REDESIGN PAGE
This page is meant to be used by everyone participating in the redesign process of OutHistory.org.
Jonathan, September 17, 2011
Look at the New York Times on line as a good example of website design that has similar problem to OutHistory in letting users know what's on the site's different sections.
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html?src=hp1-0-P
From Jonathan, August 30, 2011
OutHistory Maintenance Issues
There's really not that much that's absolutely necessary to do on a daily basis re maintenance.
To make the following type of maintenance changes on OutHistory requires special System Operator privileges on the part of user. Who has those privileges should be limited and kept track of.
1. Daily: check for spam via RECENT CHANGES function on red bar.
If spam is found, delete it and block sender.
2. Via RECENT CHANGES, if significant content entries have been added to OutHistory, they should be added to the section on the Main Page titled “What’s NEW on OutHistory.org?”
3. Daily check of email now sent to Project Coordinator at outhistory@gc.cuny.edu. (We need a new email address for this.)
4. Check Comments sections to see if people have asked questions that need to be answered via a new comment by an OutHistory administrator.
5. For a list of Maintenance issues and entries that need to be fixed click on SPECIAL PAGES on red bar and see
6. Tagging (or categorizing) entries that have not been tagged, or not well tagged, will make much more content findable on OutHistory.org. This is probably a major problem on the site, that not enough of the content has been tagged to make it findable via a search. So if a maintenance person has extra time they could work on putting categories at the bottom of entries. For an example of a well-tagged entry see the exhibits in the Colonial Era entries: at The Age of Sodomitical Sin
From Jonathan. August 29, 2011
OutHistory's Identity as a History Site Focused on Time
OutHistory.org: It’s About Time!
Seems to me that time is the essence of OutHistory.org, the thing that distinguishes it from a sociology site, an encyclopedia, or a museum. The actions of people in classes over time, movement and stasis, seems to me to define what OutHistory is about. This identity of the site needs to be made much clearer aesthetically, in the graphic design, functionally, and in terms of content stressed.
So I argue that figuring out ways to convey time to OutHistory users and content creators should therefore be the major focus of the aesthetic, functional, and structural redesign.
Part of my emphasis on time goes back to the very earliest research I did for Gay American History, between 1973 and 1975. To get a quick overview of what kind of sources and events were then known about homosexual U.S. history I got all the existing bibliographies on the subject, copied them, and cut up the entries and scotch taped them them in chronological order to three by five cards. It was completely revelatory. “Oh, that happened two years before that!” “Oh, that was published just after that!” I know that simple chronology is the most basic form of history, but it does remain, I think, a basic, illuminating starting point.
So I would like OutHistory to provide a REVELATORY time-related experience for its users similar to the experience I had years ago. I’d like them to say “Oh!!!” when they look at the site.
Ways the Site Can Stress Time
VIA GRAPHIC DESIGN (aesthetically):
VIA IMAGES
- Visualizing Time
- Think of all the ways that time is visualized in movies:
- calendar pages turn
- clocks of different kinds tell the time
- A recent art piece using lots of filmed time images and references to tell the current time might prove inspiring. See: Christian Marclay, The Clock. YouTube.com See also the review of this art piece in The New York Review of Books
- Think of all the ways that time is visualized in movies:
VIA WORDS
- Slogans:
- OutHistory.org: It’s About Time!
- OutHistory.org: Making Up For Lost Time!
- OutHistory.org: Time is of the Essence!
VIA TIME RELATED FUNCTIONS
- OutHistory should include a variety of time-related searches
- Search by day month and year (eg, June 28, 1969)
- Search by day of the week (e.g. what happened on a Monday?)
- Search by month and day (e.g., what happened on February 2?)
- Search by century and/or decade (OutHistory is set up for this, but we haven't tagged all the entries, so they don't show up. For those that are tagged click here
- Search by time period. When we redesigned the search recently this got lossed somehow. Some of the Time Era categories are viewable here
- In the redesign, perhaps all searches can have results that have a time factor stated.
VIA TIME RELATED CONTENT
- Chronologies of events should be included
- Some are already begun on OutHistory: (eg, Chronology for Out and Elected in the USA, Bloomington, Indiana, LGBT History Chronology 1969-2009, History of the Term "Heterosexual"
- Titles should include time in a consistent place
- Entries should stress time.
- (e.g., see the main entry on the life of Alberta Lucille Hart/Alan Hart)
CATEGORIZING/TAGGING (time-related)
If time related searches are to work, all content must be tagged or categorized by time. We have not done this consistently in the past. Maybe it can be made easier to do. The site could provide forms to add time related data.
