ISCB-SC:Website
About this document
This wiki page goals are:
- integrate the information about ISCB Student Council Web Portal and RSG Portal;
- establish a consistent understanding among SC Leaders about what is Web portal, what we need and what we can provide;
- provide a collaboration environment for SC Leaders to collect input and ideas, answer the questions, comment/vote, i.e. elicit the requirements
ISCB SC Web Portal Redesign Motivation
The Student Council of ISCB society actively uses web services for teamwork, communication of Council activities to its members and attracting new leaders. The main www.iscbsc.org website served for two years as a starting point to obtain information about the SC. It is linked from the main ISCB website www.iscb.org.
Currently presence of SC on the Internet is provided by the following services:
- the static www.iscbsc.org HTML website (information outdated);
- phpBB forum, installed on the same server, but loosely connected by interlinks to the website. (forum is not active: 84 uses and only 29 articles);
- RSGs are listed on main website, but hosted on Google Groups or separate websites;
- SC Wiki is at OpenWetWare Wiki, the information is not consistent with the main site. Wiki is used as the main information repository;
- scfriends -- maillist, hosted using MailMan on same domain as the website. So far announcements only in this list. 336 members;
- scleaders -- leaders only maillist, hosted using MailMan on same domain as the website. (Parthi, is it managed by ISCB directly?) This is the most dynamic component in Internet presence of the SC and the main tool for collaboration at the moment. (how many members?)
- Basecamp project management and chat online services. SC uses a trial subscription to evaluate this commercial software.
The Student Council defined issues related to its Internet resources that require redesign:
- the content is not up-to-date
- there is nobody in charge of updating the website
- it's not easy to update the website without hacking html code
- access rights can't be fine-tuned (this causes problems for RSGs)
- re-design process should not break the existing links
- more content like job opportunities, courses etc should be available
- forum is not active
- integrate services in one place - one system with one account
The SC identified redesign of web portal as one of its prime goals. Also there is an urgent need in setting up RSG web infrastructure.
ISCB
Student Council represents the most active part of the ISCB community - students, who displayed interest in ISCB Portal redesign. In his talk at SC3 Symposium in Vienna Reinhard Schneider has shed some light on the process of development of "New Face of ISCB" -- new Web Portal. Please have a look at the related documents.
The requirements specifications were compiled by Kamalakar Rao Mettani, who did it as part of his Masters thesis in Schneider Group, EMBL, Heidelberg. The procedure follows general guidelines defined by IEEE SRS Standard 830-1998 and is very interactive. The starting point was Improvement of the ISCB Membership Benefits, compiled by ISCB BoD. This document defined the Web Portal as an important means to improve membership benefits and services. With necessary background covered it has provided the ground for High Level User Requirements Specification. It helped to define key questions that formed the online survey targeted ISCB Members. This feedback helped to elicit more detailed User Requirements Specification. Some more specific questions with regards to functionality, content, new member attraction, task prioritizing and long term goals were individually discussed with ISCB stakeholders (Executive Board, BoD and SC Leaders) in interviews during the ISMB conference. The draft version of the new portal built with Joomla 1.5 has been released recently. There is space reserved for the pages of the Student Council in this layout draft.
I stop the description of ISCB portal progress here, because this is its current state. Please update if you know more.
ISCB SC Portal Requirements
A few inquires has been sent to Kamalakar (both directly and via Venkata) regarding the current state-of-the-art, the schedule and the features the new Portal can provide to SC. Unfortunately these requests have not been responded so far. This will make it harder for us to decide whether we should go for an ISCB-embedded SC portal or for a separate site, for example. Anyway, this delay does not keep us from making decisions what our (SC) requirements towards the portal are and how they differ from ISCB's requirements.
Another issue is that I found no written statement whether Joomla 1.5 will fit the defined requirements or not (Alexander). This looks more like an arbitrary choice. Some SC Leaders discourage the employment of Joomla and suggest Drupal. Parthi and Thomas have already set up trial Drupal installations for the purpose of evaluation. Abhishek has a judged opinion that Joomla fits because it's the choice of the ISCB. All I want to say with this paragraph is that there is no consensus neither about the CMS nor about the services among SC Leaders. One thing is for sure -- we need to do it fast.
Starting September'29 I have followed few discussions in the sc-leaders mailing list about the new SC web portal and the RSG portal. I have summarized the main ideas from these threads below (or on separate pages) for our convenience.
Web Coordination Team is now responsible for the compilation of Web Portal requirements and coordination of the Council's activities regarding the Portal.
Web Coordination Team
On Sun, 7 Oct 2007 in a Student Council Leaders Teleconference Web Coordination Team (WCT) has been established.
Currently WCT members are:
- Abhishek
- Alexander (lead)
- Parthi
- Venkata
- Teresa
- Thomas
The purpose of WCT is to analyze the needs of the Student Council, perform and coordinate any activities related to SC Web Portal.
