2013 Website Overhaul Project

Jane Sebastian and I (Lillie Chilen) are overhauling the RailsBridge.org website. It will be in a repo under my name until we're ready to get larger feedback on it, at which point, we'll bring it over to the official RailsBridge repo.

Here's where it lives currently: http://sleepy-atoll-6384.herokuapp.com/.

And here's our project backlog: https://www.pivotaltracker.com/s/projects/710609

Goals

• Site should be version controlled and updates should happen via pull requests on a GitHub repo
• Site should look good and be easy to navigate
• Quick access to workshop materials / curriculum
• Clearer path for workshop "grads" who want to get involved
• Really, clearer paths for anyone using the site
• Improve the structure of the Learning Resources page (when you should do what tutorial/book/etc)

Features

• Blog, calendar, donation functionality (blog will likely live on WordPress)
• Live Twitter feed on homepage
• Recent blog post titles on homepage
• Volunteer/organizer interest form

Process

• Jane and I are going to work with a few UX / visual design folks to get feedback on what we have so far.
• We're going to build the website from my repo
• When it's ready for larger amounts of collaboration, we'll make it a real repo under the RailsBridge org
• Launch!!

Resources

• Patrick Leahy did a bunch of visual design work for Bridge Troll. The top mockup on this page didn't work out for Bridge Troll, but is good inspiration for a new RailsBridge.org home page.
• Alex Chaffee is the keeper of RailsBridge DNS, once we're ready to point Railsbridge.org toward the site. (We'll also need to remove the redirect app that's currently pointing railsbridge.org to workshops.railsbridge.org)

Outstanding Questions

• What's the relationship between this site and Bridge Troll?
• How can we use the Bridge Troll workshop data (historical & new), so things become dynamic moving forward?
• Should we have the top nav bar on the home page?
• Should we include sponsorship benefits somewhere?

Non-MVP Wish List

• Google map visualization of all past workshops
• Ongoing (non-workshop specific) feedback loop for students & volunteers
• Side project: make a Jekyll site out of the Cookbook so it can be prettier
• Research project: find all the workshop-specific write-ups and link to them in some kind of reasonable way