We have a lot of data available from our top menu - much of it changing "all the time". Impractical to manually maintain. My local town council is looking to put together a system which is a "single stop" for events, community groups, contacts, news, etc, and that had me looking at the forum, all the various sources we use, and how we pull it all together (or don't). Useful to copy the description of the stuff we have on each page here, as there may be things that even well established members haven't noticed. I have also noted where the data come - both to tell you who's authority it's on and to provide a degree of help if anyone has to take this on in the future.
1. A map showing current rail disruption across our area. Click on map to enlarge and then select station by station. Click on words just below to get a full text report. Feeds from National Rail (journey check)
2. Our logo to identify the site you are on. Click on this to link to our
FAQ▸ (Frequently asked questions) thread - updates as required by moderators
May update the graphic / add a text label here soon3. Current travel and transport news. Feed from the
BBC» . Click on "BBC Stories" to get a full set of current heaslines from the BBC, with a one-line summary of each, with travel and transport topics at the top
4. What happened on this day in previous years - takes you to a page looking at today then back to each day in the past, with a picture and links to the story(s) for each data. Feed from a single data file for the whole year in which I correlate Forum Member's inputs in addition to my own (nearly complete) research
5. Today's story(s) from "On this day". Links to an appropriate forum thread for people to read, learn from, comment on, understand. Thread manually chosen from our archive of around 25,000 - either member contributions of a "special" written to correlate data
6. Advert for the forum to get people to sign up, and help them register. Once a member is logged in (around 100 members per day do so), this box changes to "Recent posts", "Recent new topics" and "Espresso" which take you back to a month of your choice in the forum's history. The data behind all of these links comes from the forum post which are added to at between 20 and 60 per day by members.
7. Next upcoming events on the diary - things happening today and on following days, as added by forum members. The next four immediate public events are shown; click on "whole diary" to see whole diary!
8. A series of links to resources - things like
* all polls that are open an recently closed on the forum (as started by members and voted and commented on by other members).
* acronymns and abbreviations to help you with jargon. This is the only section of the site that we have paid someone to work on, but it can also be updated by our moderator / admin team
* Station comparator - data from multiple sources; initial pages repopulated and updated annually from Office of Road and Rail databases, individual maps from Open Mapping database using, station by station departure boards automatically from Network Rail Darwin and Tiger
* Rail News - a link to Newsnow which takes you to rail headlines from around the world
* Train Companies - a pulldown menu that takes you to the web site of each of the train operators in our area, to check on train times, book your journey, etc
9. Next departures from the key stations listed. Allow you to enter final destination there and will tell you which is your train (e.g. will point you to a London or Portsmouth train if you're at Bristol and ask for Bath). Data fed from National Rail Tiger
10. Login, password reminder link, and request to guests to register. Once logged it, replaced by your avatar (if you have one) and log in stats
11. The six subjects that members have most recently (and it largest numbers) liked. Click on the headline to get a whole page of popular topics
12. A
QR▸ code which if you scan it will bring you back to this page.
13. News and a "byline" reminding you which site you are on
14. Search by keywords - defaults to search member contributions less than 3 years old, station names, and 1,000 mirrored and indexed documents. Adding to these indexed document is an ongoing process - something I do when someone links to a relevant .pdf which we don't already have. For copyright reasons, most mirrored documents are only accessible to members.
15. Three (public) sections which can be opened / collapsed
- Across the Great Western area
- Line by line topics
- Sideshoots and associated topics
Structure updated by our moderator team
16. Title and short desciption of each board within the section
Structure updated by our moderator team
17. Summary of very latest post in this board - when, who, what
Automatically updated by members as the post on the forum.
NOT SHOWN as they only display when you're a signed in members - systems like the message system which lets members communicate between themselves, and links to pages such as "what is new since you last visited".
Phew! It's probably worth sharing my comments to the council officer as it will give members here, too, who might be interested in the future a few insights into why things are done certain ways
One key (to me and the team) is the ability to provided data without major efforts by a few people - lots of automatic feeds in there (I have pasted a picture of a typical page and navigation) so that we don’t have issues when someone’s on vacation, or major update costs - the whole site budget is around £700 per annum as most is volunteer time from lots of volunteers.
Also key is having things drop away off the headlines and quick links as they pass their “best before” date - in the case of a diary, having stuff go off the banners and down the thread lists once an event has happened
Third key - important to keep the site / links / data there in people’s Social media (Facebook, Twitter, perhaps other) threads. Not illustrated in the diagrams below.
The front page is designed (but could be much better) to give quick access to lots of resources, both for newcomers and regulars Our site does NOT link to booking engines, nor has it easy-print on all pages. It is not at present responsive to browser width to be apelike on a phone; known issues with a system that has origins going way back, and not so relevant (or not relevant at all) to our membership and membership objectives thought it might be to the town council
The Town Council Committee that is overseeing and promoting this "Virtual Hub" is not one I'm on - my only involvement is as vice chair of
MTUG» - the above just to help provide food for thought for the working group who's members are (I think) all new to this, and to the councillor who "does web sites as a job" and is advising them on what to put in their spec.