The new LTEREurope website: Structure and Function

1
The new LTER-Europe websiteStructure and
Function
Based on proposal of Andy Sier (CEH)
2
Status

• Preliminary website active since several years
• Requirements growing with network development
• New website Under construction since December
  2007 by Andrew Sier (CEH) using a content
  management system (Plone)
• Cooperation / tuning with M. Mirtl, K. Krauze, M.
  Frenzel requirements for structure function
• Hopefully online within 2 months!
• Sevilla 2008 additional ideas?

3
Purpose of the site

• To inform about LTER-Europe (public,
  stakeholders, non-member scientists, members)
• Who we are
• How we work
• What we want to achieve
• What happens Events news
• To promote the brand LTER-Europe and long term
  ecological research in general
• To be an important and attractive tool for
  members!!!
• Networking services (share information, access
  LTER-Europe documents, find contact information,
  etc)

4
Structure (I)

• Home page
• About LTER-Europe
• Mission, objectives, background, structure, main
  contacts
• News
• LTER-Europe news / Other LTER news / RSS feed(s)
  from relevant sources, e.g. from ILTER
• Events
• LTER-Europe events / Other LTER events / Other
  relevant events

5
Structure (II)

• Networks
• Introduction / Map and index to subsections /
  Subsection for each member, with this structure
• Introduction
• Link to INFO-BASE
• Contacts / people
• InfoBase
• Introduction to InfoBase and access to the DB
  search portal
• Links
• Links to useful sites not included in the member
  section

6
Structure (III)

• Members-only section
• Internal news
• Internal events
• Documents
• Conference minutes
• Templates for letters of support, commitment
• Preliminary documents (to be worked upon)
• ..
• Contacts directory
• Image gallery

7
Features (I)

• Top-level navigation
• via tabs across the top of the screen. If a
  section has subsections, then a side navigation
  pane is displayed
• Portlets on the right hand-side.
• These collect information from other parts of the
  site and display lists (such as the 5 most recent
  news items). With the right programming knowledge
  it is possible to design our own portlets. E.g.,
  we might have a featured LTER site portlet.
• Site searching

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Features (II)

• Special logins
• create or edit content (may be moderated by an
  administrator or a network of editors).
• Graphical view of site locations
• Google Maps interface
• GIS tools
• Various add-ons
• to extend functionality newsletter generators,
  discussion boards
• RSS feeds
• of information (e.g. news and events) to other
  websites that can receive RSS feeds.

9
Proposal for minimum contents for National
Networks

• Basic information to be delivered from national
  Networks
• National Network Representative contact data
• National Network Representative Deputy contact
  data
• Structure of national LTER including all contact
  data for elements in the national LTER
• List of sites
• Location of sites (map of the country google
  maps?)
• Documentation of sites in the LTER Infobase
• Link to national LTER WEB site, if existing