HeatSync Labs Web Site Hack Day Fri 10/19 8a-midnight

[Jacob Rosenthal]

Next Friday 10/19 Luis and I are going to hack on the website all day
to get it further along.

We'll be largely working on the existing dynamic approach I started on
a few months ago now hosted at http://dev.heatsynclabs.org

You're welcome to join us! Or I encourage you to set up another hack
day in the future and well try to join you (or we call all work on
separate visions and the community can choose)

[Jacob Rosenthal]

To catch everyone up this was my last message about the site:

"TLDR

A few weeks ago I began trying to mock up a new website design for HSL. I'm no designer, but we've talked about web design for year+ and it hasn't happened yet so I thought I'd take a shot at it. 

My current work is up at http://dev.heatsynclabs.org 

Rix helped with the css to turn my mockup into reality and I massaged it a bit more since then. Its a responsive design so resize your browser window and watch it change! 

I'm waiting for commits from Luis who has offered to work on the javascript for the camera load, and Eric who is working on rss parsing so we can swap the main image out with blog posts from you guys.

If you think you can help in some way its up at github at https://github.com/heatsynclabs/hsl-site-ng

Problems:

The site is looking long in tooth, and our theme is used by many other hackerspaces now

We've had huge problems finding anyone to blog for us since Huerta left, and our site is a blog format..

Despite our aspiration towards editorial, 95+% of our blogging has been just advertising our calendar

People have trouble finding things nested in menus. 

Wordpress is a prety big pain for any new user to use, and a security vulnerability. Menus are basically broken showing content we don't want and the current answer is to edit the html manually.

Solutions:

Put calendar on main page so we don't need to blog about the calendar

Move away from blog style format so if theres no blogging, it won't matter

Remove need for us to add visual components via the blog (this week in pics, etc), by making the design inherently visual

Be mostly dynamicly driven from multiple community sources so we still have a shot at fresh content

Ditch wordpress, be simple

As close to a 1 page design as possible, no menus. Link off to wiki or other sites if necessary so all good info is presented right up front

Resources which MUST be present on new design:

About / address / support us

calendar

community blog posts (rss pulled, or maybe that hip ass html5 style with text over image)

sharing/links rss/twitter/flickr/facebook/wiki/irc

live cams updating on main page

hslphotosync flickr pics (rotating, html5 style, with titles over image)

a place to do some kind of sticky advertising if we need to( hot topics/youtube video, fundraising, big event)

contact page/board/google groups/COME TO THE LAB (footer?)

[Matt Shepard]

I'll be there Friday late afternoon/evening for this, possibly earlier.

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[Ben Humpherys]

Sounds like that would be a good time to bring in what i have kinda-sorta started. Ive been thinking about whether making a lab-specific sort of social network wouldn't be freaking awesome. Messing with drupal has me thinking it has a lot of potential for a site redesign.

[Will Bradley]

I can't make it due to startup weekend, but Ryan, Nate P, and I are able to answer questions about HSL infrastructure. I'll try to make it to the next one, too.

HSL IT documentation has been ported to the Operations Dropbox to improve volunteerism! If you'd like to volunteer your Linux / webdev skills, just ask one of the above people for access. There's no commitment, you just need to be a trustworthy person because of passwords and stuff.

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[Jacob Rosenthal]

We're out here hacking now.

Feel free to stop in any time today or work with us online.  IRC http://webchat.freenode.net/ channel #heatsynclabs

[Jacob Rosenthal]

Did I post the mockups we got back from our friends at cohoots?

Feedback on these designs based on my design at dev.heatsynclabs.org?

http://twitpic.com/b5m2p4

http://twitpic.com/b5m2rk

[Erik Wilson]

http://erikwilson.github.com/hsl-site-ng/ is a github pages of my branch with some experimental code for pulling in feeds through javascript, if anyone is interested.

[Jacob Rosenthal]

hrm, i like some of the rounded corners (though I think theres too many) 

feedback????

-- 

Jacob Rosenthal

Sent with Sparrow

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[Tim G]

I generally like the layout on dev.heatsynclabs.org . The big slideshow is good. The calendar is good and well placed. My criticisms would be that the left frame looks awkward hanging off to the left side of the image, and the animation might be a little much. Also I'd make the links to the message board and the wiki more prominent. Where will the blog be on this design?

Tim

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[Jacob Rosenthal]

Well we got a ton done on hackphx.com as we have time constraints there, so check that out!

Not much hugely visible on www.heatsynclabs.org yet. Would love more people showing up to help out or build competing visions

[Jacob Rosenthal]

Im currently working off of Eriks branch, you can see my current work on github pages

http://jacobrosenthal.github.com/hsl-site-ng/

[Zachary Giles]

I personally like the http://twitpic.com/b5m2p4 version best. Be
careful, though, to still try and create a light and robust website so
it doesn't bog when opening even thought we all have fast pc's these
days.

hackphx site is pretty sweet too. Not sure about the blue though.
Also, it would be really awesome if on that typing thing at the bottom
if users could type there and have it be interactive. That would be
AWesome.

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--
Zach Giles
zgi...@gmail.com

[Erik Wilson]

Made some changes based on your updates Jacob. Moved some icons around and redid the support button, modified the logo to be more orangy meatball, not a big fan of the orange text tho. Hid the feeds stuff as that will be inserted into the gallery, perhaps our blog posts could go into that space. "i" button now shows who is on the network.

http://erikwilson.github.com/hsl-site-ng/