FOSS4G'13

The working site for the conference committee of FOSS4G 2013

Web design

Posted by Barry Rowlingson on November 28, 2012

The first 90% of the work takes 90% of the estimated time, the last 10% takes another 90%. Hence the web page is 90% sorted.

Check it out now:

Home page: http://ma-wwwprod.lancs.ac.uk:8080/wordpress/
Single Sidebar page: http://ma-wwwprod.lancs.ac.uk:8080/wordpress/about-foss4g/contact/
Full Width Page: http://ma-wwwprod.lancs.ac.uk:8080/wordpress/sponsorship-opportunities/sponsorship-packages/

Sponsor's Page: http://ma-wwwprod.lancs.ac.uk:8080/wordpress/sponsors/duff-brewing-co/
(I'm thinking a sponsor's page shouldn't have all the other sponsor's in the footer)

News Posting Page: http://ma-wwwprod.lancs.ac.uk:8080/wordpress/2012/10/11/foss4g-2013-logo-competition/
(just noticed the comments flow out of the boxes)


You can also check it out on phones and it should rearrange itself fairly nicely (again, some minor box overflow issues).

I've also done a print stylesheet which gets rid of most of the sidebars, menus, etc that don't make sense on paper. (maybe the sponsor logos in the footer should go too?). Do a Print Preview from your browser to check that out.

Works okay in FF, Chrome, IE-latest last time I checked it, IE-8 with slight reduced functionality/appearance, okay in Android phone browser, Opera

That's about a week's work of dicking about, cursing PHP, swearing at WordPress, trying assorted things, rescaling graphics, hunting missing semicolons etc.

To deploy this on the server will require:

1. install conferencer on server
2. install responsive theme
3. install foss4g2013 theme
4. set theme
5. modify theme defaults
6. populate theme widgets (the homepage boxes and the sidebar)
7. configure the social media thing that creates the 'Buzz'

So many steps, and most of them hard to go back on. I suggest that if Jo and I can sit down to do this together for a time one day next week then that will minimise the disruption and our combined expertises might be necessary (also we might need extra Barry K power).

I'm away Friday to Weds middayish (so will miss the group meet on Friday)

Comments

Jo Cook on November 28, 2012:

Sounds good- well done that man!

Friday next week would be the best day for me for getting this deployed on the main site- if you think the various styling issues can be resolved in time? 

Jo

Jo Cook on November 28, 2012:

PS, message sent to OSGeo webcom team to update logos on foss4g.org and osgeo.org with our approved one

Jo

Steven Feldman on November 28, 2012:

Big thumbs up and thanks from me

Seems to work on my phone but the blocks all get placed one beneath the other which may not be the order we want them in, can explain on phone if you wish.

Suggest that the web design and CfP are main topics for Friday's call. Can everyone have a look at Barry's links and list comments, suggestions, requests so that we can get close to the finish line after Friday's call

steven

Barry Rowlingson on November 28, 2012:

On narrow screens it should get rearranged. I've left the default which is to put the left sidebar items first - given that's currently the top sponsors and the newsflash I think that is justifiable, although saying that and trying it on my Android phone the sponsors and newsflash fill the screen and there's no sign of the conference name or logo etc.. Hmm... I'll see how fiddly it is to restructure that...

On subsequent pages the sidebar always appears after the content.

Barry Rowlingson on November 28, 2012:

Okay, column order changed so that on narrow screens you get menu, main animated image/logo+text, then top sponsors, newsflash, second tier sponsors, latest news, then the three sub-boxes and so on.

Have also fixed the comment overflow error reported before.

Barry Rowlingson on December 5, 2012:

Okay, if we're going to make this thing live tomorrow we have to

  • make sure we are happy with the graphics on the carousel
  • get sponsor logos and information

currently I've just stuck in four handy images that I resized for the carousel, and the sponsors are just joke company placeholders.

Antony Scott on December 5, 2012:

I can lend a hand if there are jobs to be done, eg content migration. Let me know.

