Hi David,
I looked at the link with the tips but I didn't understand what you are getting at? We thought long and hard about navigation. The result of our deliberations was that all the important links are grouped together in the "mega menu" pages which are towards the top and are called:
- News & Events
- Knowledge Hub
- Partners & Members
- Working Groups

Those links at the very bottom of the website are meant to act more as a site map but not as the primary way of navigating the site.

By the way, I see you have mentioned links to other websites a few times in your posts. Could you please tell us a little bit more about yourself and your interest in sustainable sanitation and SuSanA? (I am just curious).

Regards,
Elisabeth

Site is really good. If I can suggest any changes in the future I would care a little bit more about the navigation menu. I mean you can divide it into categories and speed some user's processes. There is a lot of links in the footer but first, you need to scroll down to the bottom of the page to see it. It would be really useful to put the most important links into main menu. I have found good article about tips for improving navigation menu: www.netguru.co/blog/10-ux-tips-to-improve-website-navigation . You will find there more good suggestion which can be used on this site

Dear all,

The SuSanA website is getting better and better.... We've had a very intense period in the background with improving it further since its re-launch on 1 September. So if you haven't been to the mother website in the past 2 weeks, please go now and take a look. (www.susana.org)

Here is a guided tour video that I did up quickly just now to give you some highlights (5 minutes long):



If this kind of video is deemed useful I could also redo it to show other features, or to do something similar for the forum.* Five minutes might actually be too long for this kind of video. Let me know what you think.

What's new or different on the SuSanA website?

1. There is now a top menu bar (or "ribbon") at the top which is accessible from all pages, containing shortcuts to important items (same for the mobile version).
2. The global map of projects from the project database is on the front page.
3. The breadcrumb line showing you where you are in the website is now working. So is the "back" button from all pages.
4. The tweets that SuSanA puts out on Twitter are integrated on the front page.
5. The tweets that others put out where they mention SuSanA are integrated into the tab of "News & events".
6. There is now a site map at the very bottom of the page.
7. The pages that contain paragraphs of text have all been overhauled with the aim to updated content, improve readability, making them easier to understand for people who don't speak English as their first language or people without an academic background (further copy editing work is ongoing). See e.g. the new page of "About SuSanA": www.susana.org/en/about . And the new page about our vision: www.susana.org/en/about/vision-mission
8. The website now has a better search function - an integrated site search, searching mother website and forum together.
9. The project database page has a clearer layout - filters are available on the left handside: www.susana.org/en/knowledge-hub/projects/database
10. Each SuSanA Working Group has a nice page of their own with plenty of links. See e.g. here the page for Working Group 4: www.susana.org/en/working-groups/sanitat...s-technology-options (in future we want to set it up so that Working Group leads can edit their own pages, too).
11. The pages of the website can be shared with various social media options using the links at the bottom of the page. This includes Whatsapp if you are viewing the page from a mobile phone (I find that very useful for the forum threads).

So, what do you think? I am very excited about all this (as you can tell)!
This is still work in progress. If you spot any broken links or things that are not working well, please bring them to our attention. Either by posting here or by sending me an e-mail. - Thanks!

Regards,
Elisabeth

* Edit on 21 Oct.: I have created two more videos; one about the forum and one about the old website, see Playlist here: www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0gMdVBup...i4uLf5LIzmy-CtxUEJKG

Hi Carol,

The Forum is now linked from the mother website in so many places, it is hard to miss it. It is under the tab "community", in the top ribbon, also from various other pages as hyperlinks... People who use the forum a lot have probably bookmarked it by now.

E.g. on my mobile phone I have an icon for the direct link to the forum and an icon for a direct link to the website (it is so great that we now have mobile versions for the forum and for the website).

About the width of the banner photos, this is personal preference. I think they are about right. You always have to do some scrolling, especially with the modern websites. But lets hear more feedback on that.

About the photos, yes, a photo competition amongst SuSanA members could be very nice. I think we can get the secretariat to set that up next month perhaps. However, sometimes I wonder if we already have too many photo competitions and if people get bored with that. Also perhaps some people don't like the "competition" aspect and rather want to collaborate. I still think that in our flickr photo database we have already 11,000 photos and perhaps it's more a matter of going through them and finding the hidden gems? (www.flickr.com/photos/gtzecosan/collections/)

One problem we have with our photos is that for using them on a website they have to have quite a high resolution of about 12 mega pixels. Many of the photos were taken with mobile phone cameras or in lower resolution. This means they still look nice but they are not suitable for the front page of the SuSanA website...

Anyhow, please everyone have a look at the photos we have used so far on the SuSanA website and give us your feedback? (www.susana.org) If you have other/better photos to propose, please go ahead. E.g. what could be a better photo to illustrate SuSanA's thinktank function?

Regards,
Elisabeth

I agree with, Nitya. Better not to bury the Forum under Community.

For many of us the Forum is the go-to place and the place we send people who come to us with questions.

As for the new sliders, they look great on Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Messages are sparse and work. Slides slide slowly or you can speed them up. The design echos the layout of each page.

Just one change to consider. I'm wondering if the top front page sliders could be narrower (or eventually replaced with banner photos that can be cropped longer and narrower). There's just not enough room on a laptop to see top of page or what follows. (And because I can't remember to look for the Forum under "Community" It's easiest for me to go right to the very top to find the Forum link. )

On PHOTOS in general. Everybody needs photos for their organization's websites, Facebook pages and outreach materials.. How about a Forum-based contest to collect quality photos that photographers would be willing to share open source? There could be a different theme every month or a one time call for photos on various themes (shared toilets, community meetings, Africa, FSM pump equipment, etc or could be just "banner photos") At the end, we could give a big shout out to best photographers, maybe ask them to give a few photography tips. As smart phones penetrate all corners of the world, the time seems right to get some very good photos. This could be pretty much a zero-budget exercise.

I hope others will add comments on these and other issues so we're sure the new pages are as beautiful, useful and intuitive as possible.

Carol

Dear all,

Here's a little update on our work behind the scenes on the SuSanA website (www.susana.org). Perhaps you have noticed the gradual improvements....

For example:

• We have done lots of work on the project database, its filters, the map, the way information is entered and presented etc. (I plan to make a separate forum post about that here soon: forum.susana.org/project-database-of-susana)
• We have done work on improving the texts that appear on the "mega menu pages" (i.e. the four tabs at the top called News & Events, Knowledge Hub, Community, Working Groups). They are meant to be easy to read and understand by everyone.
• An exciting improvement, I think, are the new key messages about SuSanA that appear on the front page in a kind of slide show (note: if you access the SuSanA website from a mobile device then the slide show is not there; neither are the photos there).

I have some questions to you today:

Do you think the 6 sliders capture the essence of SuSanA well? Go to www.susana.org and see at the top. You might need to click refresh if it still has the old version. Note there are also forward and pause buttons if you want to halt the slide show.

What do you think of the photos that we are using so far? We have decided we want to only use our own photos, i.e. those on the SuSanA flickr database: www.flickr.com/photos/gtzecosan/collections and not bought photos from other photo selling sites.
We have "only" 11,000 photos to choose from - hah!!

If you have a better photo in mind that we could use on our website, then please bring it to our attention. It needs to be quite high resolution (say more than 1 MB) and it needs to be landscape or have a motive that could be "cut out" in landscape format.

Some of the working group photos could also be better, I guess, and they are not landscape format (see the tab "Working Groups).

Overall for the photos on the website we are looking to strike a balance between:

• People from all over the world (black, white, Asian, young, old, male, female etc.)
• A little bit on technology, but not too much and not "favoring" one technology over the other, some on behavior change (might still add a handwashing photo, they are always pretty), a little bit showing bad sanitation, people in planning/discussion processes, political processes and so forth.

As you can image, it is not easy to get this balance right!

Anyway, if you have a good photo to propose from within here: www.flickr.com/photos/gtzecosan/collections (or a new photo, maybe one that you have taken yourself) please do so.

Any other feedback about the new website is also welcome!

I am sorry that it has taken longer than we thought to move from "beta status" to final status of the website. IT projects always seem to take longer than expected. But overall it's an exciting process to see this new website unfold!

Regards,
Elisabeth

The two changes that Nitya had pointed out have now been addressed (thanks).

We have added another link to the Discussion Forum on the front page of www.susana.org at the very top.
Is that sufficient? The suggestion has been made that it is also added as another tab in between "Community" and "Working Groups".
I am not too sure about this as it would create a fifth sub-menu item and perhaps dilute the impact that we are achieving with the four sub-menu items which currently are:

- News & events
- Knowledge Hub
- Community
- Working Groups

What do others think?

Also, any further suggestions? We're still chipping away at a range of small and larger improvements so it is not too late to have your say!

E.g. it's been suggested to add a box with tweets from and about SuSanA on the front page. Also to have the project database map with all the pins on the front page.
We also still want to improve and shorten many of the text pieces, e.g. those that are found under About SuSanA:
www.susana.org/en/about (before we do the translations for the French and Spanish version of the website)

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear Nitya,
Thanks for your feedback!
That's a good point about making the Forum more visible and accessible from the SuSanA website (www.susana.org). At the moment, it can be accessed via the front page (from "recent topics") and via the "community" sub-menu. But perhaps that's not enough. My suggestion would be to include it in the top row where it says "About, login etc." in red (and to make that line of text a bit larger).
I am awaiting for our IT developer to come back online so we can progress further (he's been working on other projects).

That link that is currently called "collaborations" should actually be renamed to "Integrated Content", like we have it in the community sub-menu:

Integrated Content

SanCop UK
WSSCC LinkedIn Group
Sanitation Marketing Portal (WaterAid)
Akvo Sanitation Portal

SuSanA is hosting contents from several other communities of practice and information-sharing portals.

This would make it clearer, I hope.

Do we have more user feedback about the SuSanA mother website?

Regards,
Elisabeth

Hi Elisabeth

This looks great. Its fast and clear, much better than the one it replaces. The Forum is however buried under the Community tab - maybe it should be a top level tab given its size and importance?

At the bottom, the link Cooperations isnt clear. How are these different from the partners.

More when I have been through the whole site.

Regards
Nitya

Yippee!! Today was the day when the new version of the SuSanA website was launched! Check it out here: www.susana.org

It uses a new menu concept (the so-called "mega menu concept") to improve the user experience. Some functions are not working yet and we are working on those now.

If you have any comments or suggestions please post them here in this thread. You can also see what other people have commented on and what we are currently pondering over in this Google doc (and yes, the list of to-dos is still quite long!):
docs.google.com/document/d/1hqgBippjrOkM...TlT7vtFUyTBIB5g/edit

Remember:

1. Naturally, we cannot necessarily follow each and every suggestion of each and every member because there is the issue of "personal preference", e.g. some people want the font smaller, some want it larger; some like the colour red for hyperlinks, some don't like red.
2. The more people agree on the suggestions of someone else the more likely we are going to follow that advice, especially if there is good reasoning given.

So please make your opinions heard!

I hope you enjoy the new look and feel of the SuSanA website. And I hope that we have succeeded in making the mother website and the discussion forum more seamless and clearly belonging together.

Elisabeth

Dear Chris,

Thanks for your feedback!
Our IT colleagues are today and tomorrow doing the switch from the old website to the new website...

About the typos thanks a lot for offering to help! I would say if you spot one, do let me know but don't spend any time (yet) on systematically checking all texts. I need to discuss with the secretariat how we want to go about it. Many of the website texts seem a bit too wordy and complex to me. I would like to go over all of them and simplify them. I'll have to see if others in the secretariat support this suggestion. If yes, then I would want to do that first and then afterwards invite you to check & review. So don't do it yet, in order to not waste your time.

Your suggestion about the most-liked Forum posts is an interesting one. At the moment, the new SuSanA website front page is set up to only highlight the most recent five forum threads. "Most liked" will be relative... We keep a tab on all-time number of replies and view rates. But that's quite static and doesn't change much from week to week (and when a thread is broken in two then the number of replies starts again from zero). You can check those threads out here: forum.susana.org/forum/statistics

I am not sure where and how one could "feature" certain forum threads on the mother website. We used to have them on the "front door" of the forum but that page confused a lot of people so we got rid of it. Nevertheless I would like to have parts of it back as I quite liked seeing those statistics on "most active user during the last week/month" that we used to have there (with the user's profile picture). - I would see this more as something for the forum pages though rather than the mother website pages. Hmmm, I am not sure. How would you or others suggest to see this displayed where and in which style?

I also liked having those twitter feeds that mentioned @susana_org in the tweet. I am still discussing with André how to bring that back to the mother website somewhere.

Regards,
Elisabeth

Hi,

The beta is beautiful, but it needs some English proofreading. For example, "RegisterING as an individual is free ...", together with other cases I saw during a quick glance. Do you want help with this?

I especially like the engaging, excellent photos.

How about highlighting the most-liked Forum posts, for newcomers to read?

Best wishes,
Chris Canaday