Hey everyone! A major project we’d like to embark on is updating and re-designing the OpenMRS website. This is a larger project than any one person can/should take on and we want to seek the community’s guidance and expertise in developing and following a project plan, which we’re currently working on.
We want to not only update our web presence but improve our capacity of maintaining our website and information going forward.
If you’re interested in joining this work group, please comment here or send me a message here. Be sure to include what your timeframe of availability might be as well as your experience so we know how to best use your strengths.
I think i can join the group since i have done some website development before, front end using Bootstrap and i can also try on backend depending on the framework or technology used
I would like to join with this project
I am working with @dkayiwa on More Metadata Management in AdminUI GSoC project. I will send further details via the message
Thanks for pushing this forward. Our website could definitely use a refresh.
My 2¢:
Process
A working group is fine, but it sounds like a lot of planning & designing with less doing. Could we find some shortcuts or near-term wins? For example, if there are some Wordpress gurus who have the time and can try out putting our existing content into a contemporary design, we could switch to that while the working group discusses the long term strategy.
Content
Adopt the prevalent “scroll & learn” design for the front page including scripted live metrics of #devs, #commits, #patients served, etc. (example)
Keep the website thin; the thinner, the better. I’d rather see openmrs.org as a public-facing mashup of our blog, tweets, latest releases, excepts from wiki pages, etc. instead of another “wiki” with loads of additional content to maintain.
Technical
Stick with Wordpress
Take this opportunity to transition to Wordpress hosted within our Jetstream infrastructure.
Set up a mirror between IU and TACC (our two different sites with servers) and DNS failover so we at least maintain a read-only presence if the website if the main server is offline.
Switch to LDAP login (e.g., Simple LDAP Plugin) using OpenMRS ID so we have one less set of user accounts to manage.
Thanks @burke. While I agree that it’s important to refrain from too much bureaucracy that could cause a lot of delay on the “doing”, I do think it is important to plan and design with the larger picture in mind. Certainly we can have short term wins, but I do not think it is to our benefit to just switch designs and then switch again within a short time frame. This could easily happen without the planning, since we don’t necessarily know all of the important factors for a design - target audience (developers or funders?), content (which content and where is it within the information architecture?), etc. I don’t think deciding those things has to take an exorbitant amount of time, but I think they are key to producing a website that will have the right information for the right person at the right time.
I have no comments on the technical aspects except that I agree 100% on making it simple to keep it updated.
This site includes content that we I’ve presented during the LT meetings in this document.
Obviously, I never truly finished this site for a couple reasons, mainly due to needing to purchase a new license both for the theme and our contact form plugin.
This is a beta site which is not meant to be used until those problems are solved.
personally i think this design is good so maybe we should look at solving these [quote=“jeffneiman, post:8, topic:12881”]
I never truly finished this site for a couple reasons, mainly due to needing to purchase a new license both for the theme and our contact form plugin
[/quote]
