Subject: [Tools-team] web site items

From: Andrew Sullivan <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 18:54:58 -0500

Hi all,

Since I seem to be having no luck running into folks while I'm here
in Vancouver, I thought I'd better put this to the list.  (That's no
dig at others -- it's a reflection of my relative cluelessness in
this area.)

I've had some trouble with my test server for this, so I don't have a
live site up to look at; but I don't think it matters, since we've
concluded that (1) we're not going to do much in the way of dynamic
presentation and (2) the paid staff will actually be implementing
this, and all we're offering is guidelines.

So the guidelines are these:

We have at least directories for "about", "activities", something for
graphics (I picked "images", but the names are not important), and
"other sites".  Under the "activities" one we'll need some further
subdirectories for RFCs and meetings.  The general idea here is to separate
out anything that is likely to have a lot of files, so that it is
possible to manage this.

The top-level directory should contain only top-level stuff.

Every directory has a menu file that is server-side included on
every page in that subdirectory.  That actually corresponds to the
"leftmenu" div (which is where it gets included).  Adding a new set
of files to a setion of the site is merely a matter of creating the
files and adding a menu ite in the menu file (this makes rsync and
suchlike mirroring cheap, because most files don't actually change
when the menu changes, although the HTTP-presented files of course do
all change).  

Every menu except the top one includes a "Home" link which takes you
back to the top level.  That way, getting to another subsection is
trivial.  You can also go there by going to the relevant section link
in the left-hand menu.

In the enclosed example, I haven't done anything about the server side
includes (because you really need apache working correctly and
configured to do that), so do't look for it.  I still think this gets
the idea across.

In here, the top-level page, the Activities index page, the
Activities/RFC page, and the About pages work (and anything that
does't refer to an outside site does not).  You just unpack the whole
directory example_pages, and then follow the relevant
(aforementioned) links around starting by opening the file
activities/index.html.  Sorry this is so incredibly stupid, but since
I'm in Vancouver, I can't fix the (hardware failed) box in my office
at home.

As near as I can tell, this works for any reasonably recent browser
(including, in what I think is a functional way, lynx, w3m, and
links).  I don't really have much access to IE, though, so people
might want to quibble with the implementation.  Since implementation
is officially Not Our Problem, I'm not worrying about that.

Note that this approach _does_ impose on the paid staff a certain
amount of overhead in maintaining the site.  It would probably be a
very good thing to create a maintainer's manual for any new actual
site before it goes live (I'd like to see that as a hard requirement,
actually), because otherwise the usability troubles that have
gradually emerged on the current site will likely show up again in
the future (my diagnosis is that the complaints people have are
mostly "can't find X" ones as opposed to "X does not exist": the
latter is how it's phrased, but is almost always false, reducing it
to the former).

I hope this is what people were looking for.  Let me know.  If you
want to discuss this, I'll be here in Vancouver through early
afternoon tomorrow, after which I have to get on a plane.  Email is
good, although I've had sort of spotty network success --
<[email-masked]> might be better, since that will almost certainy
reach me on my phone-pda thing.  I'm also available by telephone: +1
416 731 1261 is my mobile; and I'll be around, of course, in various
sessions.

Best,
A

-- 
----
Andrew Sullivan                         204-4141 Yonge Street
Afilias Canada                        Toronto, Ontario Canada
<[email-masked]>                              M2P 2A8
                                        +1 416 646 3304 x4110

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