Thursday Meeting (4/6) notes by Kent
Meeting notes from this morning
Present: Jyotish, Peter Sk, Kent, Maria, Nabha
1) Website design
a) Keep fonts same for header as on ananda.org
b) Keep curve also
c) Make bottom left lighter color and blend in
d) *! Maria volunteered her considerable skills with the design. Kent is relieved and sending files to her.
e) Make working title" Ananda Resource Library"
f) See below for notes on major sections of library
2) Authentication
a) Most areas of site will require authentication which will be tied to information in Sales Logix database such as whether person is kriyaban, minister, sevaka member, Sanghi, etc. Each will eventually offer access to various sections of library.
b) in exchange for minimal "privileges" on the site (for newbies) we want at some minimum of information: e.g.
-email which will be validated by sending to that email address
-geographic information, e.g. country, state. Yes they can lie but that only gets them inacurate information back from us. We will then offer them ability to sign up for various existing email lists like e-notes, sangha notes, etc. Called "permissive based emailing" . We will need to add more fields to the database on Priyanath (used for authentication) that gets updated from SLX.
c) (Question of how to manage this when email is bad. Do we remove privileges?)
d) also will have ways of defeating email bots (not discussed at meeting due to technical nature)
e) Peter Skillman will flesch out the concepts here in detail prior to next meeting
3) Google Mini- Jyotish authorized purchase of Google Mini. Kent to get quote and purchase. This will be the "small one" capable of handling 50,000 pages (Nabha calculate after meeting that we have approx 5k-6k pages potential at present). This unit can be upgraded to 300,000 pages if/when needed. We will work to get installed at Ananda Bell on the "rack" and connected to WAN within next few weeks and do first test with EL.org site. Skillman will assist in configuration. Ric at Ananda Bell (and Koral) have already given the magic blessing.
4) Document Conversion of Ananda Bookshelf- Nabha reported we are about 10 % complete with hte conversion process. Mamata has been gone for past 4 weeks and will resume work on this process next week. He will help her get up to speed with using "expressions" to aid and automate further, the conversion process of the word documents to html. Hopefully this will speed things up.
Scott will be working on the navigation system soon.
5) Target for Beta Launch - We have targeted the Sevaka Retreat to launch a beta version of the Site as the first major component is the Ananda Bookshelf which will be available for all Sevaka order members. Jyotish will begin communication with Sevaka order members in May about all of this.
6) Major sections of website- we put up some potential sections of the website (not in cement yet) and they are listed below with subsections. This is for discussion and review. Please comment on additions/deletions/changes. The long term implication is to have these "updated" by someone. For now, we are focusing on the Sevaka Bookshelf section to get things functioning and up and running. Access to various sections, as noted previously, will be by authentication.
A) Community
--Colonies
-- Meditation Groups
-- History of Ananda
-- Forums
B) Library (more public in nature than Sevaka bookshelf)
-- Books
--Article
--Transcripts
C) Images (for download purposes to be used by worldwide Anandans)
--Public Photos of PY
--Public photos of SK
--Other useful common images such as logo, etc
D) Sevaka Order
--Bookshelf
--Minister's on the Road
posted by Unknown @ 1:33 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
Scott - the reason we are using HTML is for hyperlinks
ok...how do you plan to "pre-load" all the pre-existent documents? Does each one have to be manually uploaded through your control?
Also, the decision to go html rather than .pdf is a done deal. To lodge an appeal, contact Nabha directly.
At least for the bookshelf, it is our intention to provide mainly the written word in individual pages without photos. Scott makes a good point and originally we considered PDF formats. In fact there will be a number of older PY magazine articles which only exist in scanned PDF format. It is easier in a mass conversion situation to make the html than the PDF's. We should include the option, if possible, to upload a photo or 2 wiht a document, but most folks who will work with this probably will not have the expertise to "photoshop" the photos anyway to the correct size for the html. That is what we have webmaster for on the main site :)
Some books, including The AY are already completed in HTML and will be used in this way. We will make a copy of them to include in the bookshelf
Future additions will mostly include transcripts or Swami talks, or other talks which will be written word. There may be a book or two later on (Doesn't seem that Swami is finished writing yet does it? and there are other authors but mostly without photos)
Other sections of the library may have photos such as images, but they would be only images as an individual file.
Hopefully Nabha will weigh in on this also.
HTML is important in that it's easily accessed by the user (not much "friction"), and doesn't take you away from the site navigation.
But, most importantly, putting books online in PDF form would run into serious rights issues with Crystal Clarity, and the companies it works with. Sean told me in no uncertain terms that the books should not be online in PDF format.
This reminds, me, though -- has anyone talked with Sean about the Bookshelf being online (and protected, of course)? I imagine so, but just want to check!
Anyway, though, those are nice things to know about PDFs. For people who would otherwise upload word documents (or another non-HTML format) to the Ananda Resource Library, PDFs are preferable.
What we'd lose is editability, right? (From Word to PDF.) It's possible that editability will turn out to be important here and there, perhaps in the beginning, before we have anything like a wiki set up.
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