Web Team

From Interlock Rochester Wiki

Revision as of 22:55, 26 October 2010

Overview

The overall duties of the web team are to organize, maintain, and promote Interlock’s presence in all online outlets. While a portion of these duties involve technical and design work, this is largely a public relations role and is the primary representation of the space in both communication and perception.

Responsibilities

Note: As the web team is still prenatal (and to curb any arguing over verbiage and semantics), it should be noted that none of the items in the Responsibilities or Guidelines sections are set in stone. They are only initial suggestions that will be changed in the very near future with further input from team members.

General / Unsorted

The chief responsibility of the web team is to effectively communicate events and projects on behalf of Interlock’s members, as well as the benefits of the organization in terms of membership and its role in the community.

Design

As with any branding, it is important to maintain a recognizably common design theme across all public channels, including colors, logos, and icons. While analog, this should also extend to print materials.

Functionality

The web team is wholly responsible for implementing and maintaining any code required for official web presences.

Guidelines

General / Unsorted

Any online presence that could be perceived as an official representation of Interlock should only be maintained by web team members in order to preserve consistency and professionalism. This includes the main website and any social network accounts clearly marked as Interlock Rochester, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instructables.

All suggestions and requests from Interlock membership should be considered and discussed in a public forum, namely the mailing list.

Upcoming events should be published on the website, Google Calendar, Meetup Calendar, and Twitter at least 14 days prior to the scheduled date to allow for potential attendees to make plans and RSVP.

It may sound obvious, but any public composition should be proofread at least once and spellchecked. In addition, any composition that is not editable or is instantly republished through channels out of the team’s control, such as a tweet, should be proofread at least twice. This may seem like a time sink, but will prevent errors that could be detrimental to public perception, damaging to business relationships, or just plain embarrassing.

Design

Functionality

As permanent membership is never a guarantee, all code should be well documented and/or commented to ensure a low barrier to entry for future additions to the team.

Any UX modifications should be tested across browsers and platforms to ensure usability. As an organization that is automatically perceived as being both highly skilled and technical, even small UX issues would reflect very poorly.

Agenda

Any items awaiting approval that don't receive objections within 7 days after being proposed will be considered approved and assigned a priority level.

Top Priority

These items should be taken care of as soon as possible.

High Priority

Low Priority

No Priority

Unapproved

Awaiting Approval

Parentheses indicate suggested priority.

• (High) Create a footer for the website and move the Hackerspaces, Elsewhere, and Search from the sidebar to the footer.
• (Low) Integrate some more visual interest on the website. Colored icons for each category type (events, classes, news, etc.). Include a banner picture in the header or a rotating image at the top of the sidebar.
• (High) Remove the member dues from the sidebar and make a new page that contains the membership application, agreement, and dues.
• (High) Rewrite some sections from the About page, and update the membership benefits to include specifics on discounts.
• (High) Remove Contribute from the main menu.
• (High) Either remove the Contribute page, or change it to be a better front-end for business sponsorship.
• (Low) Reorganize the contact page to include graphic icons for Facebook, Twitter, and Meetup, instead of just a list of links (or add them to the footer). Integrate a Google map into the page.
• (No) Cache the Google calendar locally so there isn’t such a long load time, or implement an animated gear loading icon. Cache tweets locally to shield ourselves from the fail whale.
• (Top) Either start using the announce list or get rid of it altogether. Tweets pointing to posts on the main site would work better anyway.
• (No) Concatenate all external CSS and JS files.
• (No) Determine best method of integrating the website’s calendar with Meetup’s.
• (No) Change the index to be more of a landing page with just the first paragraphs from the latest 3 or 4 blog posts, a featured project, a more expanded definition of the hackerspace, and a more stylized upcoming events with a short one-liner description and direct links to a related blog post.
• (No) Move the blurb to the top of the page next to the logo, make a thinner menu to go below.
• (No) Template the wiki to match the main site.
• (Low) Create a web interface to the LDAP server with functionality to allow for business partners to check the status of members. Add this under the Partners page.
• (High) Create a Partners page that gives information on the benefits of providing discounts (and sponsorship?) to our members. Add a login that gives them access to the LDAP interface.
• (Top) The current Wordpress theme is now heavily customized and should be renamed to prevent any accidental updates through the WP dashboard, which would reset all of these modifications.
• (Top) Create a dev environment for testing new versions of Wordpress and plugins.

--Bryan 13:58, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

• (Low) Figure out why the Flickr gallery displays pictures in a seemingly random order at seemingly random times.
• (High) Add a Press page that lists external articles about Interlock. Include a link to a press kit that has high resolution versions of the logo with white, black, and transparent backgrounds.

--Bryan 21:38, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

• (High) Test and implement new versions of jQuery and Wordpress.

--Bryan 22:55, 26 October 2010 (UTC)