Welcome to the public beta site for the new Internet Society website! During June through August 2017 we will be “developing in the open” and updating this site as we create new content and migrate some content off our existing website.
Today, on June 4, this site is a “very early beta” showing the overall look-and-feel and design direction of the website. Most of the site is INCOMPLETE and so most links will not work and many pages are missing.
The feedback we seek right now includes questions such as:
- Does the overall design work for you in your region?
- Do you have any comments about what you see so far?
Many technical aspects of the site will be changing as will much of the content.
We invite you to provide your feedback on those questions over on the “issue tracker” of this Github repository:
https://github.com/InternetSociety/beta-site-feedback
You do need to have a Github account (or signup for a free one) to open a new “issue” or leave comments on existing issues. If you do not wish to open up a Github account, you are welcome to send feedback via email to Dan York at york@isoc.org
For more background on the new website, please read this post from James Wood.
Known issues with the beta site currently include:
- Most links do not work.
- Many more pages need to be added.
- The URL structure will change.
- The items in the menus will change slightly as we adjust them.
- Images have not yet been optimized for low-bandwidth connections.
- The mobile interfaces need further development.
- Accessibility testing has not yet been performed.
- Social media sharing icons do not appear on the left side of pages. (They will!)
- The filtering function on the news page is not yet implemented.
- The search function is not yet implemented.
This initial beta period is primarily to receive feedback on the overall design direction. We appreciate any thoughts you have on the work so far.
Future Beta Periods
Over the next weeks and months we will be creating the new content and migrating content from the existing Internet Society website. There will be additional points at which we will be seeking feedback, including:
- ACCESSIBILITY TESTING – our site is planned to meet WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility guidelines. When ready, we will be seeking testing/feedback on the work we have done.
- BANDWIDTH TESTING – we are targeting the site to work over mobile devices on 3G connections. At a point in the development we will be seeking people to help us test how well it works on lower-bandwidth connections.
- MULTILINGUAL TESTING – later in July or August we will be bringing on the French and Spanish versions of the site. We will be seeking feedback from the community about how well those versions work in their regions.
We will provide updates over the next weeks and months and will let you know when specific feedback is requested.
We welcome all your feedback as we engage in this exciting project of defining a new ISOC website!
P.S. “Why use a Github issue tracker?”, I’ve been asked. The answer is that:
1. The issue tracker is very simple and easy to use.
2. We didn’t have an issue tracker on another site/service where many people already had logins – and didn’t want to use “yet-another-site” where people had to create accounts simply to leave issues.
3. To that point, many people who we believe will provide comments on the site design already have Github accounts – and accounts are free.
4. Our (Internet Society) IT team is already using Github to coordinate with our development partner. While the feedback will be primarily monitored by myself and a couple of others involved with the redesign, the fact that the IT and development teams can also see the feedback is very useful.
The post READ THIS FIRST – How to provide feedback about this Beta site appeared first on Internet Society.
