Redesign Project Moves Forward

As of today, we have hired an experienced Drupal developer and supplied him with an outline of our needs (based, in part, on the work of the Design subcommittee). He in turn has hired a designer who will develop A VALE Drupal theme. As soon as we have some screenshots of the theme we will post them here for your review and feedback.

In the meantime, the Content subcommittee and the Usability subcommittee have both been very busy. The Content subcommittee has reached out t all of the VALE Committee Co-Chairs and is working with them to determine what content needs to be migrated to the new site and to identify what content is missing. The Usability subcommittee is using Google Analytics and other tools in order to gain a better understanding of how our current site is being used.

The next VALE Website Committee meeting is scheduled for May 13, 2009 at Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. All VALE members are welcome to attend.

Content Migration

This is a post directed towards the chairs of all of the various VALE Web Committees.

What Content on Your Committee Webpage Needs to Be Migrated into the New VALE Website?

Please review your committee webpage (http://valenj.org/newvale/about/committee/) and let us know what content on your committee webpage(s) you would like to migrate to the new website when it is ready. The Website Committee would also like to hear your suggestions about the new VALE website – what to include, how it should look like and how it could be more functional to better serve your needs. Please feel free to post your comments and suggestions here.

Feedback on the Current VALE Website

Recently, each member of the VALE Web Committee was asked to contact staff at his or her library for a preliminary usability survey regarding http://www.valenj.org:

o What do you think is missing on that website and should be added the new VALE portal?
o What would you like to remove from the current site?
o What kind of layout do you think would be more functional to the VALE community?

When you have a moment, please visit the current VALE website at www.valenj.org and add your comments to this blog. The committee would like to hear your suggestions about what to include, how it should look like and how it could be more functional to better serve your needs.

Welcome

The VALE Website Committee is in the process of planning and creating a new CMS based web portal for VALE.

The purpose of this blog is to provide the VALE community, and the web community, with the following:

• background information on the redesign project
• project updates
• screenshot previews
• opportunities for feedback

Thanks for taking an interest in our efforts to improve the functionality, accessibility, usability and design of www.valenj.org.