Website Redesign Underway

A brand-new LifeRing website is under construction.  You'll see a new, cleaner, and more attractive design, with  up-to-date web functionality, based on an up-to-the minute web platform, WordPress 3.0.  All of the core content of the current website will be preserved as pages on the new site; some of it as-is, some with reformatting or other edits.  Some of the content will be reshaped into blog posts, retrievable through categories and tags.  Some of the content will drop away.  

What content will drop away? It's largely up to you.  Content will drop away if (a) the pages get a low number of hits and especially if (b) no one maintains and updates the content.  Among the top candidates for obsolescence are:

• The Gallery
• The Humor Page
• Keepers
• Lawyer's LifeRing
• Music
• Recreation
• Science

Selected content from some of these pages will become blog posts.  But the pages themselves will disappear, unless someone steps forward and pledges to maintain them. 

Stay tuned for further updates.  The new website is scheduled for unveiling by the end of this month.  I will stay on as webmaster until about the middle of August to make sure that the new site is running smoothly and in good condition to hand over to my successor.  -- Marty N.  

Convenor web site desiderata

Chris A., who is working up a new design for the lifering.org website, is asking an important question:  Why do convenors come to the website?  What are they looking for?  What do they do when they get there?

Truth, we don't know the answers very well, and we need to know.  The new website design will have a convenor section.  What should be there?

Here are some random guesses what convenors are looking for on the LifeRing website:

• To check that their meeting is correctly listed
• To find out if they're "doing it right"
• To see how other convenors handled similar issues they're facing
• To get questions answered about the convenor role
• To get information about our books, brochures
• To get more supplies when they run out
• To share something interesting or frustrating that happened
• To see copies of documents like nonprofit status papers or insurance 
• To get information about upcoming events (Congress/Expo)
• To get reinforcement for being in the convenor role
• To see what is happening in or with the network
• To connect with other convenors
• To learn more about LifeRing history and background
• To find possible substitute convenors for themselves
• To make announcements about holiday closures 
• To find out what to do with money and signup sheets

If you're a LifeRing convenor, past present or future, please post a comment here with your desiderata for the convenor section of the coming new LifeRing website.  Thanks!

Your input needed on website redesign project

A major redesign is in the works for the lifering.org (a/k/a unhooked.com) website.  Whether it needs it or not (LOL!).  The site first launched on June 16 1996 and it's been growing like a kudzu vine ever since.  Now a talented and experienced web designer has stepped forward.  He is Chris Adams. 

Chris' day job is as senior art director for Rolling Orange (see http://rollingorange.com/team/) and his personal website is at http://culturedesign.com/   He has designed websites for Santa Cruz Snowboards, Giro, RockShox, Bell BMX, Blackburn, Mahlzeit (Zurich), Carnegie Hall, Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis), Electronic Arts, 3M, Andersen Windows, Stanford University, Stanford School of Medicine, Yale University, University of Chicago, Santa Clara University, Covad, Cisco, Borland, QPorter (Zurich Mobile), Straub Hospital & Clinics (Honolulu), Wilcox Health (Kauai), and 3M Dental, among others.  We are in good hands. 

Chris' design process begins by casting as wide a web as possible for user input.  In the coming days, if you have any connection with LifeRing, you will be invited to share your views about the lifering.org (unhooked.com) website via an online survey.  Your emails, letters, even phone calls are also invited.  Chris and the rest of the LifeRing IT group want to be sure that everyone has a chance to be heard and that no idea is overlooked. 

Two survey forms are now up on the web, asking for your input.  One is for the "general public" -- anyone at all with an interest in LifeRing, especially our online presence.  Click here for that one.  The other is aimed more specifically at LifeRing convenors, who are the living core of this organization.  Click here for the convenor input form.  Both are anonymous, and there's no rule against filling out both.  But do it now, or very soon.  (Survey is now closed.  Thank you to all who participated.)

We hope very much to launch the new design in January, which means an enormous amount of work between now and then, and everyone's timely cooperation is necessary.  I'm excited about this project, and I think you will be too.  We're going to have a top notch professional looking website, and that's going to inspire even greater confidence in the organization and attract even more people to this positive, empowering recovery environment of ours.

New LifeRing Canada Website

Convenor and LifeRing Board Member Michael Walsh from Victoria BC has launched a prototype of the first LifeRing Canada website at http://liferingcanada.org.

Note among other things the nifty Canada version of the LifeRing logo, the bilingual organizational name on the Contacts page ("LifeRing -- societe canadienne de retablissement laique") and the printed local meeting schedule here -- the first printed local schedule outside Northern California.

A very nice start!  Congratulations Michael and the whole Canada group who are making this possible.  Credit especially local member Patrick who designed the site.  We look forward to seeing LifeRing Canada grow in all the other provinces and territories.  And, not coincidentally, note that the first LifeRing in Quebec is now under construction and will be opening its doors, it is hoped, very shortly.