Website redesign

Time to update hacdc.org!

I've been threatening to spend some time updating the design and content of hacdc.org for a while, and I finally have an opportunity to do something about it. The site is based on Drupal, the same technology that powers whitehouse.gov! So, pretty much anything you can think of is within the realm of possibility.

I'll post ideas/specs/demands/etc here.

-Obscurite

Brainstorming/Ideas

My list of potential improvements (that I can recall off the top of my head) is something like:

• Reduce white space
• Use more media (Flickr pool, podcasts, videos of events, images in general)
• Emphasize donation and membership (age old nonprofit trick)
• Make it fast and easy to find out what the hottest goings-ons are in terms of projects, events
• Better calendar
• Use the Civicrm stuff ben installed to do event management eventbrite style
• Allow people to hook up circuits to the site somehow (TFine mentioned an idea that sounded like a circuit gallery)
• I thought it would be cool to build some kind of basic AI into the site to determine colors, content organization, etc. Will think more about this.

Discussion with Ben Stanfield on 12/8

• Featured events and projects
• Flickr feed
• Podcast
• Membership/Donate
• doorman
• we'll look at drupal themes and consider purchasing one from topnotchthemes if we find one worthwhile, otherwise we'll find a decent free theme and customize it
• potentially use panels (ajax tabs) for a media section on homepage?
• maybe have a "terminal mode" that uses DrupalShell (as presented at last lightning talks) for a command line mode for geeky fun

Obscurite's other random ideas: - have our IRC bot be able to twitter URLs it detects from IRC and then have the website suck those up into a "what people are discussing" block on the site. Would need a way to filter/remove undesirable content (maybe moderated?)

Potential Models to Get Design Ideas From

• Pink Line Project: A local, Drupal-powered arts news site