The Web Site Development Progress Report
From Eugad wiki
This Document is constantly updated in order to Report to Stakeholder and Team Members about the progress and the challenges of developing and maintaining this web site.(see Eugad Management). For reference about who is presently involved in the work please see:
- Tasks subdivision for the Development and Maintenance of the Web Site
- Web-site related tasks to be completed
Concerning the result obtained by the work done see ⇒ Eugad Site Map
This progress report is constantly updated by Giobi Fasoli
Last Update -9 Feb 2010
Contents |
Introduction
The web portal is the communication tool supporting the networking and knowledge sharing activities.
It is used:
- at the beginning of the action by the partners promoting the network and the stakeholders who will join it, for consultation in the preparation of Action outputs and for collecting and sharing knowledge resources and tools; (functional to the achievement of Result 1.1)
- at a later stage, for giving wider access to the knowledge resources collected and created (manuals, documentaries) and for disseminating the lessons learnt in the Action.
Eugad.eu site is divided into 2 main areas:
- www.eugad.eu that is the "official site" or the "front stage" of the team work;
- and www.eugad.eu/wiki that is the "writing lab" or "back stage" of the team work dedicate to for the preparation of all Eugad outputs.
All outputs at EUGAD are produced in cooperation amongst all Eugad partners. The WIKI platform has been adopted as a form of collaborative writing. Collaborative writing has the advantage of enabling all stakeholders to contribute to the project. However this has required a considerable amount of coordination work amongst the partners. Editing and finalizing the texts also requires a high level of effort. As consequence of this effort the final result however is a product quality that could not be achieved by single or small group authorship.
- The WIKI platform is where texts are being drafted, discussed and finalized. The amount of resources in the Wiki is elevated and often is not clear by reeding a WIKI page if that one was "finalized" or is still still in a draft form. This is the reason why WIKI is not the right environment for the access by new comers who want just to see what the project has delivered so far. They would get easily "lost".
- For the external access we have the"official site": the BLOG platform. Only certain portions (more or less finalized) of the work done at the WIKI level are shown at the BLOG level.
In a certain sense we could say that texts are drafted in the WIKI section and then published on the BLOG section. However the issue is a bit more complicated because even in the BLOG section there is collaborative work (articles are commented, etc.). And the wiki is open for consultation even to external users. It is better to differentiate the two levels as "backstage" and "front-stage": we publish on the front-stage only the documents that have received the imprimatur, i.e. the official recognition by the Eugad management that those contributions are in line with Eugad objectives and Eugad expected quality standards.
NB The two platforms (WIKI and BLOG) are not distinguished as "internal" and "external" communication stages. In Eugad "internal" and "external classification looses rigidity, because the Eugad approach is to involve the target groups as partners in designing and implementing the activities. (See more in Eugad stakeholders). So also EUGAD front-stage also has windows looking over the work-in-progress; The Blog looks upon the Wiki and even in the documentaries we see not only what the team produces but also how the team works and faces up the challenges.
From the BLOG level we invite viewers to become co-produces and back-stages and that we constantly invite viewers to become contributors and enter in the WIKI environment; and from there we ask contributors to see how the work results are portrayed in the front-stage. So the two levels call for each other like the workshop and the show-window.
Technically the two different platforms are managed by two different software. The BLOG is in wordpress, the WIKI is mediawiki(the same one used by the famous wikipedia).
Work in progress on the WIKI platform
Even if Frontpage and Joomla are developing co-operative writing tools, Mediawiki is the platform of choise for collaborative writing. This software allows any registered user to write and edit a text from anywhere in the world having only the internet as the necessary tool. Besides the written pages WIKI has "discussion" pages or "metapages" that allow talking about a page.
A more direct way "communicate over pages is the use of "Flags". Flags are used to describe the condition of a page on the wiki. It may be a note by the page author or a judgment by the Project Coordinator . The role of the flags is not only to inform the viewer but also to better manage the roles and work of the working team. When a page will be flagged, the person flagging will go to the contributor's profile whose responsibility is to the quality and content of the falgged page, and link it to the work that the contributor has to complete.
The main sections of the Wiki are:
⇒ More about the Wiki content in the site map.
Wiking and Training: WIKING is a tool to make contributors do less work and be able to upload their work themselves and directly modify it without going through various steps, which is what usually happens. To make this possible, we had a month long sessions on Skype, starting from August, to train all the core team contributors on what the wiki is, why it is useful, how to upload information on the wiki, how to use it and help them whenever they were faced with problems. This training also continued in September and it still does when contributors are faced with problems or new tools are added to the wiki. For the training a workshop was also organized on September 2nd in Sofia by Fausto Aarya De Santis to train the Bulgarian partners. Listed below you will find the details of the work we did which is not directly related to the structure but it creates the very basis for contributors to elaborate on the structure and complete the duties assigned to them.
The wiki now is Up and running and stored more than 500 articles and adopted the standard monobook skin of the other wiki for more performance and implementation of the stable extension .
A massive work has been done in describing all the phases of networking activities and in uploading the main contribution of the stakeholders in the form of interviews and reports. See:
- Reports of the Networking Activities
- Indications for the Manual autors in the basis of the stakeholders interviews and meetings;
- How the interviews have been used as resources for the preparation of the Manual.
