The state of the Libertarian Web ideal categories:info, event, news --- member recruitment: IMHO, should be a major goal of the front page links to join the party (especially to the nat'l Web form if using combined enrollment) 800 number and other contact info should be prominent ("above the fold" on the front page) appeals to volunteer for specific projects and petitioning. need to do this more to encourage member retention as well as recruitment info they need to vote Libertarian: state slates link to the quiz... on about 90% of the sites (approx) I notice nearly all pages stay away from highlighting requests for donations, probably intentionally fresh content: to keep people coming back to the web site News should be updated frequently to keep people coming back to the site. indicate dates to drive the point home that it's new (if you can commit to updating something every week) Links to current activities, events and meetings should be clearly advertised on the top page Highlight new member contributions to the website: an "essays" or "articles" section. North Carlina has a good example of this interactive features--keep the members communicating with each other between meetings mailing lists--#1 tool, used by most affiliates java chat--saw two of these Web-based bulletin board--Missouri had the most active, I think. New Jersey has one, too. Get yours at Matt's Script Archive. links to state party member's Web sites--get to know the others at your leisure. seen at Hawai'i's site projects for the members to volunteers for example: VTLP's letter-writing campaign something impressive--show off! animated graphics -- in moderation. they can either be a distraction, or an efficient use of screen real estate photos--of convention meetings, OPH and other activist events video (one site has video of speeches at their convention) CGIs: I started developing a "write a letter to the editor" cgi about a year ago, but stopped. :( Need to resume the project.) Want to work on a petitioners' dream come true: send the voters to the petitioners collecting signatures with a printout of their wards and districts in hand Java applets: e.g., federal spending ticker. But, be careful here! Not on the front page; these can crash people's browsers. Test and check your logs if you can to see what browsers people are using to access your site. Tell me about your future plans or actual projects. why should they make you a daily visit or (dare we hope?) default browser page? the ideal answer to this would be "targetted, updated information aboiut libertarian events at the national level and in their state, as well as current political news on issues they care about." Until some one of us creates a news ticker applet and finds a continuous news feed for it, that's a little beyond our reach, I think. There ARE folks who might donate the news feed if we ask them nicely, though, so it's not out of the question... the java work is probably a week for an experienced java programmer, depending how it was done. Their own work: I haven't seen this yet, but I imagine the most effective member directory would have name, email, url... and a spider would check each night, and update the web page with the date each member's page was last updated. The first thing I came up with, of course, is a search form, and I see that two other folks are doing this on their pages, as well. I use a Cato search for "New York" and an Altavista search for "New York politics" with great results... There is also Revolution, a sort of Yahoo for libertarians. It's good for quick sound bites and looking up names of activists throughout the Libertarian party's history. 1) people don't scroll, so most important info should be "above the fold" 2) have something new always prominent, so people come back (it _is_ the season of portal-mania, and we can always hope they make us "home") I don't want anything important to be more than one click away--a scroll and a click at most. I think that means adding a link to each chapter's home page directly from the top page... e.g., your LIPA stuff is now one click on my screen, a scroll and a click away for normal monitors... under "local issues." I should probably put the link for "Suffolk Liberty '98" under the "LPNY News" section, otherwise it would be at the top page of the Suffolk section. another e.g.: "How to Join" is now one click instead of six scrolls and a click (at 800x600). to encourage people to contribute, they need to see that it's being used for outreach, not just to share with other existing members. (Though the latter may be nice for their egos.) We CAN'T just cater to the 18 or 25 regular LPNY members if we want to grow!! Motivate! Give them a reason to join and to stick around _after_ they join. The medium is the most cost-effective way we have to reach the broadest range of intelligent, thinking citizens of New York State with as much info as they need to decide if they agree with our principles and want to support us. But yeah, it's not the message. :) But, I can see them all wanting to make design decisions based on that rather than "how can we make this site a recruitment tool and a central place for LPNY activism info to keep members ENGAGED and busy with projects?" Ego stroking existing members won't get us new ones. It _should_ be there, yes, but... Did you see the article from David Bergland in the LP News about needing to do something with the new member's enthusiam before it wanes? That really struck a chord, b/c that's what I'd just seen happen with me and the LPNY... I know I can organize stuff, contribute time and money, and help recruit members... but why bother if the party doesn't know what to do with them when they get here? Here are just a few ways I'm thinking we could use contributions... and it goes back to what you said about "modes." (We need stuff from and for people in action modes, not just thinkers.) 