I'd like your opinion of the new DCDP website.

[crispini]

This just rolled out yesterday. Thoughts?

http://www.dallasdemocrats.org/

Edited to add: Also, if you could, tell me your role in the party-- are you a precinct chair? an activist? a candidate, etc? and your role in developing any other websites in the past -- designer, programmer, etc. I'd mostly be interested to know this in order to get some context for your feedback!

Thanks! :hi:

[Bouncy Ball]

1. I like!

It's very nice, it's set as my home page, so I see it multiple times a day!

(The Drinking Liberally group cracks me up. It especially cracks me up that there's one in WAXAHACHIE!!! LOL!)

[BrightKnight]

2. Honestly

I don't think that it works aesthetically. The header isn't right. The color scheme is a bit off. The links above the header image clash. The whole thing is a bit awkward.

The light blue is a bit difficult to read.

I'm sorry. I'm being brutally honest. I appreciate the work that has been done on this and I do not wish to insult anyone. I think that it is very important to get it right.

[sonias]

3. The content is excellent

You have a lot of important information, club listings, contacts etc. I agree that the light blue for the links is a bit hard to read. That should be pretty easy to tweak. I don't think it's as bad design wise, as the fellow above me says it is. Heck this isn't a flash movie site, it's a get down and get what you need to work information site. DU has never been "design pretty" but it's the best damn functioning web board on the Internet.

I can't test it fully but it looks like you did a great job in trying to make it flexible enough for pct chairs as well as average people to get something out of it. I see that's Windows Shared Point Services. Is this something you feel comfortable with - Windows I mean?

I've been playing around with Civic Space that was introduced to us at DemFest and I'm really impressed with how easy that was to set up. It's open source and it sits on top of Drupal which also open source content management system. I'm not trying to put together the county party web site though, just a simple club.

The Progressive Populist Caucus is moving over to Civic Space as well very soon. I can't wait, that site is really ugly. You want to feel good about how good yours looks; go take a look http://www.texaspopulists.com/

Good luck on your site and I hope you get a lot of good feedback and use from it.

Sonia

[WestHoustonDem]

4. Excellent content!

I like the layout, but do have a couple of suggestions. I'm not a precinct chair, but I moderate houstondemocrats.com. I'm also a web developer/designer.

I'd suggest a darker font to contrast with the light blue background in the navigation pane and calendar. Also, the create link in Dsocuments and Lists should indicate it will require registration or only be visible to staff. The Site Settings link probably shouldn't be visible to the public either. The color of the links on the top navigation bar should be lighter.

[Lithos]

5. Content is great

Some usability issus, if you are not seeking that kind of response, then I apologize in advance.

Blue on blue is going to be hard to read for some people, particularly the lighter blue fonts. Light blue on white is also hard for some people. Essentially, the ice theme used is a bit hard in a glare situation.

Icons (such as on Documents Lists) are small.

You have menu options which would probably be better off being hidden (Site settings).

And of course it is written in ASP.NET and you are using Share Point, but hey, can't have everything. Just keep the patches up on it, would hate to see some script kiddie hacking it.

L-

[TexasThoughtCriminal]

6. OK, I do have some reservations about the site.

And I suspect you do too, which is why you ask. At first I couldn't quite put my finger on why it felt less friendly. But after surfing around, I felt like I was having to learn a new Microsoft desktop application. The folders, buttons, edit, delete, sort, preferences... It feels like work, not an intuitive surfing experience. Though there's a wealth of information there, the interface is awkward. It feels like this should be the administrative backend of a website.

Though I personally have login rights to the site, I visited it without logging in to experience it as a regular user and found it distracting to see all these powerful options requiring a login. I agree with a previous poster that these functions ought to be hidden from the public.

That said, the administrator has put in an enormous amount of time in just a few months to bring the site to this point, and that deserves a big round of applause. :applause: He has been very reponsive to my comments and needs from the site, and there's an incredible amount of useful information on the site that was not there during the election year. I'm sure this site is still evolving.

[crispini]

7. Thanks, all, for your feedback.

And I agree with many of the comments above, to wit, it represents a lot of hard work and deserves a round of :applause: for the effort! :thumbsup: And that there are also some specific improvements (which I am compiling) that would make it more user-friendly and hopefully we can get some of those in over the next days and months.