Hey Everyone,
We had our first official wnylegend.com meeting today! We talked through Skype and a presentation was given at the same time using the join.me service (just shared my desktop). I'm going to try attaching the presentation file and notes if I can.
This website is being built with Drupal, which I chose to use because it had a reputation of being flexible. It supports MySQL and PostGRE dbs and has a huge user and developer base. It also has a reputation for having a bigger learning curve than some other popular content management systems. Right now, the site is pretty bare boned. This forum system is actually 'advanced' and I had to install some additional modules just to get it to this point. I thought about using phpBB, but would like to keep all user accounts integrated with the main website.
Currently, I am doing all the installation, design, and testing for the site which means things are a little slow going.
Anyway, there is a lot to discuss with the design and implementation of features of wnylegend, and I encourage you to start new forum topics. I still need to modify the forum settings, as I could only upload one file, so below are the meeting notes that Erika kindly took down. If you have any interest in contributing in *ANY* way, be it site design or just map contributions, then jump in! Please create a new account and I will get you approved ASAP.
· should include an interactive mapping component because it would be more interesting –Fernando [fixed]
suggestions made:
1. embedded google maps or google earth API that displays KML/GML file
2. eventually get a web map up of WNY?
3. Graham mentioned he may know of a program?
4.
· The layout of the page can remain the default simple/clean page for now. Once we get the site functioning we could focus more on design or find someone with more website design experience to help
· We should start out as “a map a week” rather than “a map a day”. A map a day may be too ambitious to start with our current man power, also it might not make sense, since a lot of people will not be checking the site daily at this point.
· Archive the old maps?
· Maps may be more interesting if the data displayed is not readily available, but data that we create ourselves, to display new ideas on the map
1. HSBC and First Niagara Bank idea – Graham
· Logo should be made into a digital image, rather than hand drawn
· A calendar should be made (or something of the sort) where people can sign up to do the weekly map, a preview of “next week’s map/story” could go up on the site
· A forum should be added to the site so that we may all continue an open discussion on
WNY legend
· Tasks to begin on:
Ryan- create a forum for WNY legend
Erika- create a better (more professional) logo using open source graphic editing software. Start thinking about a first map to create for week 1
Jeff- seek out stories/topics for the first map to be on. Start researching sources/ideas for revenue for the site.
· Ryan will pay Jeff and Erika in Weber’s horseradish mustard.
· If I missed any points please fill them in, I created these notes after the meeting, so I could have missed something
Post meeting:
Dr. Hayes brought up the point about having all open data. This is something that should be discussed, and options explored. We want the site encourage people to create maps, but at the same time, if someone created their own dataset, they should have the ability to restrict access in some way.
Dr. Hayes also brought up the topic of having a way to rate maps or certain aspects of maps (color, layout, style etc) so that creators could get feedback. This may be especially useful for students looking to improve their map presentations. However, allowing users to give low scores to maps may deter them from further contributing. This could be an option "Allow users to rate map."
There is a lot of potential with this website, and in WNY. We can make it as complicated or easy as we would like, but for now, we're starting small... looking for content to add (maps), and will build on that.
Thanks
-Ryan
