Project owners update before project form changes
By Ed Mitchell 27th November 2012
Project owners update before projects form changes: 27/11/12
Hi,
I hope you are well and having a good day. My name is Ed, I am the web manager for Transition Network. This is a brief email to update you on some changes we are doing to the Transition Projects Directory, which will affect your project profile – for the better.
Firstly – *thank you* for adding your project to the Projects Directory – we applaud you for your work on the ground, and thank you warmly for adding it – sharing what we know and what we are doing is the first step to not re-inventing wheels, and finding others to help our projects and learn from.
The projects form on Transition Network’s website is three years old, and is very long; too long to be honest. With too many options, and not enough ‘search-ability’. It’s time for some streamlining in response to feedback, statistics and web usability findings.
Also, as well as your projects being seen on the Transition Network website, our new ‘Project Sharing Widget’ means that your projects will be seen on Transition Initiatives’ own websites as well. This means your project will have a much wider ‘reach’ so we need to tidy up how we present it for you. And people will be able to add projects direct from Transition Initiatives’ websites, so it has to be quicker and easier.
So we’re going to shorten and simplify it. We’re going to merge all of the text fields and re-present them in one new field (with all of your information moved into it). We’re also removing options people haven’t used, and adding some new more current options based on purpose and goals. We’re going to make the location simpler.
What does this mean for you – the ‘project owner’?
1. Your project will be presented more clearly, and in a wider variety of locations, reaching more people
2. You are still in editorial control of the information presented in your project profile
3. You will not lose any information about your project
4. Once we make the changes to the projects forms, we suggest you log in and bring it up to date, check the information, do an edit, and add the new options
What is going to happen and what do you do?
1. We hope to have made all our changes by the week commencing 03/12/12 (next week).
2. Please do not edit your project form between now and then – we may lose some information added this week
3. I will send another mail out when it’s done, with a handy guide to editing your forms.
4. I hope that you will log in and edit your project profile
Handy links:
- Read a high level description of the projects form changes
- Read all of the project updates on the project blog here
- Read all of the up to date project documentation on the project wiki here