[Imc-india] comment on site redesign

[Gopal Krishna]

Dear Vickram Crishna

I visted the site http://india.mir.dnsalias.net/en/. It appears fine.

The light shades of colour in the background is a relief for it does not
hurt eyes.

The options are quite vivid and simple in their appearance.

The masthead requires some redesign for it be more explicit and articulate.

regards
Gopal Krishna


> On May 30, 2004, at 6:20 AM, Vickram Crishna wrote:
>
>> As you probably know, the volunteers who host our site for us were
>> forced to move servers last year, and this meant a change of server
>> software as well - it was quite traumatic, as none of us had hands-on
>> experience in any of the new software choices. Fortunately, indymedia
>> tech volunteers from all over the world stepped in and helped us make
>> the transition, and we owe them a kudos. We also merged the Mumbai
>> IMC site with India IMC during this phase, as it had lost its admin
>> volunteers and was floundering without any support. This is a shame,
>> because it represents a step back for the IMC movement, but if we had
>> not done it, the Mumbai IMC movement would have lost its way
>> completely.
>>
>> We are in the process of modifying the look and feel of the site.
>> Please take this opportunity to visit
>> http://india.mir.dnsalias.net/en and have a look for yourself at the
>> direction in which this is going. Post your comments to the list,
>> please, so that everyone has a chance to experience the reaction.
>>
>> The page you will see is a demo, and is not cast in stone. The links
>> are not finalised, nor is the content or appearance on subsequent
>> pages, so please do not waste time following these now. When we have
>> some consensus on this look, we will work on the link pages and let
>> you know (here) that they can be viewed meaningfully.
>>
>> Your site has very few active volunteers to work on administrative
>> issues - too few, actually. Training of new admins has also been a
>> major resource constraint. For members of this list who have offered
>> in the past to step in and help with site administration, do bookmark
>> this url, because the demo site will from now offer a place to
>> conduct technical training and experiment with static content for
>> member's approval. We hope to bring more of you into the loop over
>> the next few weeks, and this will not only ease the burden but put us
>> in a much better position to encourage more IMCs to come up in India.
>>
>> We see this as making way for more local flavour not just for
>> publishing in English, but very importantly, in regional languages.
>> The new server software supports display in fonts from dozens of
>> languages, and some of the major Indian languages already have such
>> fonts available, while others are under development in universities
>> and voluntary organisations. It also has several wonderful features,
>> such as machine translation that will make it much easier for
>> articles to appear simultaneously in more than one language when they
>> are posted (provided of course the author thinks that this is
>> relevant, and the admins agree, too).
>>
>> Of course publishing in different languages also means the site has
>> to appear natively in the chosen language. This is an exciting
>> opportunity for volunteers to come in to make the site ready for a
>> more proactive and inclusive infrastructure for open publishing from
>> India. This may seem a bit idealistic to announce at a time when we
>> are strapped for volunteers to help even in English, but I am sure
>> that many of you have not come forward only because you do not feel
>> comfortable enough with the language. You also probably feel that the
>> site today does not sufficiently support a local people's movement
>> because it is not in the local language.
>>
>> We look forward to an active discussion on these points.
>>
>> --
>> Vickram
>> _______________________________________________
>> Imc-india mailing list
>> Imc-india at lists.indymedia.org
>> http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/imc-india
>>
>>
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