Posted by arts4la on July 13, 2008 at 7:08pm
For the past several months I have been quietly learning about Drupal while simultaneously building our site.
We just finished the 1.0 version and I'm looking for some good, honest, yet constructive feedback: http://artsforla.org
I posted it on the main Drupal Showcase (http://drupal.org/forum/25) section as well - but since the LA folks seem so darn smart and savvy, I thought I'd through it out to you as well.
If there's another place I should post, please let me know as well.
I'm looking forward to meeting folks at the July meeting.
Cheers!
Comments
Nice Job
Thanks for sharing. I think the site looks good and performs well.
I think some video content might be a nice addition. Are there any plans for that?
One thing that occurred to me was that, while I understand how forums and groups are different, I wonder how the two types of communications channels look to non-drupal savvy visitors. How (or why) do they choose to post something in a group vs a forum? Perhaps this is a good general question: groups or forums, what criteria do fellow Drupal develops apply when choosing one, the other or both? Of course, with groups there is always an underlying content type and that is often what drives it for me.
One other small point: the home link takes you to /node and groups goes to /og. perhaps it would be nice to alias these so as to have more human and SEO friendly urls.
Again, good job Danielle.
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Markus Sandy
http://apperceive.com
http://ourmedia.org
Non Savvy Drupal Vistors...
An issue indeed. In fact, many arts folks (at least those at the administrative and policy side) don't feel too comfortable with the whole idea of commenting in public. It's something we are going to work very hard at. But alas, we have a whole outreach and engagement plan that we are getting ready to roll out - more on that as it becomes available.
As for the video - I would love to do video - but not sure in what way. I don't want to slow the site down, or load it with fluff content. But it's a great idea.
Thanks also for the suggestion about more friendly URL's. I'm not sure what a SEO is, but I'll look that up now and will definitely share it with my webmaster.
Thanks again for sharing your quality feedback. I really do appreciate it.
Peer Review
The gdo Peer Review group exists for just this purpose. And I agree with Markus, quite a nice job.
my suggestions:
looking at the sourceview for your homepage, i noticed you're not aggregating css. Speed up drupal to make your site faster for both users and nicer to your server. similar approaches work in Drupal5.
regarding SEO, I'd also suggest URL aliases, and perhaps tweeking your theme template to use DIV's instead of tables for layout (which is semantically correct and can also make a difference with SEO, and a difference with mobile devices).
Markus:
To me, the primary difference between forums & discussions (from a user point of view) is the layout. Forums tend to have a nicer top level for finding threads. I choose the forum or advanced forum module to save me time in providing that "look" to my clients. otherwise, I feel both the built-in search and google do a equally good job find threads in either format.
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mike stewart { twitter: @MediaDoneRight | IRC nick: mike stewart }
Yea!
Thanks Mike-
I will take these notes to my webmaster. I've gotten to the point where I can upload content, change my blocks around (like nobody's business) and even mess around with my views. But you lost me with DIV and SEO (I guess that's my next course).
Regarding Groups Vs. Forum: For our purposes, many of groups are going to be set to private as they are working, team groups - so we need to have all the other bells and whistles that come with that. We are going us forums for the registered community at large.
Thanks again for providing solid feedback!
Cool
Looks like you will be in good shape to do an OG preso at LADrupal or DrupalCampLA!
OG Presentation?
Count me in. Thanks for giving it a look see.