what and so forth. We need to consider
both. Nice catch, Caleb. :)