EG Redesign - Ideas and Suggestions?

[Drashner1]

In a word, yes. If it is possible to cycle through background images specific to the section, as is done on the main page, that would be a plus. The goal of this suggestion is to create a unified visual theme for the website as a whole, hopefully one that is both visually interesting and that communicates a sense of the setting.

From a technical perspective, I would need to talk to Trond about this since I have no idea what the technical challenges of this would be nor would it would 'cost' in terms of having hundreds of pages all doing the image cycling thing, and doing it with different sets of images for each.

Note that there are around 300 Topic pages in the EG so if we had even one image per Topic that would be 300+ large size images and (if we had 6 per page such as we have on the Main Page) 1800+ large images that would need to be loaded, kept track of, and presumably updated from time to time. The Main Page tool can actually support both more and less than 6 images, but this gives some idea of the scope of doing this.

This is not to say that this isn't workable/doable. Just that it might (or might not) have a number of 'costs' associated with it or with doing it at scale.

Perhaps the Archives could feature the current content format, perhaps as part of a description of how the OAUP has "evolved" over the years since its founding. Speaking of archives, how difficult is it to make them searchable? If it is more trouble than it's worth, then that idea can be tabled until some future date ....

Radtech497

I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean by 'archives' in this context. Do you mean these pages HERE or something else? I don't know what would be involved in making them specifically searchable and they do seem a bit small to do that. The Search bar on the Main Page uses Google and appears to pull up material from the archive when used, although I imagine you would have to know to enter relevant search terms. But I may be misunderstanding you, so asking for clarification.

I imagine we could create some kind of set of archival images of the different past looks of the project (might as well not just stop at the current one, if we're going to do it), although I don't have the know how to say what the options for doing that might be. Perhaps it would work better as something like one of the art galleries, which screenshots of the different past versions of the project? That could be linked into the Archives as well. Or only from the Archives, I suppose.

Thoughts?

Todd