Antony Scott on December 6, 2012:

We can't publish any of the sponsors yet can we? The carousel just stays on the  FOSS4G logo in IE, you prob. know that.

Barry Rowlingson on December 6, 2012:

In the latest IE should animate, I thought I'd checked this. I don't think
I can put in the necessaries to make it animate in IE8.

We could create a sponsor called 'Coming soon' in each of the categories to
get something in the sponsor boxes...

Rollo Home on December 6, 2012:

Minor comments noticed:
  • Committee page: strange formatting around Mark Iliffe (isn't there always?)
  • Contact: Calendar goes nowhere. / LinkedIn Events are dead now, so delete this
and that's all that I can see as issues.
Looks good. Really good. 

Barry Rowlingson on December 6, 2012:

I thought the strange formatting was a problem with the content authoring. I see now that the current web pages on the live server look okay. I'll have to see how the CSS is doing this...

Barry Rowlingson on December 6, 2012:

Contact: Calendar gets me an XML file (which I see in plain text in Chrome, as an RSS feed in Firefox)....

Same on the live site as my test site...

Barry Rowlingson on December 6, 2012:

Jo and I have just deployed the new theme to the live site! Gosh how exciting! We've put a few different widgets in the widget slots and so on.

Changing things in the theme is fairly straightforward now - I test it on my site, push to github, then we pull it to the live site. The one thing I tried to do today was the 'external links open in a new tab/window' thing, but didn't have time. The one thing I did do today was make the carousel work in IE8 - I ditched the CSS transitions and used a jquery cross-fade library that was included with the conferencer plugin.

We'll 'announce' it tomorrow, unless people spot it tonight.

So, check it out, complaints all go to the github site! [thinks: I should link the credit line to the github site]

Antony Scott on December 6, 2012:

Yay, well done all! Looks good, will have a scan over the weekend.

Antony

Steven Feldman on December 7, 2012:

Awesome stuff guys. Seems to be pretty good on iPhone with 10k wifi connection

Suchith Anand on December 12, 2012:

The new website design is looking good. Well done and thanks to all . Apologies for delay in reply as i am travelling in India with limited intenet access.

Please add the conference theme "Geo for All" in the main page. See you all in the New Year.

Suchith

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Barry Rowlingson on December 13, 2012:

I suggest we change the big green button on the home page to say "Geo For All" but still links to the 'About' page. [There's also a prominent 'About' link on the menu, so people looking for general 'aboutness' will still see that] Perhaps that 'about' page should have a bit of a re-edit to explain "Geo For All".

Steven Feldman on December 15, 2012:

Any offers to write an inspiring text for geo for all (other than suggesting me)?

Barry Rowlingson on December 15, 2012:

For what page are you talking about? Are you thinking about adding a page under About FOSS4G called "Geo For All"? Or do you want to work the "Geo For All" theme into a rewritten "About FOSS4G" page? Or something else?

Suchith had a few words in another thread:

"We will also announce "Geo for All Declaration" at FOSS4G 2013 welcoming all interested to join and support our mission of providing geospatial education and opportunities for everyone  which will be the long term legacy of our FOSS4G conference."

There's a longer text by him at the start of the thread:

https://basecamp.com/1920286/projects/762306-foss4g-13/messages/4572594-foss4g-2013-gis#comment_25902193

Suchith Anand on December 16, 2012:

For the timebeing, having the conference theme text "Geo for All" displayed somewhere in the index page is fine. In Jan when i back i will send the full text that can be added to the link page.

I will also contact all universities who have established OSGeo labs to be the founding members of the "Geo for All" declaration which we will make open to all interested government, industry and academic organisations to join later to make sure the legacy of FOSS4G 2013 continues. Thanks.

Suchith

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Barry Rowlingson on December 17, 2012:

Okay, I've put "Geo For All" in the big green button on the home page and we await some illuminating text for the Welcome page!