The Wiki has been used also as a coordination tool. The tasks has been listed out in the Partner Profiles and for the main tasks guidelines have been specified. At present there are 15 guidelines which explain in very detailed information how the required activity must be carried out and how it must then be described in the Wiki.
Work in progress on BLOG Platform (Wordpress)
The BLOG platform is used for the external access; it is also refered to as the "official" of the "frront-stage" site. However even in the "front stage" there are windows where users can see over the "back-stage" or the labs of the work-in-progress. Not even this is a "static" site because even in the front-stage collaborative work iss going on in various forms (comments, etc.) However here, unlike in the WIKI environment, all pages have received an "imprimatur", i.e. the recognition by the site managers that contributions displyed are in line with Eugad objectives and Eugad expected quality standards.
Besides the Home Page (also called the entrance Room) there are different environment (or rooms) where users have a different kind of relationship with the Eugad team.
- In the Reading Room finalized project outputs (pages and videos) are presented.
- In the Labs viewers can have a glance upon the work-in-progress; we see here the team working and their draft outputs.
- The Library is the access to the WIKI platform from the Blog Platform
- The News are the updates upon the project activities and results; also reference to activities of synergic projects, other important events and links to other source of information useful for the team and the network. News can be commented by the registered users. Each news also is posted on the Eugad Facebook Page which allows Eugad's facebook subscribers to add informal comments and easily share the news with others.
- Newsletter: Every 2 weeks the Eugad team publishes a newsletter with updates of the work in progress at Eugad, indicates the most important additions to the documentations collected and highlights the most important upcoming events. (see all previous issues.
- Calendar. Based on the Google platform the Calendar the Eugad agenda is on display. It is updated regularly in accordance to the milestones achieved and expected. In the the agenda items there have links (on the WIKI) to the relevant resources and outputs of the event. The Agenda that displays the events externally is also used as a tool for internal communication and team management.
See the content of the site in the specific section of the Site Map.
Other Web-Platforms Used by Eugad
Facebook
The Eugad project has it's own page on Facebook. Each new 'happening' of Eugad is posted on Facebook and it gives the users the possibility to comment and further share the 'happening/news' with their friends. Eugad has more than nearly 300 fans and there is a decently good feedback from the news posted on it; 13.8% of our views are from Facebook. Though the numbers are good, the interaction between Eugad and it's members is not yet at the level we would wish it to be and we are working on how to imporve this.
Twitter
For keeping in touch with Twitter users Eugad has a Twitter page. Each news becomes a facebook update and consequently, each facebook update also becomes a Tweet. This enables Eugad to share all it's information in various platforms as to increase the dissemination.
Google Groups
For internal administrative information Eugad team uses a Google Group. This space is for interaction which is based on contractual obligations. Google groups is thought only as a tool for Vertical communication which is moderated by the prject leader. . Its is used only for intra-core-members communication; no outside members are allowed. It is communication from the project leaders to those who have a contract and vice-versa and this communication will not be open to the public. This space also contains contractual files between the EC and Armadilla and Armadilla with the other partners in the project and it is closed to external stakeholders except EuropeAid monitors.
From "viewer" to "partner": the steps of involvement of project stakeholders though the web portal.
These are the different levels to which a viewer of the EUGAD site gradually becomes a user, a contributor and finally a partner.
- Becomes a regular user:
- subscribes to the newsletter;
- becomes a "fan" of the Eugad page in Facebook
- Contributes
- Posts comments in the BLOG pages in the seminar rooms or in the news
- Writes notes on the wall of the Facebook page.
- Contributes to Wiki pages
- Shares knowledge resources, tools or practices.
- Becomes a partner
- Prepares Articles or New WIKI pages
- Takes a role in the preparation of new projects
- Contributes to sharing project outputs and dissemination of project results.
The quality of the Site is measured by its ability to attract the viewer and move lead her/him from "viewer" to "user" and contributor". The impact of the project will be measured by how many contributors become partners.
Website Viewer's Report
January 2010
This chart shows the visit to the website since August 2009. We can observe that in the past one month a significant and constant growth with an increase of more than 300%.
From the December report:
- We have had 1953 visits, which is more than 40% of the total visits till date.
- The avrage time spent has is 12:11 minutes, in comarision to the earlier 9:00 minnutes
December 2009
The following file show the chart done by Google Analytics which contains information on the website viewers http://www.eugad.eu/wiki/images/3/37/Www.eugad.eu_progress_report_19Dec2009.pdf
There are some problems in numbering on the y-axis of the graph. We are sorry but it is something we have no control over but is directly from google.
This reports shows that:
- From the biggening of july we have had 2,761 visits. over 95% of these was from 1st of August onwards
- There is an average time spent on the site of 9 minutes, which is very high for a new website
- The average weekly visits increased from around 75 at the biggening of September 09 to over 160 as of today.
- Our avrage number of pages which a viewer opens are 7.70
- Our page has been viewed from 55 different countries
- We have 39.66% direct traffic, 32.71% is reffered (out of which half is from facebook) and 27.63% is from search engines
- 27.38% of new visits and 40.85% of bounce rate (the number of people who entered the page by mistake)
- When you type Eugad on google, the first page which appears is ours
Old Reports
