FarmHack.net Next Steps Proposal. Feedback encouraged!

Hi Everyone! Last weekend Severine and I sat down and organized the FarmHack.net Next Steps list. We set our priorities to 1) moving the frontpage over to FarmHack.net (it's currently at NYFC's site), 2) reorganizing the header, and 3) building out a commerce/listing/classifieds section. This past weekend Louis and I talked over this idea of topics (see Simplifying the Site for New Users conversation). I think it is an interesting way to organize the site in contrast to organizing it by content type (tool, discussion, etc.).

Since we are moving the Farm Hack front page to a new system (Workpress -> Drupal) we have to put the work into building it on that new system. That means this is an opportunity to make any changes we want to the front page because we're building it from the ground up again. We're also talking about reworking the header so I've pushed all of the ideas we've had rolling around into one concept of a front page redesign.

Topic Hubs -> From the conversation above, I think we can give every piece of content on the site one or more of those categories. The Topic Hub landing pages still need to be thought out but the general idea is that you'll see all content with that tagged with that Topic. You'll notice I threw in "Getting Started" in there. That won't necessarily be a topic page but maybe just a wiki page that we maintain to make really awesome. I could do more to call attention to it if a user (logged in or not logged in) has never clicked on it.

Resources -> This is browsing the site by content type as opposed to by topic. I like the idea of having the two ways of browsing, by topic and by content type. I'm calling this column "Resources" for lack of a better term. More explicitly it implies "List of all content by content type".

Classified -> This idea is something I think we've all been toying with for a while and I'm ready to say we go for it. We can hash out the rules for posting but is everyone generally on board for this new section?

River of Activity -> This will be a list of all comments, wiki edits, new discussions, new tools, new hacks, EVERYTHING in chronological order for those who want to see what has happened on FarmHack.net lately. I think it's likely we'll have these rivers of activity on each topic page as well.

On Events -> Events are massively important and the one hesitation I have with my design so far is that it doesn't give Events as much exposure as it deserves. Louis and I discussed putting a little announcement in the top right corner that automatically shows up when there is an upcoming event. That might do. Thoughts? On the Blog -> It seems to me like perhaps we should be using Discussions as blog posts. Is there any reason not to do that?

Thanks for reading and I'm looking forward to everyone's feedback.

-RJ