Open call for Drupal developers to rebuild HASTAC.org

 

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1. Background

The current hastac.org web site was created by a vendor in 2008 and 2009, and is managed by HASTAC's Director of New Media Strategy.  The site failed to meet many key objectives when it was launched, and additional problems have been discovered upon attempting to resolve ongoing issues.  We believe it will be both cost-effective and more efficient to create a new web site rather than attempt to patch problems in the old site. 

The website is currently running Drupal 6.14 in a LAMP environment, and is hosted by Trinity Technical Services, a department of Duke's College of Arts and Sciences.  The server is a Apache CentOS5.4 machine with mySQL 5.0.77 and PHP 5.2.12. We also have a development server that mirrors this environment with script-driven database syncing from production to development.

a. About HASTAC

Although we are housed at Duke University, HASTAC is a "virtual organization" which operates much like a nonprofit. Finances are accordingly limited. Below is an organizational description from our brochure.

b. Web site purpose

As a "virtual organization" nearly all of HASTAC's work is accomplished through our online presence. Therefore the goals of the organization are also the goals of the web site.  We are currently focused on these three interrelated priorities:

• Grow: To cultivate knowledge and communities around digital media and twenty-first century learning by sharing information, ideas, and practices.
• Connect: To build an interdisciplinary network of visionaries and practitioners for mutual support, information exchange, and movement building.
• Learn: To inform the academy, the public, and ourselves about new ways of thinking and learning and to foster innovative pedagogies.

More about our goals is available in Appendix C below.

c. Current site statistics

HASTAC.org regularly averages over 20,000 visits per month by over 16,000 people (or bots).  Visitors spend about 2.5 minutes on the site and average more than 2 pageviews per visit.  Three-fourths of visitors come from networks in the United States, with a few percent each originating in Canada, the United Kingdom, India, and Australia.

Nearly half of our visitors were using Firefox, with over 25% using Internet Explorer, and 15% using Safari. Over one-third of visits were from Macintoshes, 60% from Windows, over 2% from Linux, and about 2% on mobile platforms including iPhones (we use a service from Mobify.com which redirects users to a mobile-friendly version of the site).  In the past year (July 2009 - June 2010), 44% of traffic was from search engines, 30% from referrals, and 26% were direct hits.

After the front page, the following are the top 10 most visited pages on the site in the past year:

1. HASTAC Scholars (http://hastac.org/scholars)
2. DML Competition (http://www.hastac.org/dml-competitions/2009)
3. Projects (http://www.hastac.org/projects)
4. User registration (http://www.hastac.org/user/register)
5. HASTAC Director Cathy Davidson's July 2009 blog post on crowdsourcing grading (http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/how-crowdsource-grading)
6. HASTAC blogs (http://www.hastac.org/blog)
7. A May 2010 interview by a HASTAC Scholar with the creator a video game called Dwarf Fortress (http://www.hastac.org/blogs/elijahmeeks/procedural-humanities-interview-tarn-adams-creator-dwarf-fortress)
8. A HASTAC staff member's announcement about the DML Competition (http://www.hastac.org/blogs/nancykimberly/2-million-competition-opens-ideas-transform-learning)
9. News and Opportunities (http://www.hastac.org/news_opportunities)
10. The November 2009 HASTAC Scholars program forum on grading and evaluation (http://www.hastac.org/forums/hastac-scholars-discussions/grading-20-evaluation-digital-age)

More statistics will be available to the developer once site work is underway.

2. Site specifications and strategy

a. Platform:

We expect the web site to remain on the Drupal platform.  Depending on the timing and developer's recommendation, we may convert to Drupal 7, or remain on Drupal 6 with a plan to upgrade within a year.  While we believe that Drupal provides a strong community framework and is the right tool for our needs, we are also open to and interested in incorporating content from outside sites such as RSS feeds and social content generated by our members (with their permission of course).

