NMK Beta

The current site is under review. We are aware of a number of functionality, usability and design issues. Please bear with us as the site evolves.Good things:<ul><li>• We have restored the entire database of articles and events - around 1000 at the current count.</li><li>• You can book for events and courses online.</li><li>• You can subscribe to (and unsubscribe from) our email list.</li><li>• You can now get new articles and events using RSS. <a href="http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?answer=79408">Go here</a> if you need a primer on what that entails.</li><li>• The CMS (content management system) now allows us to insert pictures, videos and other good things.</li><li>• It doesn't crash every other week - fingers crossed.</li><li>• It's written using standard components, LAMP/Ruby-on-Rails, so has some hope of remaining maintainable over coming years;</li><li>• It's now hosted by the University of Westminster on its multi-site network, so it can't burn down like <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6259814.stm" title="harrow fire">the last site</a>...</li></ul>Not-so-Good things:<ul><li>• We're recommissioning the design. We don't think it's very 'new media' right now.</li><li>• Comments have gone missing - the problem is that we'd have to log-in as "you" to restore them, and we can't. Think of it as a social media data property initiative.</li><li>• <strike>Search is a tad odd - currently returns newest articles last, which is... 'unconventional'. The same goes for clicking on tags and the 'related articles and events' feature. Can lead to some great finds, but not ideal.</strike> FIXED!</li><li>• <strike>The site's editors and writers over the last six years have each had their own tagging style, leading to some further search oddities, and a huge list of tags, which we'll attempt to cut down somewhat. Hope to make sure that useless tags such as "for", "in" and "of" don't appear in the cloud. "Online" and "Web" should probably go, too, since it's almost *all* about online and web.</strike> PART FIXED / IN PROGRESS</li><li>• Older articles have weird symbols where things like apostrophes, pound-signs and the like ought to be - please flag up the ones you find (just leave a comment on the article concerned). We'll go in and re-edit them.</li><li>• There are a couple of missing features - a jobs board and a shop, for example - that aren't quite right yet.</li><li>• Recent events in the last year are added as articles rather than events. Shouldn't be a big problem, but just so you know... </li><li>• Couple of other CMS issues, which we won't worry you about.</li><li>• We want to add more features to your profile and the idea of being a 'person' within NMK - find, contact, recommend others, advertise your services and all that social goodness. Integration with MySpace/Facebook/LinkedIn profiles. </li></ul>Anyway, <a href="/contact">drop us a line</a> to reveal any new and dreadful problems with the site. We very much hope you enjoy the rest of it.

2008-04-29T00:11:27+01:00

11 beta NMK Beta

2009-03-08T18:29:53+00:00

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