localpreservation / localpreservation.github.io Goto Github PK

I think the website looks, it just needs to have a dark mode or a reading mode, or even both in order for the reading experience to be pleasant. I could see if I can implement it myself.

I'm considering switching the site over to the Skinny Bones theme. There are a variety of relatively small issues with the current theme for our current and planned future content so it may be easier to switch than fix them.

We identify NPS and NCSHPO as funders on the About page but it would be better to also include their logos in the site footer.

In the interest of transparency and openness, I'd also like add information about the budget of the project and sources for that funding.

When we started this project, I did not want to narrow down the list of possible topics for lessons or courses until we had a chance to start talking to people about their needs and interests. I did some initial planning around course and lesson ideas in a public "Local Preservation 101" Trello board but did not continue using that board past the fall.

In this case, a course is a discrete collection of related lessons or tutorials that we can publish in a stand-alone repository. A course could be used as a more traditional self-guided online course, as the basis for a preservationist Learning Circle, or as a resource for the facilitator of a formal workshop or training.

Here are a few course ideas that we are working on:

• Explore Baltimore Heritage 101
• Local Data 101 (Thanks to @aejolene for this idea.)

Here are a few ideas I'd like to work on:

• Preservation Advocacy 101 (We have a related Google Doc open for comments here.)
• Neighborhood Preservation 101 (This may be the focus of our workshop in Philadelphia.)
• Organizing and Preservation (This could borrow from the open operational guides that I've started publishing for Baltimore Heritage).

I can expand on these ideas with short descriptions for each course but I'd also welcome comments or suggestions for what may be missing from this list.

from the DataMade Site Launch Checklist

Framing / Call to Action

• Make sure that the site has a clear call to action. This should not be 'hey look at this cool tool'. Rather, it should be a way for someone to engage in a meaningful way on the issue being presented.

Some examples:

• Join a mailing list (which means you need to create one)
• Attend an event
• Share on Facebook/Twitter
• Donate to a particular organization
• Create a Tumblr for people to share interesting findings (if it's a data access site)

Web Search Indexing

• If you have a staging site, tell the search engine robots not to index you with a robots.txt
• Make sure you allow indexing when you are ready to launch
• Make sure you handle the www subdomain with DNS redirect

Google Analytics

• Create Google Analytics account
• Hook up the GA Tracking Code (typically in our analytics_lib.js file)
• Set up relevant Goals and Funnels
• Set up Google Webmaster Tools
• Verify site in Webmaster Tools with DNS TXT record
• Link Webmaster Tools to Google Analytics

Sharing & Rich Snippets

• Set up general meta tags

• <meta name=“description”>
• <meta name=“author”>

• Set up Facebook meta tags & validate here

• <meta property=“og:site_name”>
• <meta property=“og:title”>
• <meta property=“og:type”>
• <meta property=“og:description”>
• <meta property=“og:url”>
• <meta property=“og:image”>

• Set up Twitter meta tags & validate here

• <meta name=“twitter:card”>
• <meta name=“twitter:site”>
• <meta name=“twitter:creator”>
• <meta name=“twitter:description”> (note that this needs to be under 200 characters)
• <meta name=“twitter:title”>
• <meta name=“twitter:url”>
• <meta name=“twitter:image:src”>

• Create 2-5 meme images using Canva or a similar tool

Mobile Friendliness

Test on various mobile devices:

• scrolling is easy
• nav bar works
• hoverable things are tappable
• charts/maps look ok

Page Speed

• run the site through https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/

Miscellaneous Polish

• add favicons, apple touch icons (http://www.favicomatic.com/)
• add 404 & 500 error pages

Load Testing

If your site relies on a database or server-side code, it should use caching and be load tested. If it's a static HTML or Jekyll site, you can skip this section.

• set up page caching
• write a script to load test all your pages. Here's a good example from Illinois Sunshine

Testing

• Plan for a day of bugfixing. This day should happen after you have added the last features you plan on adding.

GitHub Readme

If the site is open source, make sure the Readme.md is complete and accurate.

Here's a few good examples:

• Geomancer
• Illinois Sunshine

The Readme should have the following sections:

• Overview
• Setup
• Running locally
• Team
• Errors / Bugs
• Pull Requests
• Copyright and License

Outreach

• Write up press release
• Identify who will be the primary person of contact and make their info prominent on the website and all PR
• Identify relevant media contacts to email
• Identify relevant social news sites (reddit, listservs, slack channels)
• Divide & conquer - send out the media blitz!

The Get Involved page is incomplete and confusing. Here is how I think it should be improved:

• Remove information on Trello (we are not using the board at the moment and it may confuse people)
• Add at least one image
• Add a clear call to action (e.g. link to contributor guidelines, link to setup GitHub account, link to help-wanted issue list)
• Add a contact form to contact me with interest in volunteering

• Add CONTRIBUTING.md document
• Create a list of issues for volunteers using a help-wanted tag
• Add Code of Conduct document

Contributor Guidelines

We need Contributor Guidelines with a clear description explaining how volunteers can contribute to this project by adding new text, making revisions and commenting on issues.

Examples

• EditData.org Contributor Guidelines
• Township Contributor Guidelines

Code of Conduct

• Citizen Code of Conduct

Related Resources

• Contributing to Open Source on GitHub
• 18F Open Source Policy
• The contributor's guide to 18F: code for the common good
• Open Source Development Guidelines (Civic Commons)
• This thread
• Mastering Issues Guide from GitHub

Back in the fall, we came up with the idea of building a course about making maps, visualizations, seeing trends and patterns in data about historic places and the past. I started to assemble materials for this class in the Local Data 101 repository.

• What topics should the Local Data course include?
• What existing resources are available that could be adapted or reused to create lessons around these topics?
• Who is the intended audience with the proposed Local Data 101 course?

Do we have a recommended pedagogy for lessons on the site? How do we explain that pedagogical approach to contributors or workshop participants? This question is related to issue #22 and #20.

We need to talk about who the audience for the lessons may be and how they learn.

Resources for adult learners

• Adult Learners and Technology
• Toolkit for Teaching Adults

Resources on designing educational materials

• Best Practices for Designing LibGuides

The menu should include direct links or some navigation pages that link to the existing published content/tools including:

• Background study
• Trello board
• Timeline
• Contributor Guidelines (unpublished)
• Related Resources including the Reading List, syllabus directory (in a Google Sheet), and the publication list (in a Google Sheet)

How can I help?

For our upcoming workshops, we want to engage preservation professionals, educators, and interested volunteers in the process of creating lessons for the Local Preservation School and/or adapting existing reference materials to create lessons.

Here is how that process could work:

• Participants will be provided with a Local Preservation School template and examples of other lessons
• Depending on the group size, this could be done in teams with 3-5 people per group using Google Docs to collaborate.
• Later workshops could have access to lessons/tutorials developed by other groups.
• After the each group drafts a lesson/tutorial, invite participants to present lessons back to the group and reflect on what works and what doesn’t.
• Present a tutorial on how participants can contribute to Local Preservation School resources beyond the workshop

Here is the draft template in a Google Doc. Based on this draft, these are the parts a lesson should include:

• Title
• Audience
• Difficulty
• Prerequisites
• Learning Objectives
• Key Concepts
• Exercise/Activity Description

This is a great model for Contribution Guidelines (found via this repo). We may want to include additional information on getting started with GitHub for people in preservation who have not used GitHub before.