The new web site should focus primarily on flexibility and simplicity. Solutions should strongly favor semantic and accessible options such as modules, views, and panels that staff can easily administer through the Drupal interface. HASTAC is a dynamic and evolving organization, and the web site should reflect this by utilizing modular page structures that can be easily replicated and modified (automatically or manually) to reflect varying contexts and uses. See further discussion of this under Site content and structure below.

b. Design:

We would like to update the web site's theme to better reflect HASTAC while also greatly simplifying templates for greater future flexibility. Some current visual aspects of the site should remain, such as the HASTAC logo banner. This logo and our 2010 brochure (see Appendix A) should strongly inform the site's look and feel.  The HASTAC brochure uses limited colors and strategic white space to create an atmospheric feeling that evokes technology and the future without being overly literal. Deep blue signals our connection to Duke University and golden yellow ties in our logo, in which overlapping color bars represent a symbolic hay stack.

HASTAC is a cutting-edge organization that is thoroughly informed by digital culture, but we are also a deeply rooted in the historic world of education, and we exist at the intersection of many disparate disciplines. The design of the site should express this identity by balancing modern ideas with a broadly welcoming experience.  The site should utilize sub-themes for subtle visual changes in specific areas.  For example, the Digital Media and Learning Competition should have it's own clear identity while not losing the navigation and brand of the overall site. This could be accomplished by changing the background color of the page, and/or using a consistent logo to represent respective sections of the site.

Above all, the new theme should serve the site's members first by emphasizing usability. A successful design will balance aesthetics that appeal to web site visitors and also make key features clear and easy to use.

c. Usability:

The site should have a strong emphasis on creating a positive and productive user experience for visitors and especially members. ("Members" are defined as anyone with a valid account on the site.)  The site's interface should point users to clear next actions such as creating a member profile, posting new content, finding and getting involved in groups/projects, and responding to other users' content.

Interfaces should be well-designed and easy to use, especially for staff or members adding or editing content on the site.  For example, we expect a typical user with minimal training to be able to post a simple piece of content with text, images, and links in ten minutes or less.  Designs should rely primarily on text and CSS rather than images to convey important information.

The site should conform to all applicable W3C standards including Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and any other relevant Technical Specifications for markup.

d. Audience:

The target audience of the site are people who are interested in participating in a collaborative, interdisciplinary community of scholars, technologists, researchers, philanthropists, teachers, futurists, and other agents of change.  We hope to appeal to those who will engage in this community by sharing content, communicating with others on and off the site, and contributing to the greater conversation about the future of learning. 

It is less important to us who users are, and more important what they do.  That said, a large number of the most active users of the site are graduate students, professors, undergraduate students, or otherwise involved in teaching and learning. They are more educated and more technically-savvy than average web users. (For example, more than 75% of them use web browsers other than Internet Explorer!)

Although this core group of HASTAC members is both technologically curious and tolerant, we want the site to appeal to a wider range of people such as high school teachers, community technologists, and government administrators. This means that the site's interface should be understandable and user-friendly. For example, icons can help people understand a function, and clear next steps that take users up the ladder of engagement.

e. Key features

We would like to reiterate that no single function is as important as the need to keep the site simple and easy to change in the future. Proposals should state which features would be included, and which should be delayed or modified  to maximize flexibility.

• Core Drupal tools including blogs, forums, event calendar, announcements (stories), comments, RSS feeds.
• E-mail newsletters with user-controlled subscriptions, and e-mail delivery of RSS content.
• Content "sets" that manually bring together nodes of any type to be displayed in a variety of ways (such as a list, table, excerpts, page, etc.). These can be created and managed by individuals or groups of users (probably via Organic Group membership). See more under 4b. Content organization below.
• Wikis that allow specified groups of people (probably via Organic Group membership) to create and collaborate on a collection of web pages.
• Simple tools for embedding media (such as Flickr images, YouTube videos, or uploaded files) in nodes and comments.  Users should also be able to easily paste content from Microsoft Word or other sources without mangling web page formatting.
• Organic Groups (or a comparable tool) to allow a subset of members to opt-in to additional conversation and group activities such as curating sets and designing collections of information. Designated "owners" should be able to manage the group including approving membership requests, if they do not choose open membership for the group.
• User badges to indicate key roles such as staff, HASTAC Scholars, DML winners, users with high karma points, and so on.
• Site search that allows users to locate both content and users by keywords and meta data.
• Geographic search to find events and members (with their permission) by proximity to a zip code, city, or state.
• Taxonomies that can dynamically display their contents in a variety of ways including a description for each vocabulary term.

