Improving the CAP National Web Site

[Spaceman3750]

Umm...no.  According to the traceroute, it's stored at Rackspace.  Linux servers by far outnumber Windows servers for a reason (or several).  They're not a specialty thing.

OK, it's stored at Rackspace. Is it managed or unmanaged? If Rackspace manages it, then sure, we could go Linux because they already have the in-house people to take care of it. If not, we still get back around to who's going to run it. You still have to have someone who is qualified to set up and troubleshoot at a moment's notice and they aren't free. Unless we already have someone on the IT staff that can do it, you have to hire someone.

[JC004]

Rackspace manages up to the app layer.  They're a good choice for their management, among other things.  Perhaps one of the few good choices that was made on the site.   

[Spaceman3750]

Rackspace manages up to the app layer.  They're a good choice for their management, among other things.  Perhaps one of the few good choices that was made on the site.   

In that case, yes, that was a good decision.

[JC004]

:clap:  Yay!  Something was right!  I love Rackspace.  Their little jumping man is cool.   

[RiverAux]

FYI, we can't blame the crazy naming conventions for pdf documents on the current web site.  CAP has been doing that for years.  I can only assume there is some logic that makes it easier and quicker to manage them that way rather than with descriptive names for such files.

My main complaint is that if you go to a staff department web page, lets say public affairs, some of the content will be displayed in the main portion of the page while other stuff willl exist as a submenu on the left side of the page and there is almost no rhyme or reason as to which side any of it will be on.  If you don't know better its very easy to not even notice the stuff on the left because it shows up as very faint text. 

[JC004]

Our last CMS sucked as far as I can tell too. 

Exactly what I'd fix (the styling that I mentioned and the page structure).  Clearly, it was ported over without a card sort, user testing, or any other standard professional practice.  They could have at least done card sorts at things like region/national schools.

[vmstan]

:clap:  Yay!  Something was right!  I love Rackspace.  Their little jumping man is cool.   

I'm a fan of Media Temple's Grid-Service cloud platform http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/ keeps the price pretty low for daily use but instantly scales up if for some reason we started getting slammed by something.

[JC004]

I like (gs) too.  Rackspace also does a similar thing.

[A.Member]

The web design is all about bling and hardly anything about functionality. That is supposed to be a resource for our members, and prospective members, not a three ring circus.

I'd suggest that, like our parent organization, we adopt a site for marketing and recruiting and an "official" site -- the difference between AirForce.com and af.mil -- and that should be the difference between gocivilairpatrol.com and cap.gov (or cap.af.mil, preferably).

These two comments touch on a primary issue. 

Before we discuss the technical issues and the myriad of other issues with the site, the objective(s) of the site must be determined.   It is it recruiting?  Is it for potential customers?  Is it a member resource?  Etc.   The objective(s) of the site means that the audiences are potentially much different.  How the message to those audiences is managed and delivered is critical. 

To me, this needs to be sorted out first and foremost because the current site does a terrific job of muddling it's message and disappointing all audiences.

[JC004]

Noooo problem.  Clearly, we should have a public site (I would prefer we file an ICANN complaint to acquire civilairpatrol.com).  That would meet all of those target audiences.

Then, have a member site in the same style and general formatting under that.  Also, with NO use of the Triangle Thingy.

We don't need microsites for those different external audiences.  My company's intranet has hundreds of screenshots of non-profits with excellent usage of their external sites - addressing all of their major external audiences.  I collected them, so I've seen it in action.  We can do that also.  If you look at the Forbes list of the 200 largest non-profits and look at their sites, you will see how well most of them do it.  One thing is clear - if you visit these sites, you will not see the use of Adobe Flash that CAP has.

In THEORY, I'd make the member site password-protected and just put it all in ONE member portal as we've discussed on here before, but in practice, because we don't have a staff that's logged onto an intranet all day, to improve speed, I'd have a lot of information in the open and the portal (current e-Services) under that.

I would kill most if not all microsites.  I am still not sure what they all are - RiverAux dug up the NCSA microsite, so we'd have to do some more digging.  Honestly, they aren't even really microsites - they're just more unnecessary domain names in most cases.

[jimmydeanno]

Honestly, they aren't even really microsites - they're just more unnecessary domain names in most cases.

They are "unnecessary" in the sense that if our website was awesome, we wouldn't need it.  In reality, they're created to do things that the current CMS doesn't allow.

[JC004]

Honestly, they aren't even really microsites - they're just more unnecessary domain names in most cases.

They are "unnecessary" in the sense that if our website was awesome, we wouldn't need it.  In reality, they're created to do things that the current CMS doesn't allow.

?!?!?!?! 

They have the CMS's logo at the bottom (without 110-1 disclaimer)...

[a2capt]

Yeah, thats been there for quite a while, probably another reason they moved out of the .gov domain.

It also says "United States Civil Air Patrol" on the vendors portfolio, though it does have the majcom on it, at least. (W/O the 'U.S.')

I think that really should say Civil Air Patrol and then USAF Auxiliary, if not spelled out completely, myself.

[JC004]

I don't believe that 110-1 stipulates that it only be on .gov domains.  I believe that it applies to all "CAP Internet Operations."

The vendor site is a joke.  They claim to have inflicted their pain on thousands of unsuspecting customers.  Also, list us as "Recreation."