1) local news: what the chapters are doing. This will go in the chapter's own sub-directory, and get summarized in "The Latest from LPNY" -- provides incentive, b/c there will be more links to their chapter if there is something to write about. 2) essays on "general libertarian issues" -- with a topic page for each issue with a) brief background on the issue, with some "Talking Points" b) summaries, bylines and links to original material submitted by memebrs c) links to current news stories that support our view, or that illustrate such BAD examples of gov't interference that the mainstream will see our side immediately 3) local issues -- subsections entirely run by a local volunteer who can craft a pithy page or write a novel-- whatever they're up to. Linked to from main page and chapter page. The Brookhaven and LIPA pieces are perfect examples. 4) Information about special projects/groups: official LPNY or just interaction with allied groups, like the MJ march, OPH, Young Libertarians, other "Activities," etc. Same as above, get a person to commit to updating the info in that section with: a) what the issues are and what the Libertarian viewpoint is b) when the next "event" is, whether online or in the real world -- & how to sign up for it. c) how to join the group for ongoing support of promoting this issue If we get no updates, we remove the link, because we don't want to steer potential to dead committees, ESPECIALLY if it's an issue close to their hearts. :( I want one of the "projects" to be LPNY Online, just to keep track of potential additions to the site, and people with relevant skills: good copy writers and especially graphic artists! I thnk we'll be more successful if we recruit them online than if we try to recruit them at the LPNY meetings. ;) 5) Current Events/Action alerts: - summaries of stuff in the news that should be acted on NOW (e.g., the news that DARE was being considered a big waste of money, when it was all over the news for two days last week.) How to write to someone with influence. - short paragraphs to be used in the "Letters to the Editor/ Write to Washington" CGI letter generator on that issue (also, links between the matching "general issue" page and this CGI) This is an engaging activity you don't have to leave your chair for. :) 6) How to campaign effectively, what positions you could run for (for EACH election, EACH county--needs to be organized centrally, IMHO, since it's not being done anywhere else!) Best way I could think of is to make this topic an LPNY Online information-gathering "project," with a project leader that's just worried about gathering and publishing the info, not with being a campaign manager him/herself. (Print interviews with Campaign managers and NY candidates in this section?) Organizationally, this would be in /candidates, while the individual campaigns would be, e.g., /candidates/garvey or /candidates/1998/ or something. * Good job for a new member. 7) a legal section? Something for those who would like to experiment crafting legislation... and how to get either some results or some good press with it. (And to help others envision libertopia--maybe that's another mode?) 8) press releases: funny, like Bill Winter's and Steve Dasbach's, but about NY issues (not much hope for that yet as a regular feature, I'll admit) Just in case you're wondering how much time I plan on spending, on this, a topic page for each of the "general issues" (#2) is the only one of the bunch that I'd consider writing personally. And helping to marshall more volunteers for copy-writing for the "LPNY Online" project. There ARE people who will want to help, but we have to have a list of things for them to do when THEY are ready... not when we are ready for them. One of the things I want to do is outline a "LPNY Online Communications Strategy" that people can buy into or tear apart. :) The goals of this Web site HAVE to be 1) get people to vote Libertarian 2) get people to register with the party 3) get them to donate (I'm going to add a line under the Jefferson and other quotes.) 4) get people involved in our online and real-world activities The essays, as intelligent as they are, do NOT do enough to promote those goals. The long 8-point letter of how I want to use people's contributions and make them happy they're spending the time doing it is up for review... but I think we need to focus on the GOALs of the Web site on the front page, or nobody will even get to the content underneath. there's no reason that the LP's web sites shouldn't be BETTER than www.gop.org and www.democrats,org. (Which are only so-so, in my opinion.) Why do I say that? More people on the Internet have Libertarian tendancies, (which means we'll get more pro-bono help than the other parties) and our members, on average, are more creative and less restrained than their members... If you look at their sites, I already think that ours (LPNY) has more appeal to the type of people we want to attract... that's why it's OK that ours has SO much more info on the front page. You have to make an impression on the first-time viewers in about 10 seconds. Which is exactly what I want to avoid... sorry! Everyone knows what graphics can be found in the clip-art archives, and that anyone can go grab them... We need to have a professional-looking Web site to attract the down-staters--50% of the NY State population is south of Dutchess Cty, I think, and they are discriminating. It's a travesty that the Web site hasn't already attracted tens of thousands to join: that should be our goal. If we have a great web site, we will also get more press. The only clip-art archive I've ever seen that I would take stuff from is http://www.mysticpc.com/jewels/html/jewels.html --but I don't even think there's anything appropriate there. We're not going for cute, we're going for "professional" and most importantly, "effective." If we can get the committee to buy into most of the "online strategy" I want to write, that should give us a clear justification for some of these design choices I'm suggesting. And hey, just so you know... this comes from real experience. I usually charge even my friends! (At the "friends" rate, I'd say you've gotten $600 of my services for free so far, just to put this in perspective... ;) I'm not saying this in a begrudging way, just in the sense that "really, I know what I'm saying when I make suggestions." I'm not trying to brag about qualifications to you, but I'm anticipating that I will have to a little bit to make the State Committee realize that they are getting an expert opinion, and they should listen to Ben and I if they want results from the Web site. (Which they SHOULD expect. In fact, that's the only reason they should have an official site --not to feed the existing member's egos!) Maybe we could get essays.ny.lp.org SOLELY dedicated to those essays... btw, Ben said he can help talk to Joe about the DNS issues w/lp.org, but let's tackle that next month. Anyway, no, I don't think it's perfect now. I'm still trying to find that elusive "something" that puts Web design into the very top, top category... up with sites like http://www.hotmail.com/ http://www.businessweek.com/ (a site I help support) http://www.movado.com/ (another client of my company) http://www.chicago.tribune.com/ (except that it's too slow) http://www.nerve.com/ (a little risque' ;> & better at high bandwidth) Something that really makes people think "wow, they paid a lot for this design." Granted, we have more info to get across than the average site... for all the reasons you mentioned... basically, our members are smarter. :) Here are three sites that have tons of info, but still look pretty good: http://www.tagesschau.de/ (in German) http://www.abcnews.com/newsflash/ http://www.news.com/ (from c|net) I'd rather err on the side of "clean, informative, effective, but a little plain" than "busy and cheesy." Again, no offense intended: in 1995 when Willis designed this, that photo alone would have impressed folks. Now, at least half the folks browsing from NY are MUCH more sophisticated. We can get the newbies with a sophisticated site (assuming we meet the other goals of low-bandwidth, good navigation and good info), but we can't get the sophisticated users-- including journalists--to look twice at us unless we have that certain "je ne sais quoi." (I really don't, but I'm looking for it and know it when I see it! ;) I also have some good contacts we can get expert design feedback from when we're ready. (How about calling up Howard Stern after the redesign is done, and getting the URL mentioned on the air? ;> ) My actual major in college was marketing, and "guerilla marketing" is what the LPNY needs right now to assume our rightful importance. This is not just a state Libertarian party, this is NEW YORK STATE'S Libertarian party. Yeah, I know I have to go a little slowly to not frighten people. ;) But I want to see 50,000 (if not 98,000) votes this November, badly! > Check with your local Board of Elections to see what public > offices are up for grabs in November. At the last convention, I mentioned that we should keep a list-- I think the state party has to do it, b/c the local chaapters are just not organized enough yet. Another project for the Web site: something that someone with little or no experience can research and put it together. he most effective tool the party has is OPH. gotta be useful! I would never make something my home page unless I could search off it with "one click"). the idea of a sewn-together Web site, incorporating content physically residing on several servers is probably the best way to go... I'm definitely open to design and organizational suggestions. What you have to convince me of is that any changes will put at least as much content within the same number of clicks. One other strongly-held belief: This is 1998, not 1994. The goal of the Web site is to get people to come back often--weekly, at least. How can we achieve that? The _front_page_ MUST have content that is updated weekly. There's one other bias that I have that you should know about. I think that, to attract the most people--given that we are in the state of New York, with possibly the most sophisticated Web audience in the world--we need to project a PROFESSIONAL image. We want to be considered a major political force... these people (the majority) don't know that the NY State LP is weak and unorganized! The site has got to be slick, well-designed, professional in appearance (that's why I just say NO to Bruce's clipart suggestions), and it's got to absolutely impress anyone who stops by that we've got our sh*t together. In other words, (not that I've done this yet), it's got to compare with the best-designed sites out there... Beating the Dem/Rep pages isn't even something we sweat about: our goals are SO much higher than that! (I mean, come on, all the talented, creative folks, _especially_ in cyberspace, are libertarian! ;) ... So, I'd been working with two columns at the top for a while, but them my friend Ben made some suggestions (taking the chapter image map and putting it up top, since I said that I wanted the rainbow horizontal menu on the top page, and that made the left-hand links redundant), and when the current top-half design popped up, we said, "wow, we've hit on something there." The bottom is still a bit busy, and I need to get the horizontal menu to be on the front page for _all_ browsers (not just IE and my Sparc at work), but we think the top has a certain amount of /impact/ that we think is a paramount goal of the site. Any other design has to give you aat least as much of that feeling: "You've stepped into a _great_ site, measured by objective standards." (No pun intended. ;) OK, now that you understand where I'm coming from... :) Take a look at some of my earlier designs: some of these already have two columns at the top, so re-workings should probably start from there. #1: plainer, but with "static" navigational "block" at top that had all info for regular visitors, probably accomplishes the same purpose as the side- menu: http://pages.prodigy.net/bonnie/LPNY/__index1.htm #4: same, but with photo instead of 2D statue http://pages.prodigy.net/bonnie/LPNY/__index4.htm #2: different look for the side tables: http://pages.prodigy.net/bonnie/LPNY/__index2.htm > I hope that I didn't offend you by my implication of simplistic fake > frames being better than none. I'm using them on the bottom half of the screen. One side is directed at the "graphical, get-involved" types, the other at the "sit back and read about the issues" types. Which side did you look at first? Vertical columns are NOT "accessible design," btw, that why the first link (in Lynx or other character-based browsers) is to the table of contents: please keep that. > more user friendly, less information overload. Which parts in particular? I'm assuming the bottom part. Please be _extremely_ specific: I've been working with it for two months, and I _know_ it's busy, but I also know everything I've tried to make it less so... do you favor all text, no graphics? Then, what pulls people in to click on stuff? > Most of our American culture is fast > food and short attention span. We've got to reel them in and make them > so enthralled that they stay. That is EXACTLY the design problem I feel we face. > Perfect example, > http://www.self-gov.org/index.html * IMHO: A for organization, C for impact Compare with http://www.yahoo.com/ http://www.netscape.com/ Who gets more hits? Libertarians can handle a _little_ more information than the average Web visitor, I believe. So, in the choice between a "glossy tri-fold" front page with little content, just a menu, versus a "meaty, yet quick-to-load" front page that really said "you're here, where the info is", Bruce and I both preferred the latter. (And PLEASE compare what I'm doing to what I started with. If you really prefer the original, I will be very disappointed.) So, in terms of presenting lots of info well, also look at http://www.newsindex.com http://www.cnn.com/ Except for Newsindex, THESE are the sites that we will be compared to, in people's minds. Because everybody's seen them, and knows, "This is how good (or useful, informative, entertaining) web pages can be." That's the standard that everyone is measured against. - easier to find stuff quickly - quick to download, even if not all images show up immediately - less scrolling - more browsable (you don't get stranded on lower pages) - more "professional" - more "1998" (as opposed to 1994, whatever that means to you) - and a better way to promote the main goals of the state party: getting people to "Join!", "Vote!", "Get Involved!" etc. Between Paint Shop Pro and LView (get both at www.shareware.com), I can do just about anything except put text on a curve. Then, I use Animagic and MapEdit (or do imagemaps by hand if they are simple) for the effects. Save intermediate steps to get the same benefits as "layers." It works for me: almost everything on the new LPNY site was created with Paint Shop Pro. What other list topics are there? I was thinking of - a "funnel" for libertarian news: subscribe this list to a NewsIndex feed with a search for "Libertarian" (this is great!); Amazon "Eyes" program has a Libertarian search; etc... and people can subscribe to that list and comment on what goes by... I'd rather run this at Muni's site. So, we just need one other list idea for Nick's server. :) What else is NY-related? There is already a list for LP webmasters, otherwise I'd say that. Maybe an issue-related list? (Too late for ballot access! BTW, I have petitions-- give me your address, I have a plan. ;) So, the total list inventory so far is: 1) Lloyd @ coollist: lpny official announcements 2) lpny discussion 3) Adam and Adam: synergy list 4) Muni and Bonnie: "funnel" for _national_ Libertarian news, etc 5) Nick and Bonnie/Jeff: Free NY and weekly state news for the 'average' libertarians in the state, and to draw traffic to the web site getting CLEAR AND COMPLETE information to people is key to getting them to help! I _pored_ over that website, but couldn't find a petition to print out and take to the White Plains train station. Now there are instructions, tips, and a ready-to-print petition for our state party slate. It's _user-friendly_ now. If the Garvey/Silberger + 3 petition was in your sections of petitions, I started off locally. On Windows, I like to use IE for local HTML work, believe it or not. You look at it in IE, right-click to view source, it pops up in notepad (Alt-E, W to word-wrap), you edit, save, then flip back to IE (alt-tab) and hit F5 to refresh, arrows to scroll. ENTIRELY mouse-free. (Did I mention I have carpel tunnel?) But the four primo things are - Join! - Volunteer! (all the petition links, currently, plus the "activities") - Donate! (It's not too emphasized now, because that page is not too impressive, and we don't want to seem too into the money.) - Vote! (will be emphasized more as the election approaches: the petitioning is more important now. But, in the future, I want to have an intro page, "Why you should vote Libertarian") I also want to have "Link to us" a little more prominent: right now, it's buried on the LPNY Online page. I know what I would like to use for the side bar-- my ideal, unfortunately, is just not yet possible. I'd like to see something like ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Join the LPNY Reading Material LPNY Members LPNY Activities LPNY Successes Interact Online! Table of Contents ---------------------------------------------------------------------- But to get there from here, we need to organize the link section and the member contributions around the "Issues". (Although the esssays are stored by author for browsing that way.) Then, we'd need a big list of members in NY State with thewir own Web pages (also organized around our central "issues", crosslinks to those categories in each section); and a current calendar of events, with some actual entries; and some examples of (a) L*'s elected into office and (b) L* agendas pushed forward, despite not being in office; and more lists with a NY state focus, and our own chat area that actually had activity a few nights a week (and lunch hours), etc. Current news stories pulled from other states, and a "hall of shame" highlighting the gross incompetance of current government. So, if the ideal raw components were there, I _might_have_ used a compact sidebar... and then been able to spend more time writing a CGI to fill in the rest of the top page with current news. Picture a matrix with that "sidebar" on the vertical axis and our primary "platform-type" issues on the horizontal. We target our efforts to create content where we think we'll get the best results, and provide the right kind of dual naviagtion through the site so that people stay in the rows or columns they naturally gravitate towards, and the usage logs will tell us what people are interested in. But, well, back to earth. ;) This was what I had to work with, and I went with a competing format that's all about screen real estate. Yes, I was trying to provide a "link for everyone", under the theory that the first click is the hardest to get out of people. **If you have fewer categories, each one has to be SO compelling to get people to click on it.** If you sprinkle eyecandy over a layout borrowed from the National Enquirer (but a color scheme from Martha Stewart) you get the CLICK-THROUGHS, BABY! A little of something for everyone, and once you get past the first click, you make sure that they are going to find a lot of similar stuff to keep them in the site longer. The top page here is kind of the opposite of the Missouri site: which uses obnoxious colors, but has only seven choices at the top. NOT structured like a menu--in a very compelling layout that makes you click! (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/1865/ ) One of the best sidebars is LA-MA: http://www.la-ma.org/ I love it. I didn't see it until after I'd already gotten a good start on the current design. Yet, I think the NY state site should have a little more sophisticated look... since it's hard to do that with lots of graphics unless you're a really good artist, I concentrated more on color (also keeping it lower bandwidth). (And kept the clipart off the site, despite Bruce's wishes and Vermont's impressive use of it http://homepages.together.net/~hardy/VTLP/VTLP.html.) But back to your points, in the message I don't have handy to quote from: Breadth vs. depth... an eternal conflict in non-linear design. :) I agree with you, yet I don't, about avoiding information glut. In theory, yeah, sure, but then you look at www.lp.org (with its predictable nine main choices, plus a few other little doodads), and compare it with any site on any top-ten list w.r.t. traffic. They all use every trick possible to cram more stuff in the top page. The best is when they can add more stuff, yet make it look like it takes up less space, like Altavista's new redesign. (http://www.altavista.digital.com) It all has to do with clustering. You can have 49 links on the top page if they are in seven groups of seven. :) (I just did a rough count, and I'm not far from that total, but in many more groups that are not as well held- together as they should be. (Thus, the "busy" appearance.) I'd say about five groups of links are well-defined on that page. The remaining links are scattered around, turning a potential seven foci into 5 groups plus 14 or more mainly individual links. sub-sections are color-coded to give you a sense of what section you are in. That matches the colors in the table of contents and horizontal menu. Here, you have the title graphic on each subpage, which doesn't relate to how the choice looks on the menu, and it looks exactly the same in all subsections. 3. Knowing that your goal was to simplify, simplify, simplify, I came to the page with an initial question of "What will they get if they DON'T make a second click? Is enough still communicated?" The biggest problem I found there was: Urgent -- If it's really urgent, there needs to be a teaser on the front page for it. You're not giving me any reason to click on it. Icon a good idea.. IF it is carried over to that sub-page. (Like the color scheme thing.) I'm not particularly fond of the activities icon, btw. How much information do you have after the - first 10K is loaded? - the first 32 K is loaded? - the entire front page is loaded? No scrolling. There's not much info on that page without the graphics. What about people with graphics turned off? What if they don't click? Where the sign on the front page that this site is updated frequently? Why not have the last [five or so] news stories (the two-sentence teasers, plus link) below the Garvey-Silberger "bumper sticker"? (And do you really think it looks better with a border???) It chews up valuable real estate and people stare at it downloading instead of being given something to read. Other people who have looked at the current version specifically mentioned that they thought the page was more streamlined without that giant image. I was going to have a page for people to download that image to use as wallpaper: I've done that, and that's the best use of the original image (which yes, is impressive, but not enough to be the sole focal point of our front page). There are many forms of comunication, and you need to use more than one on the site for people who respond to different types of communication. A site map that travels with you or "breadcrumbs" are other ways to communicate this same information: "Where in the site am I?" The section titles are too big for the quantity of info they are imparting. I'm saying it's too big, and there's no need for it to be a graphic unless you have something other than text to convey: such as the icon you mentioned, or color-coded info. It IS necessary to communicate "Where am I in the site and how do I get somewhere else?" You used sidebar + title, I had used color-coding plus consistent. labeled navigation back to the Table of Contents, which put the whole site into perspective. Neither is 100% effective, as is, IMHO. And YOU have to see this through the eyes of a bored surfer. What message do they get in ten seconds? What do they get if they don't click? What is going to make them click? You must also compare my version to what I started with: there IS less info, and there will be less in the version after this. But we can't cut too much and not make it obvious where it's ending up. Each revision has to pare away the extra, AND build up the overall structure of the site--the framework over which the content is layered. > what would you like it to do when the mouse is over the icon, glow, > bulge, turn blue, green, or red, or nothing. Glow, I guess: I'm not sure. Emphasize, rather than obscure. The broader (deeper) you make the structure, the more you need to put things that draw the reader in: it's an extra click. If they DON'T click past the activities page, what do they get? Nah. You just need to provide an alternate link for people browsing text-only. In my design, that linked to the Table of Contents. this was the FIRST link you saw in a character-based browser like Lynx, and Bruce and I already got one letter telling us that the pages look great in Lynx. We can't go backwards on that issue. (That's why earlier, I asked you to keep a link to the Table of Contents.) I don't see a TOC here: suitable replacements could be a site map, or a text-only page listing all sections and sub-sections. If you don't know what category the thing you are looking for is in, where do you go? I felt a TOC was useful for this... another major reason was so that you could pare down the front page, yet still be sure that you were "one click and a scroll" from all content on the site. (Until it gets another layer down--the "Howard" articles were the only example of third-layer content on my site.) If someone just comes to the front page, and doesn't click on anything, just stares for 30 seconds and then backtracks to some other search result, what have we communicated to them? In my version, you felt the answer was "too much." In yours, I feel the answer is "not enough." We have to get somewhere closer to the middle. News: should be on a news page also, but MUST be on the front page, otherwise people will think it's yet another static promotional site with old, "evergreen" info ("Evergreen" is an online term meaning that you can put it up and never touch it again.) rather than the nexus of libertarian activity in this state. The big image on the front page adds to that "static" impression, IMHO. That statement is more appropriate for a billboard, not an interactive communications medium. It says "admire this picture. This is why we put up the site, because we have nothing else more compelling to show you." Just want to be a little clearer: it's not so much the colors, as having _some_ sort of device to differentiate the sections. Something that takes up little real estate, less bandwidth, and adds a "brand" to each section so that next time a person wants to find it again, there is some sort of mental cue that helps the person find that category again. Have you ever gone to a site, and known that you found something really important there, but you can't remember which section? That's what we're trying to avoid... A "breadcrumb" (I didn't explain that, sorry), is the "trail" of hierarchical links one accumulates at the top of the page as one digs deeper into the site's structure, e.g., ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Home | _Essays_ | _by_Author_ | _Bruce_Martin_

Title of Work

by Bruce Martin e.g., OPH, RC5 challenge... but only stuff that's really got people there! Also, e.g., my links to current interactive venues -- on political topics, where an added Libertarian viewpoint could get noticed. Maybe have two side-bar graphics and a bottom piece for this section of the left-hand column, and then text and other graphics can go in the middle. (Don't worry, I'll help make that table degrade nicely into Lynx-viewable. ;) THEN, the sub pages can have the breadcrumbs in the same grey background carried horizontally to the left of the side bar... (text and vlink black, active link dark purple or navy) "Who would want to page down through seven screens of identical boring links? And see that same huge f*ing picture every time they go to the site?" Compared to that, in _my_ design, the types of links are differentiated, made "more appealing" to click on (at least, that was the goal.) And there's only about two and a half pages used (think of people who print!!!) for the front page. Also, don't think of proposals. Think of a newspaper. what can hold the page together left-to-right. (Visually.) keeping pretty meticulous records about the font sizes and effects used to get the graphics I'm making, so that it's easy to reproduce. E.g., the chapters image map, the little activity buttons, the Garvey 'bumper sticker,' etc. One other reason is because when I did these, it wasn't at IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) standards, and I may want to switch to them at some point for the little icons. So, in addition to noting that, could you also keep your different version saved somewhere at freeyellow so we can compare and see how far we've come? (From Boyce's, to whatever we end up with a year from now, and on...) Bonnie * * IAB standard ad icon sizes * * Full banner 468 X 60 Full banner w/vertical navigation bar: 392 X 72 Half banner 234 X 60 Vertical banner 120 X 240 Button 1 120 X 90 Button 2 120 X 60 Square button 125 X 125 Micro button 88 X 31 kiddie shows use much more repetition and multiple means of delivering the same message, over, and over again. When Sesame Street is brought to you by the letter I and the number 12, you see them a hundred times in that hour. You may not remember each segment, but you remember the main points. , (I think the key to that is lots of activities), and provide state info at their fingertips: again, it shuold be just a few clicks away. (I go by a three-click rule, including the scrolling as one.)

keeping them on the site: links to national party, or mirror the info? (e.g., statement of principles, it could be one of 7 +/- 2, or it could be twenty if they are organized in groups) Getting them past that first page is the hardest step--you have to realize that sometimes, you won't. They may take one look and go on to the Green party link they've got.

What impression have you made in the meantime? Have you made it more likely that they will stop by a Libertarian booth next time they see one at an event?