• Content rating (along the lines of Facebook's "Like") by registered users, with accompanying views showing the top content of a certain type and/or time period.
• Karma points that reward users for activities such as posting new content, commenting, rating, curating, friending, and sharing.
• User tagging to allow any member to tag another member's content.

3. Content migration

All content that is currently in our Drupal 6 web site will need to be migrated to the new web site. Much of this will be fairly a straightforward apples-to-apples translation, however there are a few difficult issues which we hope to address in the migration to a new web site.  We will be consolidating three different image management systems into one, which will require careful cataloging and conversion, as well as changing image references wherever the location changes. In addition, some content types may be added, removed, or converted which will require special attention. We expect that this transition will require a comprehensive inventory of all content on the site, but will look to the developer for recommendations on the best approach to these challenges.  Accordingly, strong database expertise will needed to make this transition.

4. Site content and structure

The HASTAC web site is rich with years of content generated by an active and engaged community of users ("members").  The key challenges today are facilitating participation on the site, and making it easier for people to find and use relevant content.  We have envisioned some of the tools and structures below, but hope that the developer who works on this site will use their own experience to suggest better alternatives where they may exist.

In addition to the rich content and community on our web site, we hope the new site will also connect to other sites that allow for interaction or integration with their content through social media streams, RSS feeds, widgets, and other mechanisms.

a. Content types

Core content types that all members should be able to create or add to the site are: blog entries, forum posts, events, announcements, external links, external RSS feeds, and multimedia files (see table below). In addition, the site should continue to utilize pages for static content, and Organic Groups (or a comparable tool, at the developer's suggestion) to allow members to communicate with a subset of other users.  In addition, we envision two key tools to help staff, members, and groups of users to organize and present a combination of the above content: sets and collections (see Content organization below).

Content types:

b. Content organization

Sets - curated content

Sets are a method for individual members, groups of members, or staff to assemble and curate a group of nodes.  This could be accomplished through a unique taxonomy, a module such as Node Queue, or some other tool recommended by the developer.  Sets may include more than one type of node, and may have more than one author.  Collective authorship might be determined by membership in Organic groups or by Roles.

Example Sets: recommended links and blog entries on grading, class syllabus documents, selected competition-winning projects, blog posts and forums on the topic of games and learning. 

Collections - modular presentation

Portals are modular page layouts that allow site administrators to easily display blocks of dynamic content or display existing Sets. While advanced users may create custom collections, there should also be several standard collection layouts that can be used as templates to display content dynamically based on context.  This might be accomplished through a well-configured Panels module utilizing Views and Taxonomies, or some other tool recommended by the developer.  Portals should take advantage of interchangeable elements (probably Blocks and/or Panel Panes) that are configured by default to display content based on the context in which they are displayed (for example: posts related to a tag if viewing a taxonomy term, posts related to a person if viewing an author).

Standard collection types may include: taxonomy term, gallery, organic group or community, newsletter, program or project events calendar.  Typical collection elements could include:

• a set of nodes selected by an individual or group (see explanation above)
• meta info (ie: about the author/post/context)
• excerpts of recent or featured blog entries
• excerpts of recent or featured forums
• list of links
• media (gallery)
• feature (with image) from a node or custom content
• user list or grid 
• list of recent comments
• list of most read or most popular comments
• activity stream /or links to social media services
• RSS aggregator
• search box
• internal links (related to the program/info)
• upcoming events
• map display
• widget (paste code)
• tag cloud
• recent announcements

Example collections: information about an event including location and date, blog posts about the event, related links, and downloadable media files; a project home page including a list of members, recent blog posts, a photo gallery, and 3 external RSS feeds from related organizations.


Taxonomies

We hope to keep organizational structure as simple as possible. When possible, we favor utilizing taxonomies broadly across the site rather than duplicating systems for different content types and contexts.  This is open to refinement, but we propose the following categories:

Vocabulary	Applies to	Examples
Tags	nearly all content types	User-generated folksonomy.
Announcement type	only announcements (stories)	HASTAC News, Fellowships and Employment, Calls for Papers, Other News
Forum topics	only forum posts	HASTAC Scholars Discussions, Digital Media and Learning, etc.
Competition cohort	Organic Groups and possibly to the nodes posted to them (which is nearly all content types)	2008, 2009, 2010; 2009 Young Innovators, 2010 Learning Labs, 2010 Game Changers
Initiatives	nearly all content types	HASTAC Scholars, DML Competition, Masters Program, HASTAC @Duke,etc.

c. User profiles and social networking

Each member of the site should have a personal profile page that introduces him or her to the rest of the HASTAC community.  In addition to standard information such as picture, bio, location, and URL, the profile should also show the member's activity on the site including recent content posted, group memberships, and possibly also comments made on other users' content.  Profiles should also display the user's "karma" points,  role-based badges, and bookmarked or favorited pages on the site. 

Each profile should also have a link that allows other registered users to add them to their network (ie: buddy list).  Accordingly the list of friends on the site should be displayed on the profile.

Optionally, the user profile might be seen as a personal "collection" (see above) that allows each member to add and remove content as they chose. In addition to the basic information described above, possible content to display might include: recent content from the user's network, items from an internal or external RSS feed, a list of recommended links, or a featured node from the site. To simplify, the collection layout might be determined by staff and not allow for personal modification.

Since network-building is a key part of HASTAC's mission, we would like to make user profiles and related social tools very prominent on the site through things like a "My HASTAC" tab on the top-level navigation, and user-friendly links around the site that show how users can interact with content and with each other.  Such tools and link should generally be visible to anonymous users, who would be presented with a prompt to log in or register before interacting with the site.
 

d. Home page

e. Scenarios

The following narratives and images are intended to illustrate the workflow and outcomes we hope to see on the new site. They are not to be taken as instructions, but simply examples of how information might be utilized and presented.  We hope that the developer will apply their own expertise in determine how to best operationalize our goals.
 

Single blog entry

Even on pages with just one node, such as a blog post, the user should be presented with context about the content she or he is viewing. In this case there is a title, author, date, representative image (also used as a smaller icon for this post in listings, and may also appear n the body of the post) as well as tags.  In addition, the intro box contains a short teaser or tagline for the post, links to bookmark, tag, and like the post (on hastac.org), and offers tools for sharing with other social networks.  Liking the post would generate points for the author as well as for the liker to encourage feedback.

The author's name, badges, image, title, organization, and short bio are in a block along with relevant links such as to the author's blog and user profile, and the option to add the author to he viewer's network (on hastac.org).  This author profile box might appear at the top, bottom, or side of the page.

Comments are shown on the same page below the main entry, with the form to add a comment at the very end of the page.  Each comment shows it's own title and the commenter's name, small profile image, and date of posting.  Each comment also has a "like" button generates karma points for both the commenter and the liker. 

The commenting form has an optional title field, simple formatting options in a WYSIWYG editor, and a (required) preview button.  Users must be registered and logged into comment. Anonymous users see a message encouraging them them to log in or register in place of the comment form.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Group collection

A group of students that are members of an Organic group curates a collection of resources on the topic of technology in the classroom. The collection has its own home page which uses a panel layout to display nodes of various types. The page has the following blocks or panes:

• Title of the collection and meta data including a description, creation date, last modified date, author (in this case, the group name), and any relevant categories or tags. The collection may also have a representative image that acts as an icons in listings and in this intro box.
• Selected blog entries with title, author, excerpt, small representative image, tags. Link to an archive more entries.
• A list of group members, with the owner(s) indicated, and link to a page listing complete group membership if needed.
• One featured node (perhaps a forum post) with title, author, excerpt, medium-size representative image, tags.
• Upcoming events including title, start date, perhaps an excerpt and/or image.
• Links to outside web sites, showing just the title and perhaps tags.
• A gallery of media (images, videos, other documents) with medium-sized images and caption for each. Link to a full archive of the gallery.

When viewing any of the individuals nodes that are in this collection, the user should be signaled with a link to see the collection home page.  See image at right for a sketch illustrating this use case.

 

 

 

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D. Wireframe sketches

Single blog entry:


Group collection:


Competition home page: