2012 Website Redesign

This page was created to start collecting information for a website redesign, as proposed by the PR Committee.

New and Improved Features

• "Free Geek in the Media" page with links to media features, flexible archival settings
• Option whether or not to post new page content in that page's category page feed (e.g. option not to include Media posts in main News feed)
• "Large Donors/Partners" page listing individual donations over a certain amount, institutional and in-kind donors, corporate logos?
• Newsletter sign-up button
• Streaming Twitter/Facebook feed
• Seperate pages for institutional and individual donors
• Bold donate button on front page
• Address and hours on front page (and footer of every page).
• Links to wiki, possibly other outward facing services
• "Digital Tour": Area highlights w/ photos, more expository descriptions
• Integrate Inreach programs (e.g., Star Volunteers, Events, etc)
• Must be mobile-friendly!
• Presence for current certifications

• Incorporate Spanish pages (or...whole separate Spanish website).

Technical/Maintenance

• Easy/quick for staff and volunteers to maintain
• Admin: pretty easy to learn to administer, easy to add users and privileges, easy to make new pages, easy to change layout of old pages
• Analytics to view click-throughs to individual posts, and internal navigation between individual pages and posts
• Quick loading for dial-up users
• Limit JavaScript
• More cohesive method/procedure to maintain site
• Ability to integrate with RT

Structure/Features

• Submenus
• RSS feed
• Photo area (Flickr account link?)
• Header on every page: Logo, Hours/Location/Phone, Link to directions, Social Media Buttons
• Footer on every page: Text Navigation and Search bar
• No Blog looking content, except on community news page
• Full articles on community news page.
• Currents news on Home page with fully flexible posting options

Layout/Design

• Press area expanded to include links to FG in the news, articles, FG YouTube page, link to reddit?
• Corporate hardware donor and Financial donor thanks page
• Friends/Partners links
• Links to other Free Geeks and similar organizations
• Harmful stuff in computers page
• Photo area
• Map images with links - Google, Trimet, Bicycle
• More prominent hours, location, phone number on front page
• Little to no scroll on front page
• More information in other languages, primarily Spanish (Omar can help with this)

Branding

• Reuse/Recycling
• Community
• Environmentalism
• Casual
• Empowered
• Open Source
• Global , diverse, accessible
• Creative
• Comfortable with change
• Sustainable/Green
• Community Resource
• Fun
• Cooperative Learning

Current Website

• Busy (Make new site Clean)
• Dated (Make new site Modern)
• Constrained (Make new site Flexible)
• Intelligent and fun (writing style)
• Some elements are easy to use (Build on this)

• Wants:*

· Simple Front Page (very little scrolling, if any)

· Keep current Logo (Remove pictures and just use the Free Geek logo), Choose colors that flow nicely from the logo.

· Muted colors

· New Scheme (Green ?)

· Fading colors/gradients