[posted by nick]
below is the sketch pâté made of the wire-framing for the website about a week ago. i’m going to post a summary of the issues and discussion points below to hopefully stimulate input. before that i just wanted to clarify the relationship between dkdc and the on-line journal. the journal was not conceived of as a dkdc thing. but seeing as the editors (tim wright, fred lee, astrid and i) are who we are, of course we wanted to (or rather needed to) include our creative peers into all levels of the process of doing it. dkdc meetings and the blog have served as the point of communication for this process, which could very easily give the impression that the website is a dkdc thing – but it’s not, or not entirely. i have been thinking of it like this: the website is it’s own entity, being made by people who are also involved (at whatever level) with dkdc, but not as dkdc. this is not intended to exclude in an way, simply differentiate purposes, and indeed the more involvement, from a tiny observation to becoming involved in editing, is warmly (if not desperately) welcome.
1. the front page of the site. contains a navigation bar to all areas of the site. this page contains basic information and navigation, and it’s most obvious (as in biggest sized) link will be to:
2. the feature page. this is the incorporation of joel’s excellent idea of having a page where material from the greater archive is put onto the feature page, which will have a cool template modeled on the electronic literature collection. tim wright, pâté and i worked from the assumption that we would have 4 works on the feature page, and these could either rotate in groups of 4 or one could knock another one off. the feature page has a search bar, within the navigation bar, that searches all of the content. this navigation bar also links to:
3. the archive and the 4 different ways of searching. 3a. by categories/keywords: this form, again modeled off the electronic literature site, uses a series of categories that are defined and then lists links of all the works that come under this category. individual works may appear numerous times within the categories list. i am excited about this because we can encourage people who submit work to also contribute to the making of categories, indeed the creation of new ones, so that works can be subjected to numerous forms of definition and re-definition in relation to one another. 3b. by media: groups work by media type. 3c. by author: alphabetically i guess, or by size of wang. 4d. (meant to be 3d.) by title: again, alphabetically?
4. content page: the page which the work itself on it. design-wise, there will be a general design template (for text, or video, or sound, etc) which work can easily slot into. but perhaps we should also be allowing for the look of the content page to be controlled by the artist, especially in the event of submission from design and or programming savvy people (timrox & pâté… is that going to be a problem?). at the end of each work, we were thinking or having the:
5. Comments/discussion. Below each work is a blog-style place to post comment and foster discussion about work. Given the linearity of blog comments, pâté suggested perhaps incorporating a threaded comments function (an example of which is at digg.com). so if the work stimulates a number of different discussions, it can be threaded rather than all happening haphazardly. this was thought as a potential replacement for a separate forum/blog. 5a. should there be a forum or a blog as part of the on-line website, separate from comments about each work, but where other discussions could take place?
6. info page/how to/submissions/contact: the page where the website explains itself, explains how it works and also how to contact the editors for submitting, or ‘hitting that joel guy up for a bonk.’
Perhaps a little behind time, and perhaps too convoluted to express/comprehend here, but nonetheless, I put to you this:
On the ELC there’s a page before page 4, a pre-page 4, an intro page for each piece that clicks through to the piece itself. This might be what you mean by the standard Uncrunched design template that work can slot into, but if so, I think it’s important to delineate it as a separate page. And I think the tech folk would agree.
Such an interim page – let’s call it 2b – is good because it solves questions like: if the work is video, does it start as soon as you link to this page? It’s a place where you can put the abstract, author info, etc. And I also think it would be a good place to put 5, rather than going to 5 via 4. Or at least linking direct to 5.
Further, if 2b doesn’t equal 5 but instead links to 5, I think maybe 2 (and definitely the 3a through 3d/Nick’s 4d) should link direct to 5 as well, rather than via 2b and/or 4.
Next, in response to the slotting query with 4, I got the impression from TRok that slotting things straight into a template isn’t so much a problem as something that needs intricate planning and forethought.
And lastly, re 5a, I say no. Maybe plan it in, leave a space for it, but keep it hidden until it feels required.
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Neat article,, i